Tom Morello wants to make dangerous rock ‘n’ roll again

“You don’t have to wait around to change the world.”

That’s Tom Morello talking about the heroes that inspired his song “Date Night,” featured on his new solo album, “Everyone Gets Everything They Want.” “Date Night” is the story of the Oversteegen sisters, Truus and Freddie, and their friend Hannie Schaft, three young Dutch women whose act of patriotism and rebellion during WWII involved utilizing their feminine wiles to (among other things) seduce Nazis and lure them to their deaths. Unless you’re into feminist history, this is probably the first time you’re hearing those names; it’s definitely not well-known lore. So how did Morello end up writing a song about the Oversteegen sisters?

“It’s an unknown story,” Morello agreed, speaking with Salon last month. “It’s a story that deserves to be told. For years, I kept waiting for someone to make a movie about it. Nobody did. So I actually shopped a movie about it, called ‘Date Night,’ and no one was interested.” 

He continued, “And I thought, ‘Well, here’s the difference between my line of work and that line of work. In that line of work, you’ve got to get some stuffy studio executives to write a check for $50,000,000 in order to bring a story to life that someone might ruin with a poor director.” He pauses. “I’m going to write the fu*king zonk, you know what I mean? And it’s going to arrive tomorrow. And it’s going to be exactly like I want to tell it.” And zonk it is, indeed; “Date Night” is an exhilarating, high-velocity, uplifting song with a surprisingly singable chorus. It would have sounded fantastic over a movie’s closing credits. 

“It’s a story that’s just been in me for a while and deserves — especially at this particular historical juncture — a telling of how people can stand [up],” Morello said. “You know, not all heroes wear capes, and sometimes it’s an attorney who stands up for the right thing. Sometimes it’s a student who stands up in class for the right thing. And sometimes it’s three teenage girls who have had enough of the Nazis occupying their country, and they stand up for the right thing. Now, that’s a fantastic story and all, but now you need some badass riffs and a guitar solo to go with it.”

The badass riffs in this particular case are courtesy of Roman Morello, the 15-year-old son of our interviewee, who joined his dad’s band when he was 13. Morello the Younger is all over the record, but this isn’t a party trick — he’s also sharing co-writes on five songs. Morello Senior explains that Roman began playing guitar during the pandemic “and kind of got his 10,000 hours in early.”

But when your dad is famous, he’s still your dad. How do you negotiate professional boundaries with a 15-year-old? Morello laughs. “So the first crazy thing is, when you’re playing with this little kid, he’s your son in your band, and then the weirder and crazier thing is when it just becomes normal. Like, he’s just a dude in my band now, you know what I mean? I just count on him. He’s super professional. He blows the roof off the place when you give him the nod, and he’s cute as a button.”

Spoken like a dad! But this actually brings us back to “Date Night.” “Another thing about emphasizing the efficacy of youthful endeavor in changing the world is the riff of the song was written by Roman,” Morello explained. “And I sit and listen outside his door and poach his best riffs as they come out. But this was one where I was like, I’ve been looking for a home for this riff, and then that riff merged in a song that we’re both very proud of.”

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Another element of “Date Night” is that the lyrics tell the story from the point of view of the women. It’s not necessarily a perspective one expects to be accompanied by the kind of scorching guitar riffs adorning “Date Night.” Morello explained his approach: “I was trying to find my way in and how, in three short verses, do you get the picture of the art and craft of killing Nazis when you’re an occupied teenage girl in the Netherlands. I’m very familiar with the history of all three of them in the particular cases, and in the particular case we’re talking about, they needed that guy’s uniform, they needed his papers and they laid the trap.” 

He continued: “But their story is more expansive than just killing some Nazi officers in the woods. It was a lot of collaborators they went after as well. And at this historical juncture, that is something to think about. They rescued Jewish children from persecution and hid them from the Nazis. They destroyed Nazi infrastructure. And Hannie [Schaft, who was caught by the Nazis] was 14 when she started this.”

“And I’m constantly reminded — I did my senior thesis at Harvard on student movements in South Africa. And the people that changed the country were 14, 15, 16 years old. These girls [in ‘Date Night’] were 14 to 19 when they began their guerrilla warfare campaign against the fascists,” Morello said. “And I think it’s just a reminder that you don’t have to wait around to change the world. It’s been done within the immediate past by people who are no different than high school students down the block.”

Beyond this one song, there’s a lot more to think about on the rest of “Everyone Gets Everything They Want.” It is packed full of the kind of loud, vibrating guitar noise you’d expect to hear in a Tom Morello joint, and that’s not a criticism: when you have your own distinctive sound, you should absolutely make prodigious use of that particular talent. “Beth from Electronics” is a hard rock overture, an introduction that makes it clear to the listener that in case you think this is another folk-based protest album it informs you in short order (literally — it’s just 43 seconds long) that it absolutely is not. 

“Adjourn It” is a duet (more like a duel, actually) with System of A Down’s Serj Tankian, with Tankian taking the exhortative choruses while Morello’s droll baritone narrates the verses, playing the villain. The two trade off against a background of quieter rhythmic burbles (bass courtesy Roman Morello) and louder, more martial riffs, a neat slicing guitar solo and a bridge with a racing drum-and-guitar interlude that wouldn’t be out of place in a thrash metal song.

There are quieter songs — “quieter” being relative here — like one of two ballads on the record, “I Am Not Yours To Command.” It’s Morello half-speaking, half-singing against a gentle piano melody that emotionally underscores the song’s message of quiet defiance: “Maybe you can save me/Maybe you can’t/Maybe you can liberate me/Nah, I’ll take care of that.” The title track balances ringing classic rock chords mixed with Morello’s trademark Bomb Squad-esque riffs against a half-spoken, half-chanted narration and a white-hot guitar solo. It sticks in your head long after you finish the album.

This record is, somehow, Tom Morello’s first official rock ‘n’ roll solo outing, despite everything that’s preceded it. It’s because Morello is a musical polymath who has utilized his fame to allow himself to make whatever kind of music he wants to be making: from Rage Against the Machine to Audioslave, from the Nightwatchman to Prophets of Rage, to his now-ongoing role as third guitarist in the E Street Band to the Street Sweeper Social Club (his project with Boots Riley), to the EDM-influenced improbable collaborations released under the moniker The Atlas Underground — there’s more, but it’s enough to give you the basic gist.

Morello can do whatever he wants, and he does, up to and including the curation of his upcoming Power To The People Festival in October (“A Day of Peace, Love, Justice and Music”), along with launching a charity in honor of his late mother: The Mary Morello Memorial Project. Fans of RATM may recall Mary Morello’s now-legendary introductions of the band in its heyday (usually “The best fu*king band in the universe”), but they also just as likely know about her work as a social justice activist who also founded the anti-censorship organization Parents For Rock And Rap at the height of Tipper Gore’s PMRC hysteria. 

To continue on the subject of family, what did teenage rebellion look like in the Morello household when he was growing up? Morello chuckled. “As far as teenage rebellion, Mary Morello is the most rebellious person I’ve ever met in my life. You can’t outflank her, in any way, shape, or form. Really, the only conflict we ever really had [of] that sort of a stereotypical teenage rebellion is when I got my driver’s license. I didn’t have a curfew before my driver’s license. I did have a curfew after my driver’s license. And this, to me, felt like an injustice greater than apartheid. How have we taken rights away from this angsty teenager? But my mom and I were always very much politically aligned, and it was a real blessing to have been raised by somebody like that.”

“Everyone Gets Everything They Want” isn’t a concept record; even if all of the songs are essentially sharing the same themes, none of which are new to Morello: change and justice, injustice and fighting back, righting wrongs, the simple act of standing up and saying something isn’t right. That’s not nothing, even, and especially in 2026, when many artists prefer to remain silent. 

And sometimes defiance is a small gesture, like who you invite to sing on your record, which in peacetime is an artistic action, for fun or a simple desire to collaborate, but nowadays could also have larger meaning and impact. In addition to the collab with Serj Tankian — another musician making loud noises who is also an advocate for social justice — there’s also a collab with Belfast’s Kneecap, who rap in Gaelic and English on the blistering track “Unconquered.” It’s probably the strongest song on the record.

It’s not necessarily surprising that artists with a reputation for being politically outspoken would join forces, but it’s not like there’s a newsletter they all belong to, and while Kneecap have an international reputation, they’re not as well-known by a general public. When asked how they first came on his radar, Morello explained, “I actually became aware of them a couple summers ago. I was getting a tour of West Belfast by some veterans of the Troubles. And we ended up late night at this tiny bar . . . and there was just this huge graffitied “Kneecap” next to the bar. I didn’t even know what that word meant. Over the course of the next week or so, I learned there’s these youngsters from West Belfast who really like drugs; you know, that was the first thing I learned about them. And they were kind of a popular band.”

“All of a sudden they were able to find in their lived experience, and history of occupation and oppression, the courage as these young rappers who — the first things on their minds might have been more cocaine oriented than, you know, Middle Eastern politics-oriented. But they just absolutely stood up fearlessly in a way that reminded me of the best of Rage Against the Machine, of speaking truth to power regardless of the consequences, and unequivocally standing up for what they believe in and putting their, their music, and their lives on the line. That’s the dangerous kind of rock ‘n’ roll that I want to be involved with.” 

He continued, “We made an absolute banger, an absolute banger . . . they [asked], ‘Any direction?’ And I said, I think there were three directions. One is it’s got to be called ‘Unconquered.’ Two, it’s got to be a song that either one of us could open a show, open or close our shows with. And three, it’s got to have a hook that people, regardless of their political persuasion, are gonna have to go, that’s a fu*king banger.”

The riffs on “Unconquered” are incredibly satisfying and will probably result in the kind of response Morello’s hoping for, where he’s going to reel in folks who will then turn around and complain about what they mean, the way every one of Morello’s even slightly political social media posts has at least one response from an allegedly now-former RATM fan, somehow newly surprised at the guitarist’s mindset. Morello laughs. “I’ve been doing that for 3 decades. That’s my wheelhouse: disappointing fans when they find out what the songs are really about.”

Morello summed up this project by talking about everything that preceded it: “This is the 22nd album of my career, right? And is the first Tom Morello solo rock album. It really is. I’ve done collaborative rock albums. I’ve done band albums, I’ve done folk and Americana records, but this is the first one that is intentional — over the course of the last five or six years, I’ve been playing with my spectacular backup band, the Freedom Fighter Orchestra. Whereas in the past, my touring has been compartmentalized. This is the folk tour. This is the EDM-influenced art house tour. This is the Prophets of Rage Tour.”

He continued, “And of course, the last five, six, seven years, I’ve been embracing the totality of my career. Like, those Rage Against the Machine riffs, I love those, and I’m going to play them, and the world needs them. They’re in the DNA of rebels of all ages. Chris Cornell, I miss him every day, and I want to pay tribute to him and hear the crowd sing those beautiful melodies that he wrote, you know? I embraced the Nightwatchman stuff — that was such an incredibly richly satisfying second act for me, to be able to, in my mid-30s, become a singer-songwriter. And so I want all of those elements, but first and foremost, it’s got to be a devastatingly kick-ass, rip-oriented, guitar-solo, tearing-your-head-off, rock and roll album. That’s what we’ve made.”