Tom Morello is Still Catching Fire

At 27, Tom Morello was at rock bottom—or so he thought. After growing up in Chicago’s northern suburbs and attending Harvard, Morello had moved to Los Angeles to pursue his musical ambitions. His band at the time, Lock Up, had signed to Geffen Records, and his plan to make it in music had seemed to be trending up and to the right.

Then came some tough lessons. During the recording of Lock Up’s 1989 debut, the band deferred to their A&R rep and producer, only to realize afterward that the finished album wasn’t a fully accurate representation of their sound. But the experts know best, right?

Wrong.

“The record was out for about 15 seconds before they stopped returning our phone calls, and at 27 years old, I had failed,” Morello says today. “I moved to Hollywood to try to be a rock star, to make albums. I had the opportunity, and I failed.”

He continues, “So I made a solemn vow that I was never going to play another note of music that I didn't believe in. That's when I began conjuring the riffs that would in part make up the first Rage Against the Machine record.”

Over the past three decades, few, if any, artists have been as synonymous with the guitar as Morello. He’s shredded with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, joined Bruce Springsteen on several tours and made a prominent appearance on the Boss’ 2014 album, High Hopes, showcased his singer-songwriter side with the Nightwatchman, and released music with Prophets of Rage, Street Sweeper Social Club—his project with multi-hyphenate Boots Riley—and the Atlas Underground, where he collaborates with a wide range of artists.

But don’t let the baseball-card stats fool you. Morello is as selective as he is prolific, and his sonic palette is remarkably wide.

That said, when it came time to compile the riffs that comprise his new solo album, Everyone Gets Everything They Want, he knew exactly how it would work within his vast discography.

“I wanted to make an album that took the Morellian riffs, the Morellian DNA of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, and brought it not just into the present, but into the future,” he says. “I wanted to make the heaviest record since the Rage Against the Machine debut. Then the other goalpost is my love of Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town, the Woody Guthrie side, and not shying away from that. I wanted it to have the purity of vision of the acoustic records that I've made.”

Unlike his previous albums, where he approached the material with a clear creative vision, here he had to find his footing as a frontman. “I wanted to make this record kick as much ass as any record that I've made, and the bar is set pretty high,” Morello says.

“I made a solemn vow that I was never going to play another note of music that I didn't believe in.”

Inspiration, and some of the album’s biggest and baddest riffs, came from a source that surprised Morello: just down the hallway.

“There’s a great quote about Van Gogh, that he found the way to concentrate sufficiently to catch fire in a way. My son Roman, on this record, was my muse who allowed me to concentrate sufficiently to catch fire,” Morello says of the 15-year-old. “What that basically means is I stole some great riffs by listening through his bedroom door.”

In addition to his son’s bombastic riffs, the album includes longtime pals such as System of a Down singer Serj Tankian and Beartooth’s Caleb Shomo. Sonically, Everyone Gets Everything They Want showcases the many faces of Tom Morello. The album glides across genres, from the straightforward hard rock of “Soldier in the Army of Love” to the Knife-inspired electronic beats of “Unbreakable,” which features Irish rabble-rousers Kneecap, to the folky “They Can’t Kill Us All.”

Following Rage Against the Machine’s sudden halt after a successful 2022 tour, Morello has spent much of his time on the road, performing at festivals around the world and mixing battle-tested classics with new songs that appear on Everyone Gets Everything They Want. Playing the new material in front of those crowds made him confident that the songs were strong enough to anchor a proper solo album. And from a performance standpoint, Morello says, the shows captured the same high-octane energy his bands have always been known for.

For Morello, those shows also became a way to unite the disparate strands of his musical life onstage.

“Not shying away from paying tribute to Chris Cornell, not shying away from people’s love of Rage Against the Machine riffs and the timeliness in 2026, not shying away from my love of the existential dread woven into my favorite folk music and some blistering guitar solos,” he says, surveying the scope of his sets. “We’re playing in front of 80-90,000 people, with a song wholly unfamiliar to them, and they’re going absolutely ape shit. I was able to give a test run to some of these jams and really try them out in front of a discerning metal audience.”

But the album also faced another astute listener: his mother, Mary, whom he calls a “candid music critic.” She’s been a massive influence on multiple levels: Morello’s long history of activism is rooted in the lessons he learned from Mary, who was a fervent advocate for free speech, a civil rights champion, and a longtime volunteer for causes that helped the less fortunate. A presence across his platforms—she famously introduced Rage Against the Machine at a 1996 concert in Chicago and frequently appeared on Morello’s SiriusXM show One Man Revolution—she died earlier this year at age 102.

Morello says he played her his new album before she passed, noting that it earned her approval. Of all the brave things she did and all she accomplished in her life, however, one stands out to him.

“I wanted to make an album that took the Morellian riffs, the Morellian DNA of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, and brought it not just into the present, but into the future.”

“The bravest act she might have been a part of was allowing my punk band to play in her basement when I was in high school,” he says with a laugh. “In the more recent years, she lived next door, where my studio is actually in her basement. So I was once again playing in my mom's basement, where she would freely make editorial comments about whatever was going on downstairs.”

Morello is keeping his mother’s legacy alive through the Mary Morello Memorial Project, which will support many organizations that were meaningful to her, ranging from animal shelters to homeless shelters to human rights organizations.

In early October, a year after serving as musical director of the Black Sabbath tribute show Back to the Beginning, Morello curated the Power to the People festival. Billed as a “non-partisan celebration of peace, justice, solidarity, music, and community action,” the one-day festival took place at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, with a lineup including the Foo Fighters, Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Joan Baez, Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Jack Black (performing with Roman Morello and other young musicians in a Black Sabbath cover band), Killer Mike, Serj Tankian, and others.

“This is something that we don't need to just do at Hotel Cafe [in Los Angeles] and raise 1,500 bucks for a homeless charity,” he says. “We did it on a much bigger scale here, and the artists stepped up.”

Whether through the festival or Everyone Gets Everything They Want, Morello remains focused on the same mission that has guided him for nearly four decades: using rock ’n’ roll as a vehicle for both expression and action. Along the way, he’s experienced just about every high and low the music business can offer. But as he continues forward, the lesson he took from Lock Up all those years ago—the one that ultimately led him to Rage Against the Machine—remains remarkably simple.

“There is only one barometer, there’s one North Star,” Morello says. “It’s to be true to yourself as an artist, as a musician, and not care what anybody thinks.”