Tom Morello is back to getting loud. That isn’t exactly a surprise from the Rage Against the Machine guitarist, known as much for his dynamic, noisy riffs as for radical politics. As a solo artist, Morello tended to veer in other directions under his own name. He was a folk singer as the Nightwatchman, a hip-hop collaborator with Street Sweeper Social Club, a troubadour at protests and benefit concerts around the world.

Currently on a tour of festivals and solo gigs across Europe, Morello is halfway into recording a new solo album due out later this year (his previous solo album was released in 2021). Today he shared its first single, the raging “Soldier in the Army of Love.” The track also introduces a new sideman, his guitar-shredding son, Roman, who is just 13. Fans just might catch a glimpse of the younger Morello onstage in July, suggests his proud dad. “The family’s joining me in Italy, and I have a feeling we’re going to get the multi-generational debut somewhere around Turin,” Morello says with a laugh. 

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On the road this summer, he’s pulling out songs from across his three-decade-plus career from Rage to Audioslave, the Nightwatchman, and more. Days ago, he even played a song from his old high school band, Electric Sheep – which also included pal Adam Jones, later of Tool – and another from his pre-Rage band Lock Up.

Speaking over Zoom from backstage at the Live Music Hall in Cologne, Germany, Morello sounds excited about the music in progress. On this tour, he’s playing three outspoken new songs: “Soldier in the Army of Love,” “Union Power” and “They Can’t Kill Us All.” He’s also performing a cover of the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” in tribute to his late friend, guitarist, and prison reform activist Wayne Kramer.

Dressed in a red Gang of Four T-shirt, and wearing a cap with “HARLEM” above the brim, Morello leans toward his laptop. “When you’re in a band, it’s chemistry. You merge yourself into a chemistry to get something you can’t create alone,” he says. “With this record, the bossy type-A personality has reasserted itself somewhat. At 60 years old, I wanna make the definitive Tom Morello rock album.”

SPIN: In the past, you’ve always kept your rock music separate from your solo identity. Did something change?

Tom Morello: Each time out, I’ve had a very specific vision of what the album and the tour is going to be. When it was the Nightwatchman stuff, I wanted a very clear break, and it was going to be acoustic, it was going to be folk music. Then with the Atlas Underground stuff, I wanted something that was part illegal Berlin Rave, part art show, part mosh pit of the mind. And this one I’m just embracing 30-plus years of making music and folding it all into one show. And it feels really great to be able to explore the vast wilderness of my 22-album catalog. 

One of the new songs you’re playing now is the album’s first single, “Soldier in the Army of Love.”

We open the show every night with “Soldier in the Army of Love,” and it’s just been destroying. I wrote this song with my son, who wrote the big riffs in it. And to see huge, vast fields of metal heads all going off is richly satisfying and makes me a very proud dad at the same time. 

How long has Roman been playing?

He’s a pandemic guitar player. While the rest of us were baking bread and trying to learn a language, he was putting in four to six hours a day. It’s hard when your father’s a musician – the family business is just something that no one’s interested in. But in the midst of a 10-hour Fortnite session or something – I know that he likes Led Zeppelin – I said, “Would you like to learn the first three notes of ‘Stairway to Heaven’? I promise it won’t take more than a couple of minutes.” And he was willing to give me that much. And the next day we learned the next three notes. And then the third day he asked to continue. 

He has something that I don’t. He has a better ear. So he was able to pick it up on his own. And now I’ve been relegated to being the rhythm guitar player in the family. He’s a young shredding workhorse at the instrument. My family came out with me on the Rage tour in 2022, and that was the first time that he was exposed to that kind of drop-D huge riffage music. After we got home, one day I was walking by his bedroom, and he’s like, “I was working on some riffs. Do you think these riffs go good together?” And I was like, “Those riffs go very good together, son. I think we’re about to write our first song together.” That’s what became “Soldier in the Army of Love.”

What is the song about? 

It’s something about the redemptive power of music: “Transforming motherfuckers like Saul into Paul/On the road to Damascus at the Westfield Mall.” Like, that’s what music does. It did it to me. It can deeply alter not just your worldview, but can shape your soul. Music is something that provides great joy and can be a sledgehammer for social justice. Then a 13-year-old child plays a shredding guitar solo in it, which proves the point. [Laughs]

In the short video clips that you’ve put on social media, Roman’s playing one of your guitars.

Yeah, he’s got the Soul Power guitar and I’ve got my Arm the Homeless guitar. So my guitars keep disappearing into his bedroom. That’s a hazard. 

What does the rest of the new music you’ve been working on sound like?

It’s still shaping up and I have to determine what the final thing will be, but it’s somewhere between like the huge Morellian riffage of Rage and Audioslave and then [Springsteen’s] Darkness on the Edge of Town. Those are kind of the goalposts.

Are you recording your album in an outside studio or at home?

Veritas Studios is the studio at my house where I do all of my stuff. I was over at [producer] Shooter Jennings’s studio Snake Mountain for a few days. In some ways, it’s been sort of a relaxed affair. I got in there with Shooter for a couple of days, and I wrote that song “They Can’t Kill Us All” the day before, and we just worked that up in the studio. It’s very organic. So far I love the results. This really is my first-ever full-length solo rock album. I’ve made a lot of rock albums that have been laced with hip-hop, EDM and folk music. And this one is unapologetically throwing down the rock gauntlet. 

But hip-hop was also an important factor in your voice as a guitar player.

Huge. When I began self-identifying as the DJ in Rage Against the Machine is when the blinders of the guitar-playing tradition fell off. And it felt like an endless horizon of new sonic possibilities on the instrument. 

You recently played with Bruce again in L.A. when he passed through town. How has playing with him affected your music? 

The first time we played together, in 2008, I was at the height of my Nightwatchman acoustic protest music career. I felt that I’d drained the well of my electric guitar riffs and solos, and then along came this 82-bar “The Ghost of Tom Joad” thing that was [Springsteen’s] arrangement. That first night he was just like, “Keep going, keep going, keep going!” And I felt like I was breaking through layer after layer of improvisational discovery. And from that day to this, I realized I don’t have to put down the thing that I do best, which is play electric guitar – in order to play other kinds of music. And on this tour, there are wild guitar solos and a very poignant acoustic set as well. 

You started playing fairly late, right?

17. I had two guitar lessons at 13 that were horrific and made me put down the instrument for four years and it sat gathering dust in the closet. It was a $50 guitar. And my mom would occasionally say, “Why did we blow $50 on that guitar?” I heard that speech for four years. For me, it was punk rock [that changed things]. It was the Sex Pistols cassette … the power of punk compels you into being in a band within 24 hours of hearing that cassette. 

Your high school friend Adam Jones of Tool says you weren’t exactly a genius at first on the instrument.

[Laughs] I was the worst guitar player in our high school by a wide margin.  

Do you also play on the upcoming MC5 record?

We recorded the song maybe a year or so before Wayne passed. It’s a song called “Heavy Lifting.” I talked with Wayne all the time, and he was asking me if I had any spare riffs around. I said, “Wayne, riffs are low-hanging fruit around the Morello residence.” I sent him over five or six and he picked a hot one for “Heavy Lifting.” It’s a great honor to be on what’ll be Wayne’s last record. 

His passing is a big loss.

Huge. He was one of the wisest and best people I’ve ever known – leave musician out of it. I learned so much from him. He was like a mentor and big brother. His spiritual journey from being kind of a feral cat/cad to being someone who literally saved hundreds of people’s lives was just very impressive. It’s a huge loss. But his spirit’s in every room that I play in, and we play “Kick Out The Jams” every show, and it just kickstarts the night in an awesome way in his memory. 

How do you feel about the MC5 finally getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the timing of it? 

Dude, I’m on the committee that helps make the ballot every year. And the MC5 were on that ballot six times and did not get in. So I’m every year standing on the table, throwing a tantrum. But the timing – it’s never too late. The timing is poor, however, as the last two members of the band passed away in the last year, but they are forever enshrined in the hall of greats where they belong. They were in my view the patient zero of punk rock music. And their fearlessness musically and politically remains in a lot of ways kind of unparalleled. 

I will say, over the last 10 years or so, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has really shaped up considerably. They used to exclude metal. There’s still a lot of very deserving bands, but MC5 was on my short list for a long time. 

Speaking of metal, you just recently appeared on a new Def Leppard song, “Just Like 73.” Were they an important band for you?

I remember in 1983 or 84 playing “Rock of Ages” in a Harvard cover band. When they called up with “Do you wanna play a solo?” I was like, Hell yes, I wanna play a solo!

Is your current path as a solo artist open-ended?

First of all, the relationship that I’ve had with the fans through these 30 years is one of the most important relationships in my life. And in a lot of ways – in Rage and Audioslave, and even in some ways the Prophets of Rage – those fans have been underserved. And I love being able to put out a lot of music and to play a lot of music, and to be in the room with them, celebrating a history, but creating a very electric present moment. This European tour has felt very fulfilling in that regard. 

Rage Against the Machine isn’t doing anything right now, but you, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk have repeatedly through the years done different things together. Do you foresee that happening again sometime? 

I don’t know. Right now, I know Timmy’s got a great new band, 7D7D, that he’s psyched about. I couldn’t be happier on the road with the Freedom Fighter Orchestra and making this record. There’s nothing in the cards right now. 

Later this year, you’re being honored with the Woody Guthrie Prize. The Woody Guthrie tradition was clearly an inspiration behind the Nightwatchman.

Very explicitly. He is a North Star to guide one’s point of view in dealing with the music industry, dealing with a readiness to always be available, to stand up for the oppressed, and to lace your music with not just purpose, but humanity. Woody Guthrie’s children’s songs are as beautiful and as impactful as his songs about immigrant rights and his anti-fascist songs. He’s one of the greatest artists of all time. And for them to think of me is a great honor. 

Do you have any thoughts on Julian Assange getting released this week?

What a great victory. A guilty plea – yeah, he was guilty of exposing war crimes. Sorry, not sorry. I’m so glad that he’s free. The chilling point was made that if you do blow the whistle on war crimes at the highest level, they’re coming for you. The fact that he’s free is fantastic. But I think that they made their point – between him and [Edward] Snowden, we’ll do everything we can to ruin your life and set an example. 

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.