From the stadium to the club: Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine with a best-of concert in Kreuzberg.
Shortly after performing in front of tens of thousands at Rock am Ring and Rock im Park at the weekend, guitar visionary and political activist Tom Morello did some grassroots work and made a guest appearance at the nucleus of Berlin punk, the Kreuzberg club SO36.
Generational meeting of guitarists
Sweat drips from the ceiling onto the mostly gray audience. The youngest person in the hall, at 15, is probably Tom Morello’s son Roman, the second guitarist in his dad’s band. When it comes to sophistication, he is in no way inferior to his legendary father; he always shines with highly complex solos performed full of power and passion. The proud grin of Morello Senior, who already likes to smile, ends somewhere between above his ears in his trademark baseball cap. The offspring even takes on Gniedelgott Steve Vai and interprets his “For The Love Of God”.
Warm-up for the solo album
What is currently taking Morello around the world? He wants to whet the appetite for his first Rrrrock solo album, which follows various preliminary singles, most recently “Adjourn It” feat. Serj Tankian from the brothers in spirit, System Of A Down, is announced for 2026. Before that drops, he would like to remind us what made him one of the most influential guitarists of his generation. This creates “a colorful evening with Tom Morello”, a kind of “This is your life” on stage: In addition to his current singles, he presents souped-up versions of the tracks “One Man Revolution” and “House Gone Up In Flames” by his folk alter ego The Nightwatchman, new interpretations of songs from his trilogy THE ATLAS UNDERGROUND, for which he gathered stars from Steve Aoki to Marcus Mumford to Kirk Hammett, and covers his buddy Bruce Springsteen with “The Ghost Of Tom Joad”.
Tributes to Ozzy, Chris Cornell, Taylor Hawkins and Ace Frehley
Also among the tributes: “Mr. Crowley” by Ozzy Osbourne – exactly eleven months ago, Morello was the musical director of the mega-metal event “Back To The Beginning” in Birmingham, UK, the highlight of which was Black Sabbath’s last concert; Osbourne died less than two weeks later. An iconic black and white photograph of Osbourne and his guitarist Randy Rhoads is projected behind the drummers in Berlin – Morello’s eldest son Rhoads is named after him. Later in the set, in place of the two metal icons to accompany “Like A Stone”, the most lasting hit from Morello’s time with the supergroup Audioslave, there are pictures of their singer Chris Cornell († 2017), Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins († 2022) and Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley († 2025).
An evening as a career review
Of course, the biggest applause goes to two medley blocks in which Morello blasts us with his most famous riffs from the work of his most famous band, Rage Against The Machine, who shaped the 90s like no other heavy band. Mixtures of this kind reduced to their essence always come across as a bit cheesy, but the way Morello implements it here also has something awe-inspiring about it: because he really just limits himself to his parts, doesn’t put himself in the spotlight of RATM shouter Zack de la Rocha (what does he actually do? Didn’t he always have A LOT to say? And isn’t it important to comment on current world events more than ever before?), and doesn’t let himself or guest singers to the microphone, but let the music speak for itself. The audience is then allowed to sing the fully played “Killing In The Name” (can you please retroactively add the suffix “of” so that the song isn’t constantly mistitled?) before Morello launches into a perhaps very clichéd cover of John Lennon’s “Power To The People”.
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Antifa All Nite
Finally, “Rock And Roll All Nite” by Kiss, who unabashedly allowed themselves to be honored by Donald Trump in December. Kiss simply enjoy an incomparable status in the US rock scene, so politics quickly becomes secondary. Because, as Morello discovered at the beginning of the show through a somewhat flat audience survey, there are not only a lot of people in the hall who don’t like fascism, but also a lot of people who are interested in rock’n’roll. This uprising is supported by battle cries from the crowd: “Alerta, alerta, antifascista!” Morello comments regretfully, and probably somewhat misguidedly due to the acoustics on stage, that his knowledge of German is not enough to understand the Spanish slogan, but that he is sure that he agrees with the fans. Every now and then, such animations create vibes like an Antifa children’s birthday party, but there is also at least one minor among us. Fascism = stupid, rock’n’roll = great. Simple truths in a world as complicated as a Steve Vai guitar solo.