Tom Morello Charts Similarities with Obama, Talks Election 2008

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello can't help notice the similarities between himself and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. "Well, you know, being the half-Kenyan Harvard graduate from Illinois in his early forties, not running for president this year's election gives me a unique perspective," Morello tells Rolling Stone's Austin Scaggs. "I've always felt more comfortable on the other side of the barbed wire fence, you know, lobbing musical Molotov cocktails at the party."

"If America elects a black president it will be a different country than the one I've seen my entire life and that would be a step definitely in the right direction," Morello added.

A member of Rage Against the Machine supporting a presidential hopeful? Has the band softened on its radical edge? " I don't think it has anything to do with rebelling against a President. It has to do with policy. The Democratic Congress was elected in 2006 to end the war and they rolled over like lap dogs," Morello adds. So who does Morello think will win this election? "In the next presidential election America will get the president it deserves. If after eight years of Bush's foreign and domestic crimes that we elect a Republican president, you know, it seems to me like you should be able to run a barnyard animal against a Republican and win in a ninety-ten split," Morello says. "So if America elects McCain over, you know, the clearly intelligent, erudite, fair-minded Barack Obama, then either way we'll get the President we deserve."

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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