Tom Morello interview

I saw you and Boots Riley perform at a Hotel Cafe show back in 2007, but you guys go further back than that, right?

Yeah, we met in 2003 on an activist charity tour with Billy Bragg and Steve Earle and some other people. I had never met Boots before. I was a fan of his music and lyrics with The Coup, and the tour needed a shot of life in it. And so Boots came along, and I really recognized what an incredible lyricist he is, hearing his songs set in an acoustic context. And he was always the first one to say yes when I called up to ask him to play at a demonstration or a protest or a charity event, he would always fly down from Oakland and donate his time.

We became good friends, and then when Audioslave broke up, I handed him a cassette tape of song ideas, and I said let’s be Street Sweeper Social Club.

When I first heard about the project I assumed it was going to be an acoustic thing, I guess because that’s the context I’d seen you guys perform in. Did you have to talk about that, or was is going to be an electric thing all the way?

I knew from the beginning that I wanted it to be something that was really heavy and really funky. It’s an album with no ballads whatsoever. So from conception it was going to have searing Morellian guitar to go with his searing Bootsian lyrics.

Promenade is the current single from the album. Boots refers to it as a “square dance rap” in the lyrics, and you’ve also used that term to describe it. You’ve had all these combinations, with Rage being a mix of rock and rap and whatnot. How do you come up with square dance and rap, though? How do you combine those two?

(Laughs) I’m not sure what the genesis of that was. That one just sort of started with that bass line. The one thing is, Boots and I have, from the very first time we performed together on stage, while there’s a lot of deadly serious lyrical content, we’ve always had a great time. And we wanted these to be revolutionary jams, but we wanted them to be revolutionary party jams. And nothing really kicks a party off better than a square dance rap.

With the exception of Nightwatchman where you sang, every other band you’ve been in, including this one, someone else is doing the vocals. How comfortable do you have to be with someone else to allow yourself to get into that kind of relationship where night after night they’re going to be basically speaking on your behalf?

I’ve been very comfortable with that from the beginning of Rage Against The Machine. I mean Zack de la Rocha is an amazing vocalist and lyricist whom I share a world view. And Chris Cornell is one of the great rock singers of all time, and I think that lyrically during the Audioslave period, I felt that for me at least, while I think Chris is a great lyricist, it drifted away a little from my mission statement as a human being, which is music to confront injustice. That’s one of the reasons that I swung back to writing my own lyrics and singing them as the Nightwatchman, and why I feel very comfortable with Boots as a lyricist as well. I think he’s really an astoundingly talented lyricist. The wry wit and the cutting venom that are in his lyrics.

The matter of factness of how he dices up some of the topics struck me.

It’s a sense of humor too that he weaves into it. It’s a spoon full of sugar that helps the medicine go down.

Here we are talking, and you’re obviously a pretty laid back guy, and I’ve gotten that vibe from your Hotel Cafe shows as well. But back when I was in high school and watching Rage on TV, I just kind of assumed you guys had to be militant in some way. Do you get that a lot, do people think you’re going to be more dicey than you turn out to be?

I don’t know, it’s hard to say, I’ve been me for a long time now (laughs). I think while that commitment to social justice and potentially revolutionary change both in music and society is always there, if you were to hang out with the guys in Rage Against The Machine, it’s a lot of laughs too. There’s some funny motherfuckers in that band. We’re not just sitting around reading the collected works of Marx and Engels.

I was going to ask whether you’ve mellowed over the years.

Oh, no. For me it’s clearer than ever, actually I have a newborn son now, so it’s like you want to make sure that the world they inherit, that you do all that you can during your time so the world that they inherit is one that has the maximum amount of peace and injustice and equality. And the only way to do that is through struggle.

You’ve got a young kid, and you just did the [Nine Inch Nails / Jane’s Addiction] tour, and you’re still doing shows, and doing interviews like this one. How do you divide up that time? Do you have to reevaluate everything?

Yeah, definitely. With the exception of a few shows for the rest of the year, I’ve kind of cleared the schedule for the immediate time being. I’m figuring out 2010, and there will definitely be more Street Sweeper Social Club and some Nightwatchman as well.

Are we about where you thought we’d be after a year of Obama?

I worked for a United States Senator for two years, Senator Alan Cranston, as his scheduling secretary for a couple of years, and for a very progressive U.S. Senator, by the way. So I got to see the internal workings of what it takes to try to enact a progressive agenda in the United States of America, and it’s a dirty road. It’s like no one comes out clean. We’re a year later, and Guantanamo Bay is still open, we’re still involved in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now it looks like even if we are going to get some increased health care package, it’s going to be frankly nowhere near what people need, or nowhere up to the standards of the rest of the industrialized world as far as the number of people covered and the quality of care. Is this Barack Obama’s fault? No. The reasons why we don’t have peace and universal health care are systematic. I am greatly relieved, on the other hand, that we have a President who reads at above a third grade level, something we could not say for the previous eight years.

At the beginning of Audioslave you were adamant about saying “This is a real band, it’s not a stunt or a supergroup.” And you were right, it was three albums, five or six years. What’s the future of Street Sweeper Social Club? Is this a real band too, can we get used to it being around?

Definitely. We’ve already started working on new songs, and I love doing it. It’s so much fun to write these big crushing rock jams, and I’m constantly thrilled by the new lyrical twists that Boots comes up with, and we’re working on recording and touring plans for 2010.

I should let you go, so you can back to whatever you’re working on.

Yeah I’ve got to get back to what I’m working on, like changing diapers.

That’s more work than people think.

Yeah it is, let me tell you (laughs).

Beatweek’s 2010 interview with Street Sweeper Social Club’s Boots Riley is right here