Amazon Music Book Club: Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath on George Orwell & Dystopian Literature

Reading has a formative effect on a person, inspiring how they see the world and understand their place within it. This seems even more pronounced for artists, who take pieces of everything they experience with them into their own creations. With that in mind, we want to know how reading and literature influence your favorite musicians and the songs they’ve written.

Rise Against’s music has always had a political and social awareness, grappling with current topics that affect the state of our country. Tim McIlrath comes to these topics through reading and is often inspired by both fiction and non-fiction books that deal with power and politics. The punk rock band’s new album, The Black Market, is no different and specifically takes an influence from a few recent tomes McIlrath has read. We spoke with the singer about his love for dystopic literature, what people can read to become more informed and Rise Against’s literary spirit animal. —Emily Zemler

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What sorts of books were your entry point into reading?

I first connected with sci-fi books, like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and I got really into that dystopian world. Books that were more a comment on society than they were just fiction. Those were the first books that felt like light bulbs were going off.

What’s the most memorable reading experience from your childhood?

Reading Fahrenheit 451. That was one of those books where you’re reading it casually and then at some point you realize it’s talking about the world we live in, the world we might one day live in. That’s when the book became political to me. The author had a message and was trying to really say something.

What kinds of books are you drawn to now?

I do come back to that same kind of book. I read a lot of non-fiction, stuff about current events and socio-political stuff. My wife recently accused me of only reading non-fiction so I’m trying to get back into fiction. I just picked up Margaret Atwood’s book Oryx And Crake. She has this MaddAddam trilogy, which is like this generation’s 1984. I was so into 1984 and Brave New World. Those books were really important to me and I think this is the contemporary version of that. It’s still these post-apocalyptic, dystopian novels.

Why do you think we’re so obsessed with the idea of dystopia?

As civilization is devolving and evolving, I think there are literary references we can see happening in society. Think about 1984’s Big Brother and the overreach of the NSA in America in 2014 – you find that these authors predicted the slippery slopes of what too much power can do. Just like there are some ideas that only music can distill and translate, there are some ideas that can only come across through writing. So far people like George Orwell are being proven right every year. Russia recently announced they want to take the country off the Internet and have their own private Internet. That’s Big Brother right there. All of sudden you find that the blueprint for this madness has already been drawn. It’s scary how accurate these books are.

What are you currently reading?

Margaret Atwood. And then Green Is The New Red by Will Potter, which is a book about modern day activism and how the government would love to redefine activism as terrorism as a way to combat their political enemies. Similar to the way McCarthyism tried to redefine any dissent as communism. It’s interesting and it’s still bubbling beneath the surface. I don’t think people are very aware of it yet and the implications are pretty scary when you can call anybody a terrorist.

Do the things you read ever make their way into your songwriting?

All the time. In fact, I wrote a song specifically inspired by Green Is The New Red. It’s called “The Eco-Terrorist In Me” on our new album. It’s taking back the word eco-terrorist and owning it. That’s the most recent example. It’s funny because somebody once heard our song “Prayer of the Refugee” and thought it was about The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I wrote the song before The Road was out, but when I read the book it was really trippy how similar the song was to the book. It does totally sound like I wrote the song about The Road. The classics I was talking about before, like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984, also influence my writing and always make their way into my lyrics in some way, although not as explicitly.

What book have you re-read the most times in your life?

Probably A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn. It’s like the way people look at the Bible, where you carry it around but you don’t look at it all at once. People’s History is that book I always have with me. You can open it to any page and learn something new about history. Now it’s a lot easier to carry it around with my Kindle.

If someone wants to become more informed about the political and social issues in our country right now, what books would you suggest they pick up?

The most recent and important contemporary political books I’ve read include Drift by Rachel Maddow. It’s all about the militarization of America and how we’re drifting away from our original ideas of what the military should be. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein was an eye-opener for me. It came out a few years ago and I think it’s still really relevant. It’s all about disaster capitalism. And Green Is The New Red. Those are the books I would suggest.

What book would you recommend to any fans of your music?

I always come back to George Orwell and 1984. That’s the literary equivalent of the band.

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