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The Nightwatchmen
 Tom Morello, virtuoso guitarist for Audioslave and seminal political rock act Rage Against The Machine, once said, "A good song should make you wanna tap your feet and get with your girl. A great song should destroy cop cars and set fire to the suburbs. I'm only interested in writing great songs." On a Thursday morning, somewhat surreally, I find myself on the phone to the man himself, and I put it to him: does he still write songs to destroy cop cars? "Hell yeah! Have you heard [my album] 'One Man Revolution'?" he laughs. "That's a record to make cop cars implode!"
"It's a question that I've wrestled with," Morello says of resorting to violence to bring about social change. "I'm a great admirer of both the Ghandi, Martin Luther King school of non-violent civil disobedience, and also recognising that in the real world, the level of force that the Right has in our country is insane - it's hard to see what path might be the better one. But on The Nightwatchman records, what I do is I turn that question over and over and over. Writing as the Nightwatchman, rather than as Tom Morello, I'm able to look into the darker more shadowy recesses to find the answers."
Morello is speaking of the debut album for his new acoustic alter-ego, The Nightwatchman. It's a simple mixture of acoustic guitar and heart-on-sleeve, furiously political lyrics that reflect his position as both a musician and a long-serving activist for social movements. "I've been drawn to music that's heavy and music that's rebellious," he explains, "and it dawned on me that some of the heaviest and most rebellious music of all time is played with an acoustic guitar, three chords, the truth and a little bit of harmonica."
"In a way it was kind of an antidote to arena rock. On nights off I would look through the local paper and find open mic nights, or coffee houses, or bars where I could go down and play. It felt to me more like a mission than anything else, and I was compelled to do it. And I put as much heart and soul and feeling into those performances in front of eight people and a lattˇ machine, as I did in front of 28,000 people in the arena. At that point I knew that it was something that I was destined to continue on to do.
"I think a lot of times they didn't believe their own eyes," he laughs of those first coffee-house gigs. "I was playing under The Nightwatchman in part to head off expectations of rap metal. A couple of times people would come up and be like "Are you...Tom Morello?" And I'm like, "No...I'm The Nightwatchman"...and leave them scratching their heads!
"Wherever you are, whatever you do, you should stand up for what you believe in," Morello says of combining the two aspects of his life. "I happen to be a musician, I am cursed with that - I didn't choose to be a guitar player, it chose me. With that being the case, then the challenge is how you weave your convictions into what it is that you do. And whether that's working at the donut shop, painting fences or playing guitar, I think it's important for everybody to try to weave their convictions into their life's work.
"It can be absolutely uncompromising," he says of his life's work, music. "There are very, very few jobs where you don't have to listen to anybody. If you write for a paper, or you work for a radio station, or you're a television newscaster, there are often advertisers to consider, or an editor that comes through to take a look at your work. Whether it's a rock band or whether you're writing folk music, there's something very pure about it; you go directly to the audience, directly to the listener, unfettered and unfiltered, and that can be powerful if you intend to fan the flames of discontent."
That said, both Rage Against The Machine and The Nightwatchman have both been distributed by one of the world's largest corporations: Sony. Morello is adamant, however, that he doesn't feel any pressure from them.
"Oh, heavens no. I think that in the early days, when 'Rage was signed, it was sort of the beginning of alternative music and the Lollapalooza nation, when I think record companies realised, frankly, they were gonna make more money by not getting involved! You couldn't program a Nirvana, or a Pearl Jam or a Nine Inch Nails or a Tool or a Rage Against The Machine, you just let them do them what they're gonna do. And, at the end of the day, what they're looking for are profits, and Rage Against The Machine sold 15, 20 million records - so nobody had shit to say!" he laughs triumphantly. "And with this, everyone's been very, very cool. I think we established a precedent back in 1992."
Now, with Rage coming down for the Big Day Out next year ("I've got a feeling the Rage gigs are gonna rock pretty ferociously," Morello notes, just in case you weren't sure), Morello is hoping that fans will take a lot away from his quieter moments as The Nightwatchman, which will also feature on the day. "I hope they will be both rocked, and haunted, and energised to confront injustice head on wherever they see it, whether it's in their home, whether it's in their school, whether it's in their community, or the world at large. That's a lot to ask for a thirty-minute show, isn't it?"
Matt Vesley
The Nightwatchmen appear as part of the Big Day Out at Wayville Showgrounds on Fri Feb 1.
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