Tom Morello Brought Soul Power, A Star Guest and Family to His India Tour

In October this year, when Tom Morello announced his debut India tour, it was a surprising addition to his concert schedule considering he wasn’t passing through the region as such. A month after his North America run wrapped up, the guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, Prophets of Rage, and singer-songwriter under the moniker The Nightwatchman was going to be in India for solo shows with his band.

After knocking off shows in Mumbai and Gurugram in Delhi NCR, Morello was in Bengaluru for the final stop of not just his India visit, but also his world tour that spanned North America and Australia.

The cold, hazy Phoenix Marketcity back area ground was ready to be charged up, and the audience kind of had an idea of what to expect – RATM and Audioslave songs for sure, but also his solo material. By the end of Morello’s 90-minute set, Bengaluru got a hell of a tour closer, complete with rapper Hanumankind stepping on stage for a rap-rock version of his hit “Big Dawgs,” Morello’s son Roman unlocking his own fanbase for solos and guitar work, and the indomitable spirit of protest songs.

Morello’s Bengaluru concert — produced and promoted by BookMyShow Live as part of their Bandland on Tour concert series — got its initial charge courtesy of folk-metallers The Down Troddence (TDT). A short but punchy set of old and new material from their albums How Are You? We Are Fine, Thank You and As You All Know, This Is How It Is included songs like “KFC,” “Maharani” (with Carnatic vocalist T.M. Krishna’s vocals in the track), and “Shiva.” It wasn’t a mismatch, but TDT’s song choices could’ve been more hard-hitting, with the crowd fully appreciating them only as they’d just got to the final song of their set.

If TDT were bringing an intense side to the stage, Tom Morello was more celebratory and emphatic about the power of rock and roll throughout his set. He was joined by drummer Eric Gardner, bassist Dave Gibbs, guitarist Carl Restivo, and his son Roman (who got a proud-dad hug from Morello after each song he was part of).

Morello took the stage in his distinct shirt, cap, scarf and dark sunglasses look, changing up guitars throughout the set. Opening with his 2024 single “Soldier In The Army of Love,” the dissonant guitar squeal was among the opening notes, showcasing Morello’s long-hailed mutinous guitar solos and effects.

Roman matched solos with equal power, and Morello even rapped a bit, with his 2024 song “One Last Dance” with Toronto-bred rock artist Grandson tapping into rock and roll.

Morello, outside of RATM, Audioslave and Prophets of Rage, has leaned more into collaborations than ever before, adding his flair to songs like “Gossip” by Maneskin, “Metali!!” by Babymetal and more. In Bengaluru, he played songs from his Atlas Underground albums, including “Let’s Get the Party Started” with Bring Me The Horizon (with a nod to Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive”) and “Hold the Line” with Grandson, plus “Keep Going” with The Bloody Beetroots.

“In these troubled times, I’ve come to you with a message of peace, justice, and rock and roll,” Morello said as he got into “Hold The Line,” while “One Man Revolution” from his The Nightwatchman folk project was a proper stomper. In between, there was just an early taste of RATM, underscored by Morello mentioning how he’d waited 30 years to play in India. A medley of “Testify,” “Take The Power Back,” “Freedom” and “Snakecharmer” had everyone gleefully guessing the riffs and headbanging, but it was going to be a while before Morello got back to that era.

By now, it was clear that Morello was here to have fun, pay tribute to his favorite artists, and share the music he was best known for with Indian fans. The year had seen him also perform at Back To The Beginning, the farewell show for Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne in Birmingham, U.K. in July. He underscored his tribute to Osbourne and Sabbath with a nod to their history and cross-generational impact, leading up to “Mr. Crowley” with Roman.

The few thousands gathered in Bengaluru lapped it up, even throwing back an “Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy, Oi Oi Oi!” chant, which perhaps cemented what Morello had heard about the city being a rock and heavy metal capital of the country.

It took a few more songs like “Cato Stedman & Neptune Frost” (one of his earliest songs written in 1981), “Secretariat,” and the acoustic “The Road I Must Travel” for the crowd to understand that Morello was almost taking people through a history lesson in rock and roll. His son Roman was helping massively, the 14-year-old performing a cover of “For The Love of God” by Steve Vai that got the crowd chanting his name in unison.

Morello shared another historical gem about the formation of Rage Against The Machine, and how the first feedback they’d ever gotten was “It makes me want to fight.” With that, songs like “Bombtrack,” “Know Your Enemy,” “Bulls On Parade,” “Guerilla Radio,” and “Sleep Now In the Fire” rang through, ending with the helicopter-like scratching of Audioslave’s “Cochise.”

It segued into Morello paying tribute to Chris Cornell, where a spotlight on the stage mic set a poignant tone as “Like A Stone” took audiences down memory lane, carried by the crowd’s chorus and rounded out by Morello’s iconic solo. Morello said before the song, “What a pleasure it was to stand beside him [Cornell]. While we’re saddened he’s gone, his unbridled rock power and his music will never be outshined.”

As the evening grew more special, Morello kept his activist stance ever-clear, even if it sometimes gets fogged up in nostalgia value for fans. His Springsteen-meets-RATM version of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” was especially touching, consciously addressing global issues like police brutality and economic despair.

Everyone raised their fists and middle fingers as they echoed Zack De La Rocha’s iconic fuck-you lines about abuse of power by enforcement authorities in “Killing In The Name,” which Morello playfully described as “an old indigenous anti-colonial song” for India. But even then, RATM’s message has, for long, gotten diluted and lost as just angsty songs, removed from their obvious political overtones. Did anyone in India really care about systemic abuse of power, or did they just want to shout back, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!”? In that crowd, it all blended as one pent-up collective voice, letting it all out.

Being the last stop on the tour, Bengaluru got a bonus when Morello invited Hanumankind to perform “Big Dawgs,” the rapper enjoying every bit of playing with Morello and the band, even sticking around for John Lennon’s “Power to the People” and a more fun-loving sign-off with “Rock and Roll All Nite” by Kiss.

As a guitarist, Morello proved why he’s a punk at heart: because no solo is conventional. He can throw in a bit of blues, but his guitar is always going to screech, scratch, and sound like it’s communicating with aliens. As a storyteller and rock artist, Morello put up the kind of concert someone takes a bet on for nostalgia, maybe hesitantly so, only to walk away in the presence of a thorough yet subversive guitar virtuoso.