TIM COMMERFORD

I love all kinds of music and I love to play or try to play all kinds of music.

I can't stop myself from finding information that makes me mad and writing about it.

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.

I started taking vocal lessons, I always loved the challenge of playing my instrument and trying to sing.

With Audioslave, it's all about melody and chord progressions.

I grew up as a swimmer. And my brother was a football player and I played football.

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.

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.

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.

To me, protesting and playing music go hand in hand.

If Rage gets inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it'll be interesting to see who shows up.

Generally speaking people that come to an amphitheater show, they're not coming to see the opening band.

Ultimately it's a blessing to be able to make music.

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.

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.

We wrote many a Rage song where we'd use Soundgarden as a template.

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.

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.

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.

With Rage, we wrote riff rock and had rap vocals, so we didn't really concern ourselves with melody for the most part.

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 absolutely feel that Rage failed.

My bass is my weapon.

I feel so lucky that I feel the music is at the forefront of Audioslave, and the songs are the most important thing.

I like 'Discipline.' That's my favorite King Crimson album.