TOM MORELLO’S “ARM THE HOMELESS” MONGREL
THE AXE
At first a Strat knock-off with a Performance Corsair neck, two Seymour Duncan JB humbuckers and a chrome Floyd Rose, Morello has given this little-shredderthat-could its fair share of upgrades (some desperately needed, he’s stressed). Its specs have gone through more changes than we could count, however its most notable setup features (or – we’re unsure if Morello has made any recent changes since it returned to his main arsenal at the turn of the ‘10s) a graphite Kramer-style neck – which he scored dumpster-diving out the back of a shop called Nadine’s Music – an Ibanez Edge double-locking tremolo, and a set of EMG 85/H pickups. Adorned atop the stock baby blue finish are drawings of hippos (which Morello once joked was the only thing he knew how to draw) and its infamous titular phrase, “ARM THE HOMELESS”.
THE STORY
Morello had the first version of this unsuspecting baby blue beast custom-built at a Hollywood store dubbed Performance Guitar – which was, at its core, a deceptively lucrative-looking outlet aimed at duping newbie shredders into thinking they were picking up a high-class custom, but actually paying out the arse for cheap parts, dodgy builds and all-around laughable quality. “Everything about it was bad,” Morello declared in a 2012 interview with Music Radar; “It looked bad, it sounded bad, it was grotesquely overpriced, and of course over the next two years, I changed literally everything about it except for the piece of wood.” Nevertheless, the axe would become Morello’s go-to throughout the glory days of Rage Against The Machine, and despite a short stint of reprieve between ’02 and ’07, has remained a core part of his live setup.
THE REPLICA
There is no officially licensed remake of Arm The Homeless, however because
Morello’s never shied away from delving into the customisations he’s made to it, plenty of fan-made replicas exist – hit Reverb, or your favourite buy-and-sell forum to see what’s currently floating around. That said, another of Morello’s classics – the modified black Strat he pained “Soul Power” over, which was a staple of his kit in the Audioslave days – was recently given a run by Fender, sans the hand-painted branding but up to spec with Morello working closely alongside the design team.