Audioslave Guitarist Arrested at Protest

LOS ANGELES -- Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello was arrested during a protest for hotel worker rights last week in Los Angeles.

According to Morello's social activism Web site Axis of Justice, he was one of about 400 protesters arrested during a march last Thursday to raise awareness for immigrant hotel workers' rights.

He was charged with unlawful assembly for refusing to move from the main entry road into Los Angeles International Airport.

Morello, 42, spent the evening in lockup and was released Friday morning. "Bail was high," he said each arrestee had to pay $5,000. But, he added, "spirits were higher. We had a rousing civil rights-era-like hootenanny on 'the inside.' "

In 2005, Audioslave played a free show in Cuba. It was the first American rock group to perform in that country in 26 years.

Morello's former band, politicos Rage Against the Machine, always discussed doing that concert, he said.

"There were many roadblocks to keep Rage from playing Cuba, and some of them were generated by government bureaucracy, and some were generated by internal band conflict," Morello said in 2005, shortly after the trip.

"Revelations," the band's latest album, was released last month