News

Tom Morello's Career in Stripping

9:51 p.m. · November 5, 2009 · by Sarah Dupuis

If Diablo Cody doesn’t fit your fantasy of an educated, literary celebrity stripper, maybe the thought of Tom Morello dancing on a pole will get your  heart rate—among other things—up. The former guitarist of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave, who currently performs as The Nightwatchman, admitted in his NME column that he made cash after getting a Harvard BA by working as an exotic dancer. He writes:

"When I graduated from Harvard and moved to Hollywood, I was unemployable. I was literally starving, so I had to work menial labour and, at one point, I even worked as an exotic dancer. ‘Brick House’ [by The Commodores] was my jam! I did bachelorette parties and I’d go down to my boxer shorts. Would I go further? All I can say is thank god it was in the time before YouTube! You could make decent money doing that job – people do what they have to do."

Morello also discusses Rage Against The Machine’s nude appearance at Lollapalooza in 1993 later on in the post. Guess old habits die hard! [NME]