Credit: Tom Morello
October 31st, 2026 · 1:00am GMT
Has there ever been a time when Tom Morello hasn’t been at the forefront of revolution?
Despite Rage Against the Machine releasing their final songs in the late 1990s, a lot of what they created together still feels as relevant as ever, despite some people who just don’t get it trying to relive the days when they used ‘Killing in the Name’ as a soundtrack to lashing out at their parents. That wasn’t the kind of genre that Morello ever wanted to play, but the best thing that he could hope for was to make songs that actually managed to have that same revolutionary heart behind them.
Audioslave may have been a much more straightforward rock band compared to Rage, but Morello has never let go of the same ideals that his mother taught him whenever he first started making music. Some of the best tunes of all time have come from people who have been oppressed, and the best tunes in Morello’s catalogue have come from moments where he calls upon those same influences to fuel his own tunes.
There’s no shortage of influence from bands like Public Enemy in a lot of what he does, and even though Rage never had a DJ per se, Morello was ready to be the DJ in the band through his strange guitar stabs. He was all about using the guitar in an unconventional way whenever he performed, but there were also so many opportunities for him to start working on tunes that had the same effect, even if he was playing a simple acoustic guitar.
Let’s not forget that the guitar alone was already a symbol of the revolution before anyone had even written a single song, and while Chuck Berry helped people understand what the power of rock and roll sounded like, Morello’s influences went back much farther than that. He could enjoy every single Yngwie Malmsteen lick that he learned, but none of his songs was going to matter unless they had the same kind of heart behind them that Woody Guthrie had back in the day.
Guthrie was the epitome of what a folk singer was supposed to be, and long before Bob Dylan ever talked about the answer that was blowing in the wind, ‘This Land Is Your Land’ was the first time that everyone got a taste of what the powers that be were doing. Even with just one guitar and his voice, Guthrie was speaking for the people, and Morello felt that the song wasn’t lost on anyone from the minute that he began working on his own records.
He had something awakened inside of him, and he felt that any American could be able to relate to this kind of tune if they stood up for their fellow man, saying, “This may be the most American song ever written. [It’s] a deeply American anthem that people just don’t know. The other verses are about, ‘In the shadow of the steeple but the relief office I see my people/Some are crumblin’ and all are wonderin’ if this land is still made for you and me.’ After the revolution, this will be our national anthem.”
Further reading: From The Vault
And given how long Morello has been fighting, that sentiment has remained close to his chest. Whether he’s playing with Bruce Springsteen or manning his own rock and roll album, he has always kept that music close to his chest, knowing that someday he might be able to see a world where people can bother to help out their fellow man in the same way that Guthrie only hinted at in this song.
Because as much as people like to cower in the face of the world today, that’s what a real ‘patriot’ is supposed to do. It’s not blindly following a leader who might claim to have everyone’s best interests at heart. It’s about looking at your country from all angles and seeing if there is any way that you can possibly make a difference to make it better than when you found it, and if that means picking up a guitar and causing a stir, it’s time well spent.
