YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Morello

lines on the record: 71
first: 2022-04-29
most recent: 2022-04-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Anytime you broadcast your soul artistically, be careful because somebody may be listening and that you can make a connection that you wouldn't otherwise.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All they have to do is take Glance at history. And the first thing to do is ask yourself, you're saying artists exclusively, has any art ever affected you? That's the first question. And I know for me it was bands like Public Enemy in the Clash that they didn't necessarily change my mind about things, but they made me, they connected me to a bigger world than the one of Libertyville, Illinois. Made me think, oh, there's other people that see things the way that I do. They're not my teachers. They're not the governor of my state, but they're musicians who, and they have an audience. And when I go to see their show, all of a sudden, there's a community that's beyond my suburb or my job at the Dairy Queen or wherever. And so I would say that.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dangerous times to man dangerous songs. And when we form this band, that was our first ever public performance, which was a free show for the homeless people on Skid Row. We wanted this band to the onset to not just talk the talk, but to walk the walk. Our first three of our first eight shows, any show which we charged a dollar for, all of them went to local homeless charities in the cities that we were in. And the shows that were free shows were on Skid Row and were at Norco Penitentiary in Southern California and at the protests outside of the RNC. So it was like, it's a band. It's in set from day one, we wanted it to live it like we were going to play it. And so that's a very exciting band to be in.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Prophets of rage is the band that I am in now. It consists of Be Real from Cyprus Hill, Chuck Dee, and DJ Lord from Public Enemy. And Timmy C. and Brad Wilk from Rage Against the Machine and Audio Slave. And it's a band that was formed in the tumult of the 2016 election is a band that will continue into the future. The two things that we can be certain of is that looking forward is that there will be injustices in the world. We can also be certain there will be resistance to those injustices. And that resistance needs a soundtrack. And it will be provided by prophets of rage.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no. I'm gonna have something for you. There is a quote from written by Joe Strummer of the Clash. I cut this, I wrote this down, put it on my refrigerator as a youth. It says, Are you taking over or are you taking orders? Are you going backwards or are you going forwards? And I would look at that on my refrigerator and I would try to answer those four questions for myself every day.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Certainly, the one book that I've gifted the most in my life was a book that I first wrote when I was 15, and I reread it almost yearly. It's a book called Watership Down. And Watership Down. I've read books that have been more serious political tomes in my time, but the heroism, courage, and friendship exhibited in that book among a number of rabbits, it's about rabbits, but it's about much more than that, is, and it is the single most breathtakingly exciting book that I've ever read as well, Watership Tab. Richard Adams, a strong endorsement for that book right there.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, I told him, first of all, you're bombing. One thing you have in common is with everyone, I'd say name the five artists who you love the most. And I would ensure them that all of them have bombed as bad or worse as they just did then. And then it's a matter of sort of continue. What did you learn from this? And maybe there's a lot of basement music heroes. You have to play with other people. That helps you in a way. You have to play in front of other people. That helps you in ways. And that you do that over time and you will amass the opportunity to discover who you are as a musician and or as an artist.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, hey, check it out. I wrote this song that includes my Van Halen influence and this, that, and the other. And here it is. And that's the only way that art grows. And as an artist, that's the only way to grow.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It depends on what you want to do and who you want to be because there's a, I believe there's a clear delineation between musicians and artists. And if you, like I said, when you start playing guitar, what you want to do is you want to sound like, so you're trying to be a musician. I love Angus Young. I want to play Angus Young songs. At some point, are you going to go beyond? You have to make a determination. And many people are delighted and content to be able to learn and play their favorite songs and jam along with the radio. But if you have a vision that goes beyond aping the technique of your favorites, then you have to take a different step. And that is a step into risk and a step into the unknown to say, this is what has come before. Now I'm going to write my own songs. I'm going to take a risk that people are going to hate those songs. And I'm going to take a risk of putting myself out there. It's not like, hey, check it out. I can play Van Halen.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Three weeks of your playing guitar. And we can work on the other stuff along the way, but it's called playing guitar, and that sort of enthusiasm comes from early successes.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. I was a guitar teacher for a while during my... Semi homeless days. And what I taught, the lesson that I learned when I took those bad guitar lessons where they wanted me to do the boring stuff, I applied that when teaching brand new guitar players. In the first guitar lesson with every student regardless of their skill level, I would teach them to write a song. They would write a song in that first guitar lesson and try to smash that barrier between there's these mythical gods who make music and there's you who one day might hope to touch their shoes. Like you're a songwriter today. I'm going to teach you two chords. You decide what order they go in and how long you play each one. Boom. You've written a song, you and the Beatles now are both songwriters. I would see in them this kind of like, holy crap, like I can write something. Tomorrow you might write another one. And that's what I'd give them as their homework. Like you write another one for next time. And then you're going to have a catalog of six songs in the first.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Will my twin passions have been always been music and politics? It would certainly not be something in conventional two-party politics, but I would probably be working as a community organizer or something like that.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it may have been the passing of his younger brother, who was an advocate, but then his older brother is the uncle who we know. And again, there's a sort of a hierarchical's 80th birthday, and he announced that his younger brother, my dad, would now introduce his family to everyone. And I think he was just trapped then. And it took a long, but he did, at the end of the day, he did the right thing. And he sat me down. He asked for my forgiveness. And since I've had kids, he's very much in their lot. And they've melted him in a way that is really lovely. He just had his 88th birthday now. And he came to my wedding and stuff. So it's been really, really lovely to connect with that side of the family that I never thought that I would have.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She couldn't have been more gracious given what must have been a pretty stressful dinner for her, and he maintained his silence throughout. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It all turned around and he welcomed me to the family. He apologized to my mom and thanked her for raising a good kid and was and kind of opened the door to... Yeah.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like, oh, wait, it gets an ounces at that dinner that this is his brother. And at first, people think that, oh, like you're bro. He's like, no, my brother, like biological brother, like my dad's son brother, mom.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If he doesn't talk about it, it doesn't get talked about. And that's the end. That's the ant. That's the end. But, you know, the then girlfriend and now wife were very charming people and we were now friends with the family. Like the brothers have come. They stay at our house. Everybody's great. And we go to my brother's graduation at Georgetown. The attendees at the party will be myself. What could go wrong? So we're sitting at dinner, and my brother has taken great relish at each step of the way in the reveal. And now the biggest reveal of all is about to happen.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the toothpaste started to get out of the tube, and I began to meet my, it turns, I learned there were a couple of first cousins who were attending Pepperdine University. And so I met them. My brother, Sigheni is his name, who discovered me, calls up our dad back in Kenya with a phone call my dad thought was never going to. So this will give you some indication into the how the Kenyan male would react to such a thing. So, Dad, what do you know about a guy named Tom Morello? And this is what my dad responds to.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Letters after that, and I thought, well, at least I got to meet my dad, and that's that. It turns out that one of my half brothers, unbeknownst to me, was attending Georgetown University. This is in a time when search engines were being discovered and whatnot, and he was a computer guy, and he put in his father's name to some developing search engine. And to his surprise, a hundred articles referencing a man with his father's name and a similar biographical background was referred to by a guy named Tom Morello, who was the guitar player of a band called Rage Against the Machine. And serendipitously, it was the same week when Rage was on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. So he went to the newsstand and saw a guy in that band that he just read about who looks more like his dad than he does. And he managed to find me and we had an interesting discussion.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which was stunning. And I realized not only am I going to see my father for the first time in a very long time tomorrow, but that he had received all of that stuff through the years that had not commented on it. So we met, and it was crazy because those of you who are blessed with having two parents, you've seen them before. I've seen mine. So, you know, I look a lot like some combination with the two of them. And it went fairly well, somewhat awkwardly, but he had received it. He commented on some of the music, not the music so much, but some of the lyrics and the music. And he had remarried, and I had three half-brothers who we were never allowed to meet and did not know that we existed. And that wasn't awesome. So, you know, we exchanged a few.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I basically met my father when I was 34 years old. He had not had anything to do with our family growing up and throughout my life my mom had sent to the PO box that they had in Nairobi in the early 60s updates on me, your son graduated from high school, your son went to college, your son got a record deal of this, that and the other. And it never heard back decades of not hearing back. So we went to Kenya for the first time my first time to Kenya. When I was 34 years old, and my mom had written to my dad, who she hadn't heard from in decades, said, you know, please meet us at the airport. So we're flying into Nairobi. And my mom tells me, I'm like, mom, like, he could be dead 25 years and certainly doesn't have the same PO box as he did back then. She's like, oh, I'll bet he'll be there to meet us. So we land. He's not there to meet us. But we arrive at the hotel intercontinental where there's a note from him. Sorry I couldn't meet you at the airport. I'll pick you up for dinner tomorrow at 8.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Ridge has had two lives. I mean, while it was a band that professed... Solidarity in our music, we were never able to manifest it almost from day one within our own ranks. And, you know, and I wish that I could tell you the conflicts were political ones. They were, you know, just you watch Spinal Tap, all the stuff. Every rock band, there's only four or five boxes to check. We had, you know, three of the four. But, I mean, my contribution to it was I was always super type A and had sort of the musical, the political, the record goal in mind and would not sometimes turn a deaf ear to the feelings of my bandmates. I've learned that lesson through the years that that's a very important. Do you have to get that right first or none of the rest of it matters? And so in 2000s, Zach quit the band and we formed a band called Audio Slave, but rage reunited in 2007 and played shows for a few years, which was very nice to do.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because, well, I love playing in rock bands, and rock bands allow a chemistry that no one person can put forward on their own. I like the purity of the solo singer-songwriter thing too. And it's also, you can do it gorilla style. I've played it hundreds, dozens, thousands of protests and marches, and you just need an acoustic guitar and a plane ticket or a bicycle or a ride over there. I really like that kind of independence of spirit. I always was a fan of heavy music. And when I discovered the early Dylan, the Springsteen, Nebraska record, the Woody Guthrie stuff, the Johnny Cash acoustic records, that it dawned me that there's no heavier music than some of that. Metallica Black Album is super heavy, but Springsteen's Nebraska goes toe to toe with it with no amplifiers in sight.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's still a bit of an anxiety barrier. And while all of my rock and roll work is done stone sober, there's a level of technique involved in that that I must be very, very present for. There's a lot of Jameson involved in the Night Watchman performance, truth be told. Jameson therapy. I've heard about that. There's a bit of the anxiety about sort of remembering lyrics and this, that, and the other that goes away when it sort of dampens down those voices. Not the courage, you're going to forget your lyrics. But those, I mean, I began doing that.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Half the show would still be great. They are going to be fine. But when it's just you, and your guitar and the intimacy of that moment, it was terrifying. And through time, learned to do that”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before that actual concert. Yeah. No, I mean that concert devolved over the course of time. I will give you a couple of other instances though where there was a real barrier to a fear barrier. One was in the early 2000s I began doing playing acoustic songs under the moniker The Night Watchman. And I would go to, I began signing up at Open Mics under that name so I wouldn't sign up under Tom Morello because there would be an expectation of playing bulls on parade. And I would play these Dylan Asque, Woody Guthrie-esque, political folk songs. And at this point my career, I had played in front of millions of people live and I was terrified playing in front of eight people who weren't particularly listening to my songs anyway with a latte machine grinding in the background. But like, would I remember the lyrics? Because I felt very vulnerable. When I'm on stage with rage against the machine or audio slave, if my guitar were to snap in”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was spoken language. And there's something in our reptilian brain that responds to a communal gathering with rhythm. And that's something that's in from campfires, campfires and mammoths. And when you get that combination of rhythm and a rhyming couplet and a gathering of the tribe like that, and you do it right, that something like that happens.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think that the shows were just so insane. Like, they were so incendiary. And Zach is a tremendous, tremendous musician and lyricist, but as a frontman is the greatest, like, he's like the punk rock James Brown. Like, he's the greatest as a lightning rod on stage. And there is a meaning to the band's music that transcends it being a great rock and roll band. The other is, it's a great rock and roll band. Like that's how people like, oh, well, how do the politics, like If you don't have that vehicle, and it's this chemistry that naturally happens in the way the four of us played together, almost from the very first rehearsal, certainly from the very first couple of shows to that, which was, I think, Woodstock 99, that it gives off an aggressive energy that allows this kind of this feral release. There's something about music that is, there was music before.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we met, there was a fellow by the name of Michael Goldstone who had signed Pearl Jam, who was ascendant at the time, and he saw us play and he said something that no one else, the people wanting to sign the band based like a Tucsong cassette. And he came in and said, I'm not sure I want to sign your band. I thought that was an interesting thing for someone to say. And that opened a discussion. And he was very interested. He was the fifth Beatle for the beginning. He was a very important collaborative partner.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it was a, you know, we talked about that stuff. I had been through it before, and I was maybe a few years older than the other, but it was all the decisions were collaborative. There is an excitement when heads of record companies come down and offer you the world, but we dampened down that excitement and took our time making a decision.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I had a futon cushion. I did not have a financial cushion. No, we had between us then, I think we had one job and two cars.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the reaction was like that from day one. Now, when it came to interacting with the evil music industry that we had, I've been burned by, I think it was very helpful to have that experience because I knew what it was like. Having a record deal doesn't mean anything, doesn't mean anything. So there was nothing to hold over our heads. They would call up record companies, managers, publishing companies. Everybody would call up and say we'd like to take the band to lunch and say, we're not interested unless you fax me over a document that says in every transaction we ever have, the band has 100% creative control over what they do and veto power over anything that you do. Then we'll have lunch with you.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes. Well, I knew it was working the first time we ever performed in front of other humans was at a house party in Huntington Beach. And I had been in a lot of bands and I had never seen a lot of bands and been to a lot of shows seeing a lot of bands. I never saw an audience respond to music the way that people responded to rage against machine at the first show ever played. It was like the parents were out of town. We knew five songs. It was maybe a friend of Tim and Zach's living room in Huntington Beach. We played the first song we ever played in front of people is a song called Take the Power Back. And a pit started in the living room. They thrashed the living room, went ape shit for five songs. Then we just play those same five songs again. And they went double ape shit. I never felt anything like it. And that's how it was from day one with that. I mean, the chemistry of that band was like that from day one.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“planet and there's no reason to assume that it has predetermined limits based on the records in your collection and it's just basically a piece of wood with some wires and a few electronics that makes sound so you can try to make sound in different ways and then make music out of that sound that became I started practicing an entirely different way and it helped form a sound that felt like it was authentic. If you're challenging the boundaries of any genre music you're saying what came before is not all that there has to be”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the left of center guitar playing, the barnyard animal noise stuff, while I had some of those arrows in my quiver, it really wasn't until rage against the machine when I was the DJ in the band. We proudly put on the records all sounds made by guitar bass drums and vocals because there were a lot of sounds on those records that are not traditionally associated with guitar bass drums and vocals. And I was very much influenced by Terminator X of Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad that produced those records and by Jammaster J and by Dr. Dre. And the sounds on those records, rather than practicing Chuck Berry and Jimmy Hendrix, I would try to approximate the sounds that I heard on those records. And while I wasn't always able to get them exactly right, it just put my mind in a completely different place and maybe look at the instrument of guitar in a very different way. It's a relatively new instrument on the list.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Zach and Tim have known each other since they were kids and grew up together. And it was just sort of a fortunate combination of musical convergence. Brad and I played together for a while. Then he knew Eddie Vetter. He left to play with a fledgling version of Pearl Jam for a minute. So during that time, I met Tim and Zach. Then Brad came back. And finally, we got in a room in August of 1991, I think was the first time the four of us were in a room together.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That being the case, I'm just going to make music. I'm a musician. That's what I am. I'm just going to make music that I believe in and not care about getting a record deal or any of that anymore.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, it's the brass ring. It's the thing you've heard about, you think, when you're in suburban Illinois, when you get a record deal, you're a millionaire. Exactly the opposite. If you were penning this before, now you're in debt and penniless to the record company. And every cliched bad dicking that happens to artists happen to that band. They try to manipulate and change the band sound and make it more commercial. Money-wise, we're completely screwed over. At the end of the day, we had like a second guaranteed album that we're going to, you know, we didn't make it on the first one, but we're going to try this time. They just said we're going to drop the band right now and you don't have the money to sue us, so too bad. Wow. And that was that. And I thought, well, I tried. And I had my grab at the brass ring. It didn't work out.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was planning some, I joined some bands just to be in bands that were not particularly good bands. But there was a band called a local band called Lockup. It was playing in a place called Alsbar in downtown LA. It was a life-changing moment. I saw what then became my favorite local band. It was a band that combined sort of elements of the chili peppers and it was funky. It was hard. But it was new. It was what alternative music would later become but was bubbling around in the underground in Los Angeles. Later, I happened to be rehearsing in the same place as this band lockup. They heard me playing through the walls when they got rid of their guitar player. We connected and I joined that band and that band eventually got signed to Geffen Records, which was my foot in the door to the record industry.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're lost to the dusty annals of time. There were signature moves. We would arrive in suits with some lame excuses to why we've barged in on this bachelorette party.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was no stage name. It was a duo. We had like sort of a. It was bachelor two parties. Yeah, it was a duo. It was like me and another dude. We had like a routine.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I naively put out ads in all the local press saying shredding guitar player seeks awesome Marxist front man influences Run DMC and Iron Maiden. I did not get a lot of replies to that, not get a lot of replies to that. So I had on my apartment in Normandy, I put the little thing outside the door with basically job applications to join my band. My band that does not exist and that no one's heard me play a note of music, but somehow you're going to walk up these stairs in Department of Normandy, sit on the landing, and what are your contacts in the music industry? That went very, very, very, very poorly.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was no plan B. I arrived in Hollywood with big ideas about how I was going to form my dream band. I know exactly what it was going to be, but I knew the groups that I liked then were Run DMC, Aerosmith, Public Enemy. Like I wanted it to be political.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I should have paid better attention in Eck 10 because $1,000 lasted about four days when I moved here. All of a sudden I was destitute. Yeah, my mom was very supportive. Given her history of kind of Bucking Convention, it was not surprising, but she was completely supportive. I got a Harvard degree and I'm going to go move to Hollywood to try to play rock and roll. She's like, great.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I graduated in political science. But like I said, it was a calling. I had interest, but music and rock and roll was a calling. And I knew as soon as I graduated I was going to move to Hollywood because that's where the rock magazines told me I needed to go to pursue my dreams. So I loaded up the Chevy Astro van and drove into the suck with all my crap in the back and a dream and $1,000 and a dream.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was the first person from Libertyville, Illinois to ever go to Harvard. No one had ever applied before. So after I got in and floodgates open and now it's recognized as the fashion of intellect and culture. You all suspected it might have been.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Entirely by ear. Yeah. I never really had the ability to learning songs off record. The other thing to sort of do psych 101 analysis of why I fell so deeply into that as a grown-up looking band, it was a matter of control. There are a lot of things sort of in growing up that did not have control over. There was sort of a race issue. There was maybe a romantic deficit issue, things that you just didn't have control over. I had control over this. It's my will and my will alone that will determine the outcome of what happens if I apply myself to this. It's just me that makes the decision here. And that was very, very appealing. And then when you start playing two hours a day, you notice the tide rises quickly. So you bump that to four hours a day and all of a sudden everyone around you is marveling at when you go to eight hours a day, that's when it kicks in.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The guitar at first was an instrument to be in a band. And then it later became a calling. Like I had many varied interests, but it was when I was about 19 years old where sometimes you choose a thing, sometimes a thing chooses you. And I really felt the guitar chose me. I had no choice in the matter. And then I applied my OCD to the instrument and was practicing at sometimes up to eight hours a day, 365 days a year.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On stage of the Aragon ballroom, and that was the revelation that made me realize it's not, oh, I can do this someday. It's like, I'm doing it. He's doing it. We're all doing it. We're all just in bands, and that felt pretty good.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wanted to be a part of it in some way. And then I had a guitar. And then the thing about punk was it's like I no longer, there was no longer a barrier. It's like the bands that I like, like the Clash and the Sex Pistols, with no musical experience, my level of technical ability was not too far distance from theirs. And yet they were my favorite bands, making the best music that I had ever heard. I had a formative experience seeing the band, the Clash, which was my favorite band of all time, playing at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. And in my high school band, The Electric Sheep, I had a sort of a cheap music man amp on a chair in my mom's basement where we would practice. I saw the clash play the Aragon ballroom. Now I'm used to seeing these bands play, these huge venues with walls of martial stacks, some of which are dummy cabinets. But I saw Joe Strummer on stage of the Aragon ballroom. He had the exact same cheap music man amplifier that I did on a chair.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we wrote songs. There were three bands in my high school, and one of them was Destiny. And that was the pretty boy band. They got all the ladies. They played sticks, Kansas Journey, and they just owned the school. And then there was the bad boy band, Epitaph. And now they covered Black Sabbath, ACDC, and they would not stoop to play a school function. It was garages with ripped jeans and weed. And we all admired them from a distance. We were all afraid of them and admired them. And then there was the electric sheep, my band, the drama club band. And we didn't have the technical ability to play other band songs. So we had to write our own. So from day one, we were writing our own. And from that band, two of the founding members of that band went on to form Rage Against the Machine and Tool, so we were vindicated in the end.”
2022-04-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT