Backstage at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, Tom Morello was preparing for the worst.
In a few hours, the guitarist would be diving into three decades of his personal musical history for a full house, from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave to his folkie alter-ego the Nightwatchman and multiple other genres and collaborations across 21 records.
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“This is the last big event before we all go to jail, so let’s just enjoy it,” he said with a laugh, referring to the chaos and threats to the social fabric already apparent with the second Trump Administration. As always, Morello was prepared to rock—and also to stand up for protections for workers, immigrants, and others increasingly under attack. For sale in the lobby were T-shirts reading: “Nazi Lives Don’t Matter” and “Organize/Unite – One Man Revolution.” Later on, he’d show his audience the back of his electric guitar onstage, revealing the simple message: “Fuck ICE.”
“It’s not the first dangerous time in history, and it likely won’t be the last,” he added.
Morello and his Freedom Fighter Orchestra were joined on this Saturday night concert by some of his closest musical friends, including Slash, RZA, Måneskin’s Thomas Raggi, Luke Spiller from the Struts, and System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian, whose new metal band Seven Hours After Violet opened the night.
His music and message remain fueled by his radical impulses, along with his lifelong obsession with rock, folk, and hip-hop. Morello is still at work on a new solo album that he hopes to finish this year, and has plans to travel through U.S. festivals.
In Birmingham, England, on July 5, Morello has another high-profile gig as musical director for a festival built around the final performance of Black Sabbath—reuniting the original quartet of Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward for the first time in two decades. Osbourne will also play a shorter set of his solo work. Leading up to that will be an all-star cast of players and support acts, including Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Alice in Chains, and Mastodon, among many others.
“The show’s going to be about 13 hours long,” Morello joked about the event, called “Back to the Beginning.” It will mark one last live performance by Osbourne, sidelined in recent years from Parkinson’s disease and multiple spinal surgeries. “I mean, duty calls. Heavy metal is the music that made me love music and Black Sabbath created heavy metal. And Randy Rhoads, Ozzy Osbourne’s guitar player, is the poster that was on my wall when I was practicing eight hours a day.”
In Hollywood, the night’s sold-out show was also a fundraiser for causes related to the recent fires in Morello’s adopted hometown of L.A., where last month he and his family – including his 101-year-old mother, wife, and sons Roman and Rhoads—evacuated as the Sunset Fire edged toward his canyon home. “We had a half hour to get out,” Morello recalls. “Roman and I had to decide what guitars to bring.” (Their house survived.)
In notable ways, the night unfolded very differently from a Rage Against the Machine concert, which are dependably explosive gatherings, a nightly manifesto on social justice amid the crushing riffs and agitated vocals. At the Fonda, Morello frequently tapped into that same energy, recreating Rage tunes with real bite, but there was just as often a feeling of warmth and uplift coming from the stage, as the guitarist led his gifted community of players, friends and family.
The most surprising performance was by his own son, Roman, 13. The boy was dressed in a black T-shirt and baggy jeans, and with a pile of black curls on top.
Morello’s son learned guitar while stuck at home during the COVID-19 years, then obsessively kept at it. (The elder Morello didn’t start taking guitar seriously until he was 17.) It was only last year, during Morello’s festival tour of Europe, that he brought Roman onstage for the first time to play their song “Soldier In The Army Of Love.” The track was released as a single last summer, and originated in some riffs Roman had unexpectedly shown him.
The song opened the show, and is very much in the tradition of Morello’s music with Rage Against the Machine, heavy with collisions of hip-hop and metal. Roman stood onstage like an eager middle-school kid but moved like a seasoned player, even delivering a solo during “One Last Dance” while holding his guitar behind his head, Hendrix-style. He’s clearly picked up some of his dad’s classic moves on the stage, leaping and swinging his guitar neck like Excalibur.
Earlier, Morello said, “He has a confidence on stage that I didn’t have till my late twenties, which is pretty cool.”
After those two opening songs, Roman exited the stage and Morello ripped into a four-song medley of scorching Rage classics: “Testify,” “Take the Power Back,” “Freedom,” and “Snakecharmer.” All landed like thunderous calls to action, the crowd bouncing to the attack of Morello’s guitar. Things shifted gears with a blast of modern rock glam on Måneskin’s “Gossip,” originally recorded by the Italian rock band with Morello as guest soloist. This time it was played with the help of Måneskin guitarist Raggi and singer Spiller from the Struts.
From the sci-fi sounds of “Secretariat,” Morello’s fingers eased into the bluesy flow of “Cato Stedman & Neptune Frost,” unleashing his inner Jimmy Page to unfurl an elegant cascade of notes that would fit on Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti. Morello mixed in brief passages of his own distinctive sound, but the overall effect remained tied to an older tradition. It was a fitting moment for a journeyman guitarist whose second major concert as a 13-year-old fan was seeing Led Zeppelin at Chicago Stadium in 1977.
“That was the chief inspiration for me to love music,” he says of the experience.
There was more Rage (“Bombtrack,” “Bulls on Parade,” “Bullet in the Head,” etc.), and a pair of Audioslave hits, “Cochise” and “Like a Stone,” as the face of late singer Chris Cornell filled the big screen behind him.
Arriving soon after was Slash, sans top hat and wearing a knit beanie snugly over his long curls, and began with “Interstate 80,” his collaboration with Morello. Together they moved on to the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams,” in tribute to Morello’s late friend, MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer. Spiller took the mic again for AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” standing between Slash and Morello, along with Odadjian in an L.A. Dodgers cap on bass.
Slash also stuck around for the arrival of Wu-Tang leader RZA, who rushed onstage waving a water bottle over his head to splash the front rows and everyone onstage around him, and dove into “Wu‐Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit.”
Morello frequently turned the mic toward the crowd. Near the end, Roman returned for Rage’s signature song “Killing in the Name,” played as an instrumental by the band, but with a thousand voices in the crowd shouting along as maybe the only thing that could fill in for Zack de la Rocha. As they roared the words, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” the screen behind them was the image of a woman aggressively waving a middle finger at the room, signifying a state of mind for the immediate future.
“It’s not a time to shy away from resistance,” Morello says. “It’s a time to lean in. On a cultural front, that’s what these shows are – my small contribution to withstanding the fascist gale that is blowing.”
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