I'm a conspiracy theorist. I can't help but look at the lunar landing and go, 'We didn't go to the moon.' We never went there. My dad worked for NASA on the Apollo missions, and I've always felt it's been fake since I was a kid.
Tim Commerford
Living in L.A., it's such a big huge place and there's so much of it. It's so much fun to be in Chinatown, or Downtown L.A. I was in Lynnwood, I was in Huntington Beach. I was in Venice. It's an incredible place.
I'm a bass player and I love the bass.
And EDM music grabbed my ear and got my attention and I started realizing that the computer was, in the same way that the saxophone was invented in the late 1800s and guitar in the 1930s, an instrument.
I can't stop myself from finding information that makes me mad and writing about it.
As a member of Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave and now Prophets of Rage I'm pretty used to coming on stage and there's a full house.
I feel so lucky that I feel the music is at the forefront of Audioslave, and the songs are the most important thing.
I was a huge prog rock fan as a kid in high school, and I'm so thankful for that.
Is punk rock really music, or is it really just an attitude? I get into that discussion with people all of the time. I personally consider be-bop jazz to be punk rock. And prog rock would definitely fall in that category too.
Any time people are breaking outside the norm and playing something that isn't expected - that feels like punk to me.
We wrote many a Rage song where we'd use Soundgarden as a template.
For me, I've always been intimidated by the computer coming from the era of record industry and record stores and buying records and looking at album covers, waiting in line for records when they came out and then ultimately being successful in a band where we recording pre-computer era.
My bass is my weapon.
I love all kinds of music and I love to play or try to play all kinds of music.
I don't believe ISIS is real.
If Rage gets inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it'll be interesting to see who shows up.
To me, protesting and playing music go hand in hand.
Luck has a lot to do with being a musician.
To me, music is not a stunt. Music is not a joke. I take every lick of music that I've ever played very serious.
I like 'Discipline.' That's my favorite King Crimson album.
I grew up as a swimmer. And my brother was a football player and I played football.
I could have played water polo in high school instead of football. I would have gone to Stanford like my other buddies from Irvine who played water polo and ended up going to Stanford, you know.
My experience with playing in odd time signatures was progressive rock and learning King Crimson songs as a kid coming up and maybe learning Pink Floyd, 'Money,' that kind of thing.
I've played in front of a hundred thousand people and it's easy for me to squint my eyes and blur my vision and then all the people just turn into a giant piece of pizza or something. Everyone becomes one, you know.
Guitars, there was rock 'n' roll. Saxophone, jazz. Now we have the computer and there's this electronic thing happening in music that is somewhat superhuman.
I started taking vocal lessons, I always loved the challenge of playing my instrument and trying to sing.
Ultimately it's a blessing to be able to make music.
Generally speaking people that come to an amphitheater show, they're not coming to see the opening band.
I love being a dad, I love my wife and my kids are amazing to me and I love the challenge of making music and family work.
I'm still really proud of Rage as much as I am of Audioslave. I still love it when I turn on the radio and I hear a Rage song. I love that.
With Rage, we wrote riff rock and had rap vocals, so we didn't really concern ourselves with melody for the most part.
I love my tattoo and I think it looks great. It's like an old pair of jeans, it's beat up. I remember when I first got it outlined. I'm like 'why don't more guys do this?' Then I realized the pain.
With Audioslave, it's all about melody and chord progressions.
The computer has always been this ominous, scary thing that came into music, for me, in the early '90s, right when I first started playing music.
For me it's liberating to be able to look somebody in the eyes and know that they can't see my eyes. I've always thought that when I would see Slipknot playing.
It's insane for me to say this, but I've never been in a room with anyone that's more talented on the electric guitar than Brendan O'Brien.
I think you still need to use music as a way to say something that's important, and I'm always gonna do that. Always.
No matter what you're doing, whether you have a business with someone, a band with someone, when you feel confident that your idea is going to be embraced, and even if it isn't, that everyone is going to work on it as hard as they can, then that's a great thing.
A great thing of getting older is coming to terms and saying sorry and trying to repair damage that happened in the past.
I absolutely feel that Rage failed.
But when I was a teenager, I was in my room learning how to play bass by listening to Rush and the Sex Pistols. I wasn't reading Karl Marx.
I don't know what to say… There's always animosity when a singer leaves a band. It's like you're a football team and the quarterback just split for more money on another team.
