Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello said it’s almost impossible for a RATM performance to go bad in a new The Ringer interview, though if someone fell off stage, that could be the one thing that would ruin a performance.
None of those [other Rage Against The Machine] guys are here in Ohio, either, but no matter: All Morello really needs is his guitar and your undiluted reverence. “There’s a confidence to, say, a Rage or Audioslave show, where you have X number of hits on the radio,” he concedes. “You gotta fall off the stage for that to not go great. And while I’ve always tried to remain in the moment, there can be a complacency to that. This—I’m totally present, and I’m like, ‘You don’t know what’s gonna happen, and we’re going to ambush you today.’”
Later on Morello says fans aren’t getting a Rage Against The Machine reunion:
The crowd is thrilled and thoroughly sated, or so it appears. “They’ll never get what they want,” Morello tells me, politely confirming, for the 10 billionth time, that a full Rage Against the Machine reunion is not forthcoming. (That already happened, via 50-odd shows spread out over four years, starting with a raucous gig at Coachella 2007.) “Rockers are conservative that way, you know.” But his Sonic Temple set is nonetheless everything a longtime superfan would hope for, just delivered in a manner even a longtime superfan would not quite expect. That’s his goal now. Well, that and full-scale political revolution. He’s still working on that, too.
Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello has responded to reports in recent quotes he has made regarding Rage Against The Machine sadly not having a reunion in the works, with Zack de la Rocha rumored to be the lone holdout.
Morello said, “What I REALLY said was ‘please stop asking me about RATM in an effort to grab ‘no news’ click bait pull quotes, instead form your own damn band if you’re so eager.'”
Morello recently told Hard Drive Radio, “I had some of those riffs that eventually ended up on the first Rage record on a cassette player,” he recalled. “I was jamming with every musician in Hollywood with some of the riffs that would become ‘Bombtrack’, ‘Freedom’, ‘Township Rebellion’, ‘Know Your Enemy’.”
“They didn’t sound like that until I played with Brad Wilk, Tim Commerford and Zach De La Rocha. Didn’t sound anything like that.”
“The second we were in a room together — it’s something I try not to over-intellectualise, it’s just something that happens.”
“There’s no news on the Rage Against The Machine front,” Morello later said about a possible reunion. “The times demand people standing up. That’s what I’m doing with my stuff, what Prophets Of Rage is doing.”
“Don’t wait around for Rage Against The Machine. Form your own band and get it done.”
What I REALLY said was “please stop asking me about RATM in an effort to grab ‘no news’ click bait pull quotes, instead form your own damn band if you’re so eager.” https://t.co/O7UfGg7EYs
— Tom Morello (@tmorello) May 28, 2019
