Like so many other young men of his generation, in the mid 80s, Tom Morello came to Los Angeles to pursue his dreams of a life in rock’n’roll. It did not, initially, go well: for a time, the closest the Harvard-graduated guitarist got to a career in the entertainment industry was working as an ‘exotic dancer’, grinding to Brickhouse by The Commodores at bachelorette parties.
“My friends were all saying, ‘Damn, that must be so awesome’, but, no, it was not,” he recalls, with the faintest of shudders. “Even on the fringes of sex work, the dehumanising aspects were unpleasant.” Happily, today Tom is rather better known for his work alongside Zack de la Rocha, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk in Rage Against The Machine, alongside a career CV that takes in acclaimed work as a solo artist, with Chris Cornell in Audioslave, as The Nightwatchman and with Prophets Of Rage. And, while Rage’s future is uncertain at best, sitting in a North London hotel restaurant on the eve of his appearance at Download 2024, the 60-year-old guitarist is buzzing with anticipation for the road ahead, a path he’s previewed with the release of an excellent new single, Soldier In The Army Of Love, co-written with his 13-year-old son Roman, a gifted guitarist in his own right.
