I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.
Tom MorelloThere's not a country on earth that doesn't feel that it might be invaded by Donald Trump's regime.
Tom MorelloThings like rebellion and resistance to authority are absolutely as much a part of the human experience as love and cars are, and it's a part that doesn't get covered very much in pop music.
Tom MorelloThen about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.
Tom MorelloIn our country there's never been a successful progressive struggle that did not have a soundtrack, whether it was the civil rights movement, workers' rights movement, women's rights movement. There's got to be songs at the barricades, and those are the kinds of songs that I try to write.
Tom Morello