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.
