“I was a skateboarder with long hair down to my shoulder and one jock got in my face, told me to cut my hair, and yelled a derogatory slur for a gay person at me so the whole hallway heard it. And he was a bigger dude than me.
The ironic part was, a year or two later, the same kid grew his hair long and got into bands – I was like, ‘Fuck you!’ When Rise Against got big, I became cool to him.
Adults in my life were very dismissive about what I was doing with my life until I was successful and then it was all, ‘Good for you! I respect you now because you can buy a house!’ That’s so wrong; I was like, ‘You should have respected me then, and you should respect the person doing this who isn’t successful at it.’”
(From Tim’s interview with Kerrang!)
Source: Kerrang! (full interview here: https://www.kerrang.com/features/rise-against-tim-mcilraths-track-by-track-guide-to-nowhere-generation/)
Tim McIlrath photo: Jonathan Weiner