What Tom and Roman Morello Watch (and Listen to) Together

It took the COVID lockdown to get Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave’s Tom Morello to teach his son how to play guitar. Even then, after working through “Stairway to Heaven” together three or four notes at a time, Roman Morello says he wasn’t all that aware of what his dad did for a living. 

That changed in 2022, when Morello Sr. took his family on the road with him as he toured with a reunited Rage Against the Machine. Before that, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee says he’d never really immersed his family in his rock-and-roll lifestyle. 

“I’d never played Rage for them,” he says. “I’d never played Audioslave. We never talked about it either. I just wanted to be their dad. I wanted to be their Little League coach.” 

After Roman and brother Rhoads joined Rage on tour, though, they started seeing their father in a whole new light. Roman also started seeing his own interest in guitar differently, ultimately putting in more hours jamming with his dad and developing his own interest in coming up with what his dad calls “monster riffs.” 

“I was constantly surprised by the different twists and turns that his artistry took, and I just began poaching those riffs, making songs out of them, and then releasing those songs,” the elder Morello says. “The first song that came out was called “Soldier in the Army of Love,” which is on my new record, Everyone Gets Everything They Want, along with four other songs he worked on. This record is billed as my first solo rock album and the 22nd album of my career, but it’s also the first one that’s a substantial and full collaboration with Roman.”

It’s not all riffs and rock and roll in the Morello house, though. Here’s what Tom and Roman, now 15 and a budding rock star of his own, listen to, play, and watch together when they’re not laying down some tasty licks. 

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Rush

Roman Morello: We listen to a wide diversity of music. Recently, however, we’ve been listening to a lot of Rush. That’s our band of the summer. We went to their concert at Madison Square Garden, and since then it’s been all Rush.

I wasn’t really too familiar with Rush before the summer, but they’re some of the best musicians of all time. When they all play together, good things happen. It’s a very different vibe than what I’m used to listening to, but it really caught my attention. 

Tom Morello: What I learned about Rush this summer is that it’s possible to maintain the highest level of excellence, prowess, and artistic power into your mid-70s. There are some acts that do not maintain that, you know. I had the good fortune to play with Bruce Springsteen this summer as well, who’s at an absolute apex part of his career, too, and seeing Rush, I mean … I’d seen some of the YouTube videos before and people had warned me that it was going to be great, but it really lived up to the hype. 

Each summer, we try to do a musical deep dive. It sort of happened by accident, but one summer it was the Eagles, one summer it was U2, and one summer it was Led Zeppelin. We’ll do a real deep dive, and then I’ll have a renewed interest in 15 jams, and they’ll have perhaps some new interest in a band. 

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Jesus Christ Superstar and spooky Halloween music

TM: I like to throw on seasonal jams. Around Easter, we will do the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, and around St. Patrick’s Day, we’ve got a bunch of bangers from some Irish bands that we like. It’s a sort of habit for us at particular times of year to rock particular jams in the car. I have a really good spooky Halloween playlist, too, which perhaps I’ll inflict upon the family in the coming weeks.

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Performing live together

TM: We’ve done three summers touring together now in Europe, and we’ve done some shows here in the U.S. as well.

RM: It’s so much fun. The band has become like family to me, too. At first I was kind of shy and timid because I didn’t really know them, but they’ve grown on me a lot. It’s a lot of fun even playing together, too, because I love playing guitar, and I also love jumping around while playing guitar. It’s a new thing for me.

TM: How would you say that you’ve gotten the confidence to do that? Because two summers ago, when Roman was 13, we played a couple of smaller shows together. Like, we played in a castle and we played a show near the hometown of the Morellos in Italy. But then we played a 60,000-person festival, and that was the first time we’d done that, and I think perhaps there were some nerves. But now you’re a ham and you’ve certainly gotten over those initial jitters. So to what do you attribute that?

RM: I attribute it to you, because I remember I was side-stage at my first-ever big festival in Madrid, and I was scared out of my mind. It was like, “All these people! What if I make a mistake?” You looked at me and you said, “Do you know how to play all the notes?” I said, “Yeah.” You said, “Do you know if the band knows how to play all the notes?” And I said, “Yeah, the band knows how to play all the notes.” And then you said, “Then that’s all you need. Let’s go play the notes.”

TM: For readers who may not be familiar with Roman’s work, there’s plenty of internet evidence of it. I’m a proud dad, but it’s not nepotism when your kid is this good. There are a lot of musicians where sometimes their kids are in the band, but then there are musicians whose kids steal the effing show, and I’ve got one of those.

I’ve never had a better time than I have in the last few years touring, writing, recording, and releasing music, and a lot of that comes from my great band, the Freedom Fighter Orchestra, but a lot of it also comes from playing with my son Roman. 

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BigXthaPlug, 2hollis, and Fakemink

RM: Sometimes, when we do our aux round robin, I’ll put on something like BigXthaPlug.

TM: Oh, I love BigXthaPlug thanks to you. And who’s the other blond rapper?

RM: 2hollis.

TM: Yes! 2hollis is another artist who I’ve been turned on to by Roman.

RM: Yeah, sometimes I’ll throw on some of the nowaday rappers, like Fakemink. I’ll throw his top-five songs on when we’re in the car, and I think he likes that.

TM: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, but it’s great to be introduced to new stuff.

These days, young people are so open-minded. Like, he likes “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “Red Barchetta” by Rush, and Fakemink. It was much more tribal back in my day. You had to plant your flag in metal or punk or classical or whatever, and now it’s much more open-minded. 

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Planet of the Apes (1968)

RM: Last night, as a family, we watched the original Planet of the Apes from 1968, and honestly, I was pleasantly surprised.

TM: Yeah, he was skeptical when he heard “1968,” like, “How could anything from then be good …”

RM: But I loved it.

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Watership Down, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars

RM: It’s kind of a tradition for us to read the book Watership Down.

TM: I think this may be our fifth time through it together. Normally, I would read it to them when they were smaller, but Roman is reading it on his own this time.

There’s lots more we do together, too. Our holiday tradition is that we watch the extended edition of all the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies. We’re also steeped in Star Wars lore, like we just watched The Mandalorian the other day, too.

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Good Morning Football

RM: Every morning, we watch Good Morning Football on the NFL Network because we’re big football fans over here. Big Los Angeles Rams fans, actually. So we watch that during the season to get hyped for the coming weekend, or in the off-season we’ll watch to get fantasy-football advice.

TM: Yeah, we’re a sporty family. Our teams are the Rams and the Chicago Cubs, because I’ve indoctrinated the kids to my favorite teams, and so we’ll go to the Rams games whenever we can, and we go to Wrigley Field in Chicago whenever we can, too.

The Chicago Blackhawks are our hockey team, but they haven’t been so good lately, so there hasn’t been too much to travel with them. But sporting-wise with the kids, I never miss a volleyball game or a flag-football game or a baseball game. 

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Madden NFL, FIFA, and MLB: The Show

RM: Sometimes in my free time I play sports games, like the Maddens, the FIFAs, the MLB: The Shows, all those. And my dad is kind of curious, so I tried teaching him FIFA.

Dad, what would you say resembles your type of play? 

TM: My skill level is toddler. If there were a setting, like expert, medium, beginner … toddler is where it would have to be set for me. I’m always running my player off the field. I cannot find the ball. I was never much of a video-game player, but I like watching him play, and it’s so realistic now, so that’s cool.

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Dungeons & Dragons

TM: I ran a neighborhood Dungeons & Dragons game for the kids when they were little.

Playing Dungeons & Dragons is kind of like my poker night. I have three or four Dungeons & Dragons campaigns going on concurrently as a grown man. Roman has been out of the D&D game for a while, but his brother plays regularly, so we can talk about our adventures.

As far as the characters I play, there’s a hardy dwarf who rides a polar bear. There’s a headless horseman who subscribes to the religion of the Raven Queen. There’s a Vistani war priest. I’m also a giant hippopotamus with spiked armor. That’s the Mount Rushmore of my current Dungeons & Dragons characters.