Credit: Sean RiciglianoFollowing the shooting-death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri last year, Tom Morello released a protest song called "Marching on Ferguson." To commemorate the one-year anniversary of Brown's death, the Rage Against the Machine guitarist was among many protesters who traveled to Ferguson this past weekend.
"I love to play benefit shows, but I'm not a humanitarian; I'm a hell-raiser," Morello tells Rolling Stone. "Those voices are necessary on days like the one-year anniversary of the police murder of Michael Brown."
"Police murders of black people [are] as American as apple pie or baseball," he adds. "What is also as American as apple pie or baseball is resistance to that injustice."
Morello says that while protests have been effective to some extent, "the underlying problem remains."
"Frankly, while some change is important, little change has happened," he says. "Music is our revenge. Music is our expression. Music is our liberation. That's where they can't touch us."
Morello grew up in Libertyville, Illinois as, in his words, "the only black kid in an all-white town." As a rock guitarist, Morello is also part of a predominantly white group as an adult.
"Every once in a while I'll talk with a non-white person who is like, 'You're the guitar player who made me play!," says Morello. "Guitar playing, in a way, is kind of a post-racial world now. In some ways, it should be a model. It didn't used to be that way. I think that probably Rage Against the Machine had something to do with that, but bands don't have to look like Led Zeppelin in order to rock hard."
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