2023-05-24 18:25:10
On Tuesday June 6, at the Caupolican Theaterthe guitarist Tom Morello he will meet his Chilean fans again in a concert where he promises to review the peaks of his solo and collective career, and of course the riffs he immortalized in bands like Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave y Prophets of Rageamong others.
At the San Diego street venue, the American will be accompanied by a full line-up of The Freedom Fighters Orchestrabacking band with which he resumed his work after the cancellation of the return tour of Rage Against the Machine“Public Service Announcement”, which stopped its route in 2022 at Madison Square Garden after a complex injury to their vocalist, Zack de la Rocha.
After breaking an Achilles heel on stage in July of that year, de la Rocha ended up singing seated for the last shows of the tour, which had already been postponed for a year due to the covid-19 pandemic. This was not the only problem faced by the tour, where even Morello himself suffered pressure.
“I’m not nervous at all, I’m very excited”confesses Tom Morello to BioBioChilein a telematic dialogue where he immediately recalls that mythical RATM recital at the Bicentennial Stadium in La Florida, in 2010, the same one that was established in local pop culture as “The battle of Santiago.
“My favorite shows of my life have been in South America, and probably the greatest audience I’ve ever seen was when Rage Against The Machine played The Battle of Santiago in 2010. I have never seen a crowd like that anywhere in the world, and I would say with certainty that the Chilean fans are the best rock crowd on the planet.”confirms the composer, on the verge of his first solo electric concert in the country.
“It’s very exciting to be able to return to one of my favorite countries to play my life’s work. While she was writing the setlist, she was thinking: “What would be appropriate for this South American tour?”. In the past it was a Rage tour or a Prophets of Rage tour or an acoustic tour, but I’ve done 22 albums and I’m going to play them all. Rage Against The Machine has only been to Chile once, so I’ll play Rage songs. Audioslave never made it to Chile, so I’m going to play Audioslave songs. I’ve never played there with Bruce Springsteen, so I’ll be playing some of my Springsteen collaborations and songs from my solo career. As a thank you to the fans, friends and comrades in Chile.
(Q): How did you handle the frustration after the cancellation of the shows with Rage Against the Machine? Was it one of the most difficult moments of your career?
(R): There have been many difficult moments (laughs). When RATM canceled the tour, I came home and spent almost every weekend playing for the Labor Union across the United States. I flew out to play for miners in Alabama who had been out of work for 500 days, for exotic dancers in California who were forming a union, for the union of teachers in the American educational system. For me, it’s about the music and the mission. Sometimes RATM can work for those causes and when they can’t, that doesn’t stop me. Another thing that allowed me to channel that energy was booking a tour of South America, so I could play my favorite places for my favorite fans all over the world. The music and the mission will be in “full display” when I play in Santiago.
(Q): Will Chile have a prominent place in an eventual RATM tour of South America?
(R): Now there is no RATM tour, no touring plans and no no touring plans, so there is no way to answer that. As I said, I don’t know if Rage will be in Chile againwhat I do know is that I will be there in a couple of weeks and that we will “destroy the place”.
Tom Morello: “My political awakening had to do with learning about Víctor Jara and Salvador Allende, and the complicity of the United States and the CIA in the injustices that happened in Chile”
Morello, considered one of the best rock guitarists in the world, also studied Political Science at Harvard University, where he graduated with a BA in Social Studies. His link with Chile mixes these two facets: while he recognizes himself as an admirer of Victor Jara and Violeta Parraalso knows part of the country’s political history of the last half century, from Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity to the Pinochet dictatorship and the echoes of the October 2019 protests.
(P): Considering your own history and your link with Chile. Does it have a special meaning for you to visit the country 50 years after the 1973 coup?
(R): Yes, it is very significant. Part of my political and educational awakening had to do with learning about Víctor Jara and Salvador Allende, and the complicity of the United States and the CIA in the injustices that happened in Chile and throughout Latin America. So to be there at the 50th anniversary is very significant. Every time I go to Chile I visit the tomb of Víctor Jara and Allende. I visited the places where the torture centers were, that story is very important to me, to remember it and never forget it and to keep alive the legacy and work and the power that the music of Víctor Jara channeled 50 years ago and that made it so dangerous that they had to kill him. I hope I can make music this dangerous in 2023, 50 years later.
(P): This year you said: “Víctor Jara’s spirit is with me every time I go on stage.” Do you plan something special in this regard?
(A): Yes, of course. I don’t want to reveal my plan, but I definitely plan something special for the show in the city of Victor Jara, for the fans of Chile. In many ways, there are artists around the world who encapsulate what I believe music can be at its most exalted. Victor Jara is one of them. Bob Marley probably too, there are many artists I admire The Clash, Public Enemy; that spirit of taking what you do, in this case music, and doing it with every ounce of power and feeling. That’s what I was born to be a guitar player. Don’t get me wrong, there are going to be a lot of guitar solos, they’re going to be long and crazy, a lot of rock riffs that have nothing to do with politics, but are going to destroy your brain and hopefully cause giant mosh pits. But all that music will be played in the spirit that Víctor Jara had and that I try to embody in my own work.
(Q): Do you miss that social awareness of artists like Víctor Jara in the new generations of musicians?
(R): Yes. Of course I would love it if Víctor Jara was alive today, and that I could invite him on stage. But, his spirit is alive everywhere, not just when I play shows in Chile. The last time I was there I had a long talk with her widow and she was as sad in 2018 as she was at the time she was murdered. There is nothing that takes away that sadness. But I assure you that his spirit is alive every time any artist is on stage making changes, whether it’s in a charity show, playing for children, for the poor, against fascism. He’s alive, and he will be forever when he’s on stage in a couple of weeks with you.
(Q): This question is for political analyst Tom Morello. Weeks ago, in Chile, the radical right won the elections for constitutional councillors, and today there is a lot of uncertainty in the country about the new constitution that these right-wing councilors can deliver. How do you see the changes that the country and Latin America have experienced in these years?
(R): Yes, it is a concern. The extreme right is active not only in Chile, but in the United States and throughout Europe and Latin America. And I think it’s important to understand why that happens. My perspective is that the far right is using very old tricks that they have always used, which is divide and conquer, that is, racism. Blaming the problems of a neoliberal nation on poor people, immigrants, people of color. And it is a simplistic analysis, but one that we must take into consideration. And that is the key, the extreme right wants to make a constitution that is going to harm the working class that is supporting them. Those who support Donald Trump, it’s the same thing, they want people to vote against their own economic interests and make Muslims or socialists the villain, for example.
We have to understand that, and speak to the working class who are being drawn to the far right and make them understand that the world we can create together is not a fascist world. It is not a harmful world, which is not going to deny the rights of indigenous people or the working class, regardless of their skin color. We have much more in common with each other than with the far-right oligarchs trying to reshape the world in their image.
(Q): Any book on politics that you think is essential to understand these times?
(Tom Morello): Interesting, interesting… There are some books that helped me to have a better understanding of the world. One of them was The Chomsky Reader. For someone who lives in the United States, and to understand the fine grain of the hypocrisies of the institutions and the oligarchic elite. Anything from the catalog Max Weber, which helps us understand why society works the way it does. And well, a very good source of information are the albums of Rage Against The Machine. I’ll tell you that. Zack’s lyrics and the intentions of his lyrics are a literary bibliography of contemporary world history.
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