"The most powerful music is music with purpose," states Morello, whose politically charged band confronts imperialism, disinformation, economic coercion, and propaganda in its hip hp influenced lyrics. Inspired partly by the punks and partly by the historical example of International Workers of the World activist/songwrwiter Joe Hill, Morello claims that "all music is political. It can either function as empowering and confrontational, or as desensitising and anesthetizing."

Morello has clearly chosen the former: Rage's recent video "Freedom" argues for the innocence of jailed American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier ("we basiacally call the FBI liars, murders, and theives"), and the band's recent three- week tour of Europe added 10,000 names to the ranks of the European Anti-Nazi league." Music can unite." Morello stresses. "It can help to organize around very pressing causes, and that's what we'll continue doing and take to a higher level in years to come."

Whether he's reaching 50,000 at Britian's Reading Festival or 500 at LA's Roxy, Morello uses a single late-'80s 50-watt Marshall half-stack with one beatup Peavy 4x12 cabinet- no dummy cabinets, either. His greasy effects pedals include an Ibanez flanger, a DOD EQ, and a Boss Delay, but his secret weapon is the DigiTech Whammy Pedal, which he sets to jump a fifth, an octave, or two octaves. You can hear its charachteristic harmonised warp sounds on the intro the "Know Your Enemy" and the solos on "Killing in the Name" and "Bullet in the Head". Morello knows little or nothing about his home-made Telecastercopy, except that is pales in comparison to the ancient $80 three-quarter-size Jaguar copy he found in Toronto with the appelation "Creamy" inscribed on the headstock. "It's the guitar of the future", Morello sigs.

The seeds of Morello's Musico-political impulses were sown in Libertyville, Illinois, where he was high school pals with Tool's Adam Jones (They had a punk band called Electric Sheep) and Maureen Herman of Babes in Toyland. At age 13, Tom dragged a $50 Kay and five bucks to the local music store, asking to be taught the riffs to "Black Dog" and "Detroit Rock City". Instead, he was taught how to tune up. Frustrated but still hopeful, he returned a week later and made the same request; they showed him a C major scale. "That was it!" laughs Morello. "That Kay collected dust for four years, until I bought the Sex Pistols' Nevermind the Bullocks. I had the punk rock revelation-I can do this too. You don't need to have a $10,000 Les Paul; you just have to be pissed off, have a few words of the truth, and be able to produce sond with a guitar."

It was as a social sciences major at Harvard University that Morello began to combine his interest in radical politics with what he describes as an obsessive passion, bordering on disorder for playing the guitar. Though his schoolwork was demanding, Morello, convinced he had to make up for lost time, pushed himself to the limit, playing at least two to four hours per day. "And that didn't mean one hour and 58 minuets," he notes. "If I finished studying at 1:00 AM, that meant practicing until 3:00 AM. Not 2:58."

Tom's high school heroes ranged from the Pistols' Steve Jones to Ozzy's Randy Rhoads, but while he was an undergraduate his tastes took a decidedly progressive turn. Scribbling along with Charlie Parker records, wearing out the grooves on Al DiMeola's Elegant Gypsy, shaking his head at Alan Holdsworth's harmonic outness on Metal Fatigue ("A major turning point"), and clocking countless hours woodshedding and fiddlidng with the toggle switches on his Gibson Explorer, Morello devoured guitar magazines and studied instruction books to verse himself in theory. You can hear his single-not scalar facility in the roaring solos to "Take The Power Back" and "Settle for Nothing," which bear the telltale signs of a barely reformed fusion geek.

Relocating to Los Angeles after collage, Morello played in the popular punk-metal band Lockup and formed RATM in 1991 with drummer Brad Wilk (Who'd played with Pearl Jam during an earlier European trek), bassist Timmy C., and poet/rapper/singer Zack de la Rocha. De la Rocha scathing diatributes and the band's minimalist power grooves have touched a nerve, particuarly in Europe, where they are set to headline Holland's 65,000-seat Pink Pop festival this summer.

But for Morello, the true measure of Rage's success isn't the size of the venues, their LP's chart position, or his stature as guitar hero. "The test of whether Rage Against the Machine will be a successful band has nothing to do with album sales," he insists. "It's going to have to do with the way the message translates into concrete action. It's not enough to have people humming along to 'Bullet in the Head' in their cars-the next time there is a massive disinformation campaign about U.S. military adventurism abroad, people need to take to the streets to put and end to it."