Quotes from Tim Commerford

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

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

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

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 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.

I'm a bass player and I love the bass.

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

My bass is my weapon.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

I absolutely feel that Rage failed.

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.

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.

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.

Any time people are breaking outside the norm and playing something that isn't expected - that feels like punk to me.

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.

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.