Tom Morello / Photo by Ben Watts

For our May cover feature, six stars of this year's festivals give the skinny on ginormous outdoor shows to (sun-)baked crowds. SPIN.com was on hand for the historic cover shoot in Hollywood, and we filmed our own quick interviews with the cover subjects. Watch our on-site video interview with Nightwatchman/Rage guitarist Tom Morello, and keep checking this space for interviews and behind-the-scenes footage of Jeff, Satellite Party's Perry Farrell, AFI's Davey Havok, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Wu-Tang's RZA, and Spoon's Britt Daniel.

Rage Against the Machine are re-forming to headline Coachella and Rock the Bells. How strange is it that after so many years of performing protest music, you guys haven't been around for the George W. Bush era?
I know what you're getting at, but bands don't exist to address historical events. It doesn't work that way. During those years, I formed the Axis of Justice organization with Serj [Tankian of System of a Down] to do concrete political activism. But clearly, Rage was the most outspoken voice of political music during the '90s, and all I can say is, I'm glad that voice is going to be heard again.

What's the craziest festival experience you've ever had?
I first met RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan at a Swedish festival above the Arctic Circle with about 60,000 kids. Wu-Tang just commandeered the entire backstage area, and ODB was king of the court, God rest his soul. It was Rage Against the Machine, Biohazard, Prodigy, and Wu-Tang; and Rage, Biohazard, and Prodigy are very aggressive, in-your-face bands, but we were like small children in the presence of the Wu-Tang Clan. We were all sitting at these picnic tables hunkered down, dodging the beer bottles and Swedish women that were flying all over the place.

Do you enjoy playing these bigger shows?
I've been involved with groups whose music tends to move large groups of people, and I've never subscribed to the notion, "Man, we've gotta get back to the clubs." I enjoy trying to make a festival field of 100,000 feel intimate.

Do you remember a particular moment when that happened?
There was an early Rage show at Pinkpop in Holland, and during "Killing in the Name," the crowd literally registered 1.1 on the Richter scale -- they reported it in the paper the next day. And you know how sound travels slower than light? When the snare drum would hit, people heard it at different times as the sound moved back, so the crowd was jumping up in these rolling waves, and from the stage it just looked like an ocean of humanity.

What's the greatest festival performance you've ever seen?
Billy Bragg. I saw him at a festival sometime in the '90s and was just awed by how one dude with a guitar completely commanded this huge crowd -- it was funny, it was rocking, it was moving, and that particular performance inspired me to do the Nightwatchman. He absolutely held his own and more, with all these big rock bands. And that gave me a fearlessness, a sense that there's no audience that you need to be afraid of.