Tom Morello - Guitar


Tom Morello is the guitarist for Rage against the machine, here's his biography: 
                            
                              Tom's heritage: His mother's name is Mary Morello, who is
                              the founder of Parents for Rock and Rap, an
                              anti-censorship organization. His father was a guerilla in the
                              Mau-Mau uprising that freed Kenya from British rule. His
                              political education, as he says, "began the first minute you
                              have brown skin and walk onto an inter-racial playground".
                              He grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, a small suburb north of
                              Chicago. He went to pre-school there when a little white
                              girl kept on calling him "nigger" and other racist remarks,
                              and although he didn't know what it meant, when he told
                              his mother about it, she showed him information on
                              Malcolm X, and talked with him. The next day, the girl said
                              the same things again, and he replied, "shuttup! whitey!",
                              and then punched her in the face. He lived in Libertyville
                              most of his life while he was in the high school drama club,
                              played Dungeons and Dragons, and was into Marxist
                              politics. 




 His first experience with guitar, was when he heard a KISS song that he wanted to play. He paid
 some guy $5 to teach him how to play, but instead, the first thing the man taught him was to tune
 the guitar. He came back the next week, coughed up another $5, and was taught the C scale. That
 was it for him, he didn't touch a guitar for years after. Then when he heard a song by the Sex
 Pistols, he thought that he might be able to channel his feelings and political ideas through a guitar
 too, so he learned how to play. He went to Harvard University, where he majored in Social
 Studies. This is when he practiced obsessively, at least 2-4 hours a day on the guitar. After his
 Harvard friends all left to become doctors and lawyers, Tom went to L.A, because that's where
 everyone said that you had to go to form a rock band. 




  Going there with
  nothing, no friends, or
  anything except a
  Harvard Alumni phone
  directory, he started his
  rock career, he played
  with several bands,
  which were
  unsuccessful. He started
  teaching guitar to get
  along, and finally took a
  job as a California
  senator's secretary. He
  was fired when a
  woman called
  complaining that
  "colored people" were
  moving into her
  neighborhood, he told
  her that maybe the
  problem wasn't them,
  but the fact that she was
  racist. He then formed a
  band called "Lockup"
  with the guitarist of
  Tool, where Tom did
  backing vocals. He then
  found his way to Rage.