Tom Morello’s Power to the People festival has added Geezer Butler, Mike McCready, Scott Ian, Stephen Stills and three more artists to its October 3rd lineup at Merriweather Post Pavilion, expanding an already sold-out event built around collaborative music and civic action.
Black Sabbath bassist Butler, Pearl Jam guitarist McCready and Anthrax guitarist Ian join Stills, Nathaniel Rateliff, State Radio and The Last Internationale in the latest lineup wave. The current festival lineup already includes Foo Fighters, Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Joan Baez, Killer Mike, Serj Tankian and Morello himself, among others.
Bruce Springsteen is billed as a special guest, while Shepard Fairey will DJ in addition to creating the festival’s poster artwork. Jack Black also has an unusual performance with Roman Morello, Revel Ian, Yoyoka Soma and Hugo Weiss.
The seven latest additions were officially announced September 16th, with NME highlighting Butler, Ian and McCready when it covered the expanded lineup September 21st.
Gates open at noon at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, with performances beginning at 1 p.m. across two stages. Morello is building the day around special and collaborative performances while placing metal, punk, hip-hop, alternative rock, folk and politically engaged songwriting inside the same event.
Seven Additions Push the Lineup Even Wider
The latest wave does not simply add more artists from Morello’s corner of heavy rock.
Butler brings one of heavy metal’s foundational bass players and lyricists into the event. Ian connects Anthrax and thrash metal to the bill, while McCready adds Pearl Jam’s lead-guitar language to a festival that already includes his longtime bandmate Matt Cameron.
Stephen Stills reaches considerably further back. His work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young connects the event to an earlier period when folk-rock and protest songwriting frequently occupied the same space.
Nathaniel Rateliff brings another musical lane, while State Radio and The Last Internationale have histories of socially engaged songwriting. The complete group of additions was announced September 16th.
Judged purely by genre, the lineup is deliberately unruly. Metal, thrash, alternative rock, hip-hop, punk, folk and soul all occupy the same poster. The connecting thread is less a shared sound than musicians whose work or public lives have repeatedly intersected with issues outside music.
Butler, Ian and McCready Widen the Musical Possibilities
The three most attention-grabbing additions help explain why individual musicians, rather than only complete bands, matter to Morello’s festival model.
Butler’s bass supplied a huge part of Black Sabbath’s low-end identity while his lyrics helped establish the darkness, anti-war themes and social unease running through the band’s early records. Ian’s tightly controlled rhythm guitar became central to Anthrax’s version of thrash. McCready’s work with Pearl Jam draws heavily from blues and classic hard rock while leaving room for the improvisation that distinguishes the band’s concerts.
Morello developed another guitar vocabulary entirely. Rage Against the Machine built riffs around effects, feedback and unconventional techniques capable of making a guitar resemble turntables or electronic manipulation.
No specific collaboration among Butler, Ian, McCready and Morello has been announced. Power to the People promises collaborative performances without publishing a complete map of who will share the stage.
The individual bookings create possibilities a standard festival schedule would not. McCready and Cameron are both appearing without Pearl Jam being billed. Butler is appearing without Black Sabbath. Ian arrives without Anthrax. Guitar World emphasized that collaborative potential when covering the additions.
Jack Black’s billing makes the idea even more obvious. He is listed with Roman Morello, Revel Ian, drummer Yoyoka Soma and Hugo Weiss. Roman is Tom Morello’s son, while Revel is Scott Ian’s son.
The group has appeared under the Jack Sabbath name, an especially interesting detail now that Butler is on the same festival bill. The official lineup does not, however, promise that Black Sabbath’s bassist will join them.
McCready could likewise share a stage with Cameron, or Springsteen could reconnect musically with Morello. Those are possibilities created by the lineup, not scheduled performances.
Springsteen and Morello Already Share a Live History
Bruce Springsteen’s special-guest status is not simply a prestige name placed near the top of the poster.
Morello has performed extensively with Springsteen and the E Street Band, including a period when he stepped into a larger touring role while Steven Van Zandt was unavailable. Their musical connection also reaches the studio, most notably through versions of “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”
Springsteen helped reveal Power to the People from the stage at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., the night before the formal festival announcement. The original announcement emerged while Morello was touring with Springsteen and identified him as a special guest from the beginning.
That history makes Morello and Springsteen one of the few potential combinations on the bill with years of existing musical language behind it. The festival has not announced what Springsteen will perform October 3rd or whether his appearance will resemble a conventional set.
Other artists connect the day to different traditions of politically engaged music. Joan Baez carries decades of protest-song history, while Public Enemy and Killer Mike represent different generations of political hip-hop. Serj Tankian has similarly made activism part of his work outside System of a Down.
Morello’s Activism Goes Far Beyond Rage
Morello’s attempt to connect live music with political organizing predates Power to the People by decades.
Rage Against the Machine made that connection unavoidable. Morello’s heavily manipulated guitar sat beneath Zack de la Rocha’s confrontational lyrics on songs including “Killing in the Name” and “Bulls on Parade,” music that continued to surface at protests long after its original release.
His political work continued whenever Rage became inactive. The Nightwatchman stripped away much of the volume in favor of acoustic political songwriting, while benefit appearances, union events and collaborations kept activism tied to Morello’s live career.
Power to the People scales that instinct up. Morello is not simply appearing on someone else’s benefit bill; he is curating the musicians while helping connect the concert to organizations receiving financial and on-site support.
In the festival announcement, Morello framed the gathering around ordinary people coming together through music, art, community and action.
The event describes itself as nonpartisan despite its explicit focus on voting, civic participation and social justice. It is not being presented as a campaign rally for a candidate or party.
Freedom Village Moves Activism Off the Stage
The civic component will not be limited to what artists say between songs.
A Freedom Village inside the festival grounds will bring nonprofit organizations, advocacy groups and community partners into direct contact with attendees around civic engagement, grassroots organizing, education and mutual aid.
HeadCount will help attendees register to vote and access election information. VoteRiders, which works around voter-identification barriers, is another beneficiary.
A portion of proceeds from every ticket will go to HeadCount and VoteRiders, while 100% of net VIP ticket proceeds will benefit the organizations, the festival confirms.
That structure moves the event beyond political messaging delivered from a stage. Organizations will be inside the venue, with part of the concert’s ticket revenue connected directly to their work.
Visual art has a role as well. Shepard Fairey created the festival poster and will perform a DJ set during the day. When Fairey unveiled his involvement, he described the event around peace, justice, solidarity, music and community action.
All-Star Concerts Have Long Joined Music and Causes
Morello is working inside a live-music tradition that predates Rage Against the Machine.
The Concert for Bangladesh brought George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and others together in 1971 around humanitarian relief. Live Aid transformed the benefit-concert model into a transatlantic television spectacle in 1985, while Farm Aid became a recurring institution after launching that same year.
The causes and structures differ, but the musical mechanism is recognizable. Artists who would rarely appear on a normal tour together become part of the attraction because the gathering itself is larger than any one set.
Power to the People borrows that collaborative logic while keeping the physical event to one venue and one day.
Merriweather Post Pavilion’s combination of pavilion seating, lawn space and surrounding grounds gives the festival room for two stages alongside Freedom Village. The venue schedule lists gates at noon and performances beginning at 1 p.m.
That format makes short appearances and guest spots practical. Not every musician needs a conventional hour-long festival set for an individual booking to matter, giving Morello room to use the lineup more fluidly.
October 3rd Will Test Morello’s Festival Model
Power to the People now contains several generations of artists who have approached politically conscious music from different directions.
Baez and Stills connect the day to folk and rock’s 1960s protest traditions. Springsteen brings decades of American social storytelling. Public Enemy and Killer Mike put political hip-hop into the same event, while Morello and Tankian represent later heavy-rock traditions where activism became part of the artists’ public identities.
Butler, Ian and McCready deepen the musical side of that equation. Their additions make the event heavier while giving Morello individual instrumentalists whose appearances do not depend on their primary bands being present.
The festival does not require every artist to share the same politics or approach every issue from the same direction. Its official language remains deliberately broad: peace, love, justice, music and community action.
Tickets are already gone. Merriweather Post Pavilion’s event page now points fans toward a face-value exchange rather than a standard primary sale.
The sold-out status means Morello has already established that an audience exists for a one-day event where major rock, metal, folk and hip-hop figures share space under an explicitly civic theme.
The harder question cannot be answered by the poster.
On October 3rd, the test will be whether the collaborations onstage and the organizing inside Freedom Village can make Power to the People feel like one gathering rather than several unrelated concerts sharing a lineup.