Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello recalled in an interview with Howard Stern that he worked as stripper before fame in order to buy a hot tub. The musician said it was a really weird job.
Guitarist Tom Morello recalls working as a stripper to buy a hot tub:
“My roommate and I at the time had aspirations to. We had like a one-room apartment in Hollywood, and to enhance our dating lives we thought that the thing that would help would be if we had a hot tub in our living room.”
“Of course, we couldn’t afford a hot tub, so we figured out how much money it was going to take to buy this indoor kiddie pool and a water heater, and this and that, and the other. Just to simulate a hot tub. And then we worked towards that with this extracurricular activity. Having a three-and-a-half-foot tall, 10-foot diameter, 101-degree roommate is a horrible roommate.” [Laughs]
But you would dance on stage?
“It was at bachelorette parties. So, you knock at the door, you’re wearing a suit, you knock at the door, ask for a cup of sugar, ‘Brick House’ comes on the stereo… It wasn’t awesome, I got to tell you – it wasn’t awesome, it really wasn’t. It was weird.”
You didn’t like it, it was weird? It didn’t last long… I remember when Rage went on stage nude as a protest. You guys stood there naked for 15 minutes, you were protesting this movement to censor rock music and the band decided, ‘We’re not gonna fucking play, we’re gonna stand up there naked.’ Did everyone in the band agree to this?
“It’s funny because we’re pretty deep in the interview before we got to that. I’m like, I knew eventually we would. [Laughs] Sometimes you got to suffer for your art. There was a discussion about it, and it was a time that – we all thought, we had talked about a couple of cities beforehand, but the irony of that day was – this was in Philly, so it was the closest show to New York City at the time.
“And this was the day when the record company sent everybody down to the show. ‘Check Rage Against the Machine, the hottest new band on Lollapalooza, you’re gonna see them in all their glory.’
“And we didn’t even play. It was like a 15-minute feedback protest of nudity, and then we left the stage. And I remember talking with one of the record execs afterward, and he was like, ‘Thanks a lot for that.’ I’m like, ‘Hey, you sign a band named Rage Against the Machine, you get rage against the machine.'”