ABC NewsTom Morello will pay tribute to one of his heroes, guitarist Randy Rhoads, on the forthcoming album Immortal Randy Rhoads -- The Ultimate Tribute, due out on next month. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist teamed up with System of a Down vocalist Serj Tankian to cover the classic "Crazy Train" for the record.
Morello also had an opportunity to play for another one of his musical icons, Bob Dylan, at last Friday's 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year gala. He joined another legend, Bruce Springsteen, to cover Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" at the event.
"I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan, and so it was an honor just to be asked," Morello tells ABC News Radio. "Bruce Springsteen asked me to play with him, and that's always an honor in itself. And then [it was] a double down honor to be playing for Bob as well."
Other performers at the MusiCares gala included Jack White and Beck, but the biggest story to come out of the gala was Dylan's instantly famous speech, in which he criticized other songwriters and defended his oft-maligned voice, or, as he puts it, his "croak."
"The opinions expressed, and the language used to express them, were vintage, great Bob Dylan," says Morello of the speech. "It was like a 30-minute-long epic ballad, and one of his best."
Morello thinks people won't forget the speech any time soon, and he suspects many will pretend that they were actually there.
"As the speech was going on, we were looking at each other around the table -- I think there was about 5,000 people in the room -- and my thought was as the years go on there's going to be like about 100,000 people who are going to claim that they were in that room," he tells ABC News Radio. "It was really special."
For those who missed the speech, Morello doesn't think we'll be hearing another like it anytime soon.
"It didn't feel to me like a farewell speech, but it felt like a last speech," he says. "Like he was like, 'I'm never going to get up in front of a microphone and and talk for a half-hour again, so I'm going to lay it all on the table tonight."
Immortal Randy Rhoads -- The Ultimate Tribute will be released on March 3.
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