During a recent ACLU live conversation, Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello said he is ‘good friends’ with Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, despite his political differences with them. He even said he’d like to record with them.
Morello was asked, “Well I read somewhere that you count among your friends folks like Kid Rock and Ted Nugent. But I noted that they were not on this album. Was there…?”
Morello responded, “They’d be more than welcome to. Yeah yeah yeah. I grew up in a town that didn’t, in a county — Lake County, Illinois — which didn’t even run Democratic candidates, it was so archly conservative. And it’s Trump country through and through. And I’ve always been sort of empathetic and had been open-minded towards people of different political persuasions. And with, in the case of Kid Rock and Ted Nugent who are, I consider, good friends of mine. I think it’s alright to have people that you disagree severely with on some issues but find common ground and humanity.
How Ted Nugent became a friend was, I didn’t know him. And through, his people reached out — it was either his fiftieth or sixtieth birthday — and they said, we’re compiling a video of notable musicians to give Ted Nugent birthday greetings. I was like, well I loved Stranglehold and Free for All as a kid, but he’s become this kind of right wing caricature through the years. What could I possibly say to him on his sixtieth birthday? So I decided to come up with a list of things that Tom Morello and Ted Nugent have in common. And I made this video and he called me up and we laughed about it and have been friends since.”
