Naked protests and dropping f---ing f-bombs on Christmas radio — let’s
get unfiltered about Zack de la Rocha.
Plenty of artists' creative and philosophical
leanings appear to come out of nowhere, but Zack De La Rocha doesn't come from a family
of fishermen or tax auditors. The roots of his music run strong in his family,
and he's spoken at length about his parentage. De La Rocha's father was an influential artist,
and his great-grandfather fought in the Mexican Revolution of the early twentieth century.
According to Hyperallergic, Robert "Beto" De La Rocha,
Zack's father, was a member of the legendary Los Angeles art collective Los Four, whose 1974
exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art ignited that decade's Chicano art movement.
In a 1998 interview with journalist Jesus Ramirez Cuevas, Zack
explained his family tree's influence on his worldview and his art, saying
"My father is a Chicano muralist [...] His attempts at trying to build bridges
between the artists in Los Angeles, the workers, and Chicanos against Vietnam,
led me politically towards the National Liberation movements."
He elaborated that his grandfather worked in agriculture in Silicon Valley.
De La Rocha explained that the hard labor and poverty his grandfather was subject to
reminded him of the challenges the indgienous rebel group, the Zapatistas, face every day.
In an interview, Zack De La Rocha spoke at length about the Zapatistas, whose movement has inspired
him personally and politically. According to the Australian Institute of International Affairs,
the Zapatista Army of National Liberation originated in the region of Chiapas,
where the indigenous population has long struggled for independence from the Mexican
government. The Zapatistas believe the Mexican government to be illegitimate,
and fought a brief but intense revolutionary war against it in 1994.
De La Rocha has made multiple trips to the region, and he described his harrowing experiences. He
observed how the government violently controlled its people to prevent them from organizing.
Soldiers destroyed crops and pulled children from classrooms in order to keep citizens
from uniting against them. The events De La Rocha witnessed would inspire the song "Wind
Below" and "Without a Face" off the Rage Against The Machine album, Evil Empire.
"That after so much poverty, the time has come to harvest rebellion, instead of death."
While his trips to Chiapas
certainly sharpened his view of government abuses in the United States,
Zack De La Rocha's decidedly left-leaning politics were formed much earlier. In an
interview with veteran music journalist Rob Tannenbaum, he described his experiences after
his mixed-race family relocated from East L.A. to the predominantly white Orange County city
of Irvine. He referred to the city as, quote, "[o]ne of the most racist cities imaginable."
As one of the few non-white kids in his high school, De La Rocha remembered having intense
feelings of alienation, which were only compounded one day at school when a teacher
referred to California's border checkpoint using a racial slur. While the comment stunned De La
Rocha into silence at the moment, that teacher's ignorance might be directly responsible for the
creation of Rage Against the Machine. Referring to the experience, De La Rocha explained,
"I remember being very silent and feeling as if I could do nothing to raise my voice.
At that point, I decided that when I started a band, I would never be silent again."
To the benefit of generations of music fans, he stuck to that oath.
To say that Zack De La Rocha's
voice is among the most distinctive in all of rock would be a wild understatement.
Employing whispers, screams, and ear-shattering bellows as each song
calls for them, it's surprising how little De La Rocha's voice has changed over the years.
However, even the most die-hard Rage-head could be forgiven for underestimating the
frontman's talent. It turns out that in addition to his dynamic vocal range,
De La Rocha can also play a variety of instruments.
De La Rocha played in plenty of bands both before Rage Against The Machine,
and during the band's hiatus. In pretty much every one of these projects,
he contributed something other than vocals. Rest Assured reports that, in his teens,
De La Rocha played guitar in the hardcore band Hard Stance. According to Music Times,
he also sat in on drums for another hardcore outfit by the name of No For An Answer.
In 2008, De La Rocha formed the supergroup One Day As a Lion alongside the Mars Volta
and Queens of the Stone Age drummer Jon Theodore. In addition to providing vocals,
De La Rocha also tracked the keyboards on the band's sole EP release. Due to the absence of a
guitarist or bassist in the band, those keys were tasked with filling up a whole lot of sonic space,
but it should come as no surprise that De La Rocha had no trouble with that.
The older fans of Rage Against the Machine
probably remember one of the most confounding and controversial moments of the band's early
history occurred at Lollapalooza in 1993. The band was slotted for a brief 15-minute set, but
Zach De La Rocha's voice was completely blown out from a show in Rhode Island the previous night.
Faced with either canceling the gig or finding a replacement singer on short notice,
the band went with an unlikely third option. The performance was scheduled during the time
when the government body known as the PMRC, or Parents' Music Resource Center, was cracking
down on explicit lyrics and graphic album covers as part of their ongoing war on music.
"Some of the album covers are very explicit. In fact, they look like they should be in Playboy
or Penthouse, some of them. And they're in the record bins available to young children."
Rage was unsurprisingly not in favor of their activities, and since De La Rocha couldn't
voice his displeasure, the band decided to demonstrate it visually by taking the stage
stark naked with their mouths duct taped and the letters "PMRC" painted on their chests.
Guitarist Tom Morello told the press after the fact that the demonstration was meant to
raise appreciation for the listener's right to hear music that goes against the grain.
"We didn't even play. It was like a fifteen-minute feedback
protest of nudity. Ya know, and then we left the stage.
Considering the amount
of anger that goes into their music, fans might not be surprised that the
relationships between the members of Rage weren't always harmonious.
In 2000, the band was pretty much on top of the world, having released three brilliant
and well-received albums. However, behind the scenes, there was some head-butting going on.
According to Louder Sound, the band's well-known internal tensions came to a head on September
12, 2000, after they performed at the MTV Video Music Awards.
In an interview with Loudwire in 2015, bassist Tim Commerford remembered taking
issue with the fact that Rage's music video for "Sleep Now In the Fire" looked poised
to lose the Best Metal Video award to "Break Stuff" by Limp Bizkit.
Commerford even referred to the band as "the dumbest band in the history of music."
Despite that assessment, Limp Bizkit won the award. Their victory prompted
Commerford to climb up on a towering stage decoration behind Fred Durst
as he and his crew accepted the award. Commerford began shaking the structure,
which caused Zack De La Rocha to walk out of the ceremony. Less than two months later,
he announced his intention to leave Rage, saying the band was no longer making decisions as a unit.
Although Rage helped pave the way
for a number of rap-rock bands to emerge from the '90s, few would argue that Limp
Bizkit and their ilk have little in common with them musically or philosophically.
Part of the reason behind this degree of separation is that
De La Rocha has always been a rapper at heart,
as evidenced by the many collaborations with hardcore MCs he's performed over the years.
"It had to start somewhere.
It had to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?"
As one might guess, De La Rocha didn't go seeking out Will Smith or Young MC
for his rap collabs. In 1999, he hooked up with Philadelphia rapper Last Emperor,
along with legendary MC and fellow political firebrand KRS-One, for the single "C.I.A.
(Criminals In Action)," a track protesting the shadiest of American intelligence organizations.
He went on to contribute verses to deep cuts by revered Oakland
crew Blackalicious and supergroup Deltron 3030,
and in recent years, he's found a creative kinship with the acclaimed duo Run the Jewels.
Zack has appeared on no fewer than three tracks with the group: 2014's "Close Your
Eyes (And Count to F---)," 2016's "A Report to the Shareholders/KillYour Masters,"
and 2020's "Ju$t." It turns out, the artists collaborate so frequently
because De La Rocha's has been friends with Run The Jewels MC El-P for over two decades.
In 2016, Zack De La Rocha dropped
a solo track, "Digging for Windows," featuring El-P's unmistakable production. At that time,
according to Pitchfork, El-P took to Twitter to promise that there were more tracks to come.
Unfortunately, De La Rocha made a fibber out of him. For the next couple of years,
the expected solo album stubbornly failed to appear. In 2019, El-P confirmed
that the project had been permanently shelved on the People's Party podcast.
During the podcast, El-P surprised the audience by saying that Zack went to
live with him in Brooklyn shortly after Rage Against The Machine broke up. The
producer went on to explain that De La Rocha had hoped to make a solo record.
"I was making beats in my bedroom. I was like 'Oh, ya know.'"
"But it sounds like that's what he came for."
"Maybe, but — but he didn't leave with much music."
The situation may not have been conducive to creating magic,
but it was the beginning of a decades-long friendship.
Later in the interview, El-P explained that he was extremely grateful that De La Rocha
chose to collaborate with him at such a key point in his career, and explained that he
considers the vocalist a good friend and one of the most down to earth artists out there.
The Grammy Awards have a history of
failing to honor politically-oriented music, but Rage has proven impossible for them to ignore.
The band has been nominated a whopping seven times, according to the Grammys' official website,
and they have taken home two statues: Best Metal Performance for "Tire Me" in 1997,
and Best Hard Rock Performance for "Guerrilla Radio" in 2001.
For Zack De La Rocha's part, he has remained silent on the two wins, preferring as he often
does, to let Tom Morello do the talking. On the 25th anniversary of the release of Evil Empire,
Morello took to Instagram and spoke about the band's approach to making
music. Morello posted a picture of a cheap-looking guitar and amplifier,
and explained that they were used to record the guitar part for "Tire Me." He elaborated,
"The guitar, which I'm not even sure is made out of wood
(plywood?) cost 40 Canadian dollars at a Toronto pawn shop and the amp is a 20
watt solid state practice amp I had in my apartment. The song won our first Grammy."
If there is one name besides Zack
De La Rocha's that is sure to have right-wing, ultra-capitalist types shaking in their boots,
it is Noam Chomsky. The author of a metric ton of books critical of far-right ideology,
capitalism, and the media, Chomsky has spent decades earning his reputation as
one of the most intelligent and progressive men alive.
Needless to say, his works have been an influence on De La Rocha's worldview,
and in 1999, the rocker got the chance to interview his hero.
As one might expect, the pair's political views lined up quite nicely,
and in spite of their titanic differences in age and background, they became good friends,
according to Far Out. De La Rocha led off the conversation by acknowledging Chomsky's acolytes.
"Noam Chomsky is the most quoted intellectual alive today.
His books have helped me understand the nature of globalization."
At Coachella in 2007, De La Rocha paraphrased one of Chomsky's more controversial views,
observing that if the United States Presidents of the last 8 decades were held to the same legal
prosecution as Nazis post World War II, they would be tried and executed as war criminals.
Whether they agree with the sentiment or not,
no one could ever criticize De La Rocha or Chomsky for laying their beliefs out loud and clear.
The Christmas Number One is a
time-honored U.K. tradition in which popular tunes jockey for the top position on the U.K.
singles chart, as the Yuletide season has long been a peak time for record sales there.
In 2009, BBC Radio staged a contest between Rage Against the Machine's classic "Killing In the
Name" and The X Factor winner Joe McElderry's "The Climb" to see whose song could achieve the feat.
Rage was invited to perform "Killing In The Name" live in the studio,
on the condition that the band substitute replacement lyrics for the many f-bombs
included throughout the song. Rage agreed, but proceeded to perform the song exactly as written,
annoying British censors and shattering monocles across the land.
As it turns out, Zack De La Rocha and the boys aren't big on censorship,
whether it's self-imposed or otherwise. Perhaps BBC should have expected such
behavior for a song that repeats the line "I won't do what you tell me" over and over.
British music fans, however, did not seem put off by the performance at all.
According to a 2021 poll by Genesis Publications,
"Killing In the Name" was selected as the favorite Christmas Number One of all time.
After three decades and counting, it sure seems like Zack De La Rocha intends to keep
rocking fans' faces off and raging against the machine until the music gods call him home.
He's so committed to his craft that even injury won't prevent
him from rocking and raging — even when that injury occurs right in the middle of a show.
According to Yahoo! News, at the second stop on Rage's 2022 reunion tour, the rapper injured his
leg during the fourth song of the set. A lesser performer might have ended the angry fun right
then and there, but not De La Rocha. Frustrated but undeterred, he hauled out a chair, took a
seat, and proclaimed that he had no intention of ending the performance for any reason.
He then proceeded to go full throttle as Tom Morello helpfully took center stage,
and Rage finished their set with their openers,
Run the Jewels, cheering them on along with the rest of Chicago.