A sprawling new interview with Tom Morello over at Rolling Stone saw the Rock & Roll Hall Of Famer open up on a wide variety of topics. With a central focus on his newly released solo album, “Everyone Gets Everything They Want“, the conversation also spilled over into his decades of activism, his voting preferences (spoiler: he didn’t vote for Harris), writing and touring with his son Roman, the passing of his mother Mary earlier this year, the rocky start of Audioslave, and the continued uncertainty around the future of Rage Against The Machine.
Another topic touched on amid that conversation was the recent controversy over Ed Sheeran and Macklemore‘s tour this summer/fall. Originally set to feature both artists, Macklemore‘s continued activism for Palestinian causes saw him dropped from the bill. That decision came about in part from pressure from venue owners and Israeli-aligned lobbyist groups who took issue with Macklemore‘s pro-Palestinian stance and onstage commentary amid the opening stops.
In response, Sheeran‘s planned openers for the tour and backing band all withdrew from the trek. Never one to shy away from expressing his political opinions onstage, Morello was asked in this new conversation about his take on the matter, to which he replied:
“In some ways it’s a distraction, and in some ways it’s the whole thing. It’s a distraction because Ed Sheeran is not a victim or someone we should be focusing on, nor is Macklemore. The war crimes that were brought to the fore on the stage by Macklemore’s speech are the ones that should be the primary focus. And not be distracted by whether or not Ed Sheeran is crying today or crying tomorrow. That’s what I think.
But on the other hand, it’s the whole thing, where the idea that a handful of ruling class billionaires get to decide what speech can occur on a concert stage is a very worrying element. But it’s indicative of the moment that we’re in. Who decides what the truth is? Who decides who gets to say what? There’s a handful of extraordinarily super rich people who believe it should be them in every instance. And I disagree with that assessment.
And I think that at this crossroads of our democracy, the people who are gonna make a determination of whether or not that stands is no one different from you and from me. History is not something that happens, it is something that we make, and there is absolutely no neutrality in this particular moment.”
When asked if the focus shifting to Ed Sheeran rather than the situation in Gaza and Palestine is a distraction, Morello went on to offer:
“Yeah, 100 percent. It’s all right to shame him in this moment because he deserves the shame, but not the focus. The focus is your and my tax dollars are going to commit horrific war crimes in the Middle East, and that, I believe, should be the focus and what we should be doing our best to stop in its tracks.
It’s a clickbait, it’s salacious, it’s, ‘Oh my gosh, poor Ed Sheeran.’ First of all, has Ed Sheeran never seen a Macklemore performance before in the last three years? He certainly should’ve known what he was getting into.
The one thing that’s sort of adjacent is, this is a time where speech is being vilified and is a crime, where the truth is a crime, where skin color is a crime, where immigrant status is a crime, where gender is a crime, where sexual orientation is a crime. And it’s my belief that the true crime is the rise of authoritarianism, and the true crime is the erosion of freedoms, and the true crime is an impending environmental disaster.
And so my hope at each one of my shows, I deputize the audience as anti-fascist crime fighters, and that’s really the way that I think you have to look at the world right now. Like, what are the real crimes that are happening, and what is it that you and I can do to stop it?”
