A rock 'n' roll Christmas surprise. Shutting down the financial capital of the world. A series of
surprisingly specific backstage requests. One of the most politically minded bands of all time,
Rage Against the Machine have been living out their principles their entire career.
Before his most famous band came to be, Zack de la Rocha was part of a
Southern California-based group named Inside Out. They released just one EP,
and by the time it hit stores in the early 90s, they'd already split up.
Plans for a follow up called "Rage Against the Machine" fell apart, but de la Rocha liked the
title of the nonexistent record enough to use it as the name of his next band.
Around the same time, another local band called Lock Up also split. That group's drummer,
Jon Knox, was days away from moving to Nashville to pursue a career in Christian music. He thought
his friend, bassist Tim Commerford, should connect with Lock Up guitarist Tom Morello,
and he also suggested that de la Rocha should meet up with them. Then there was drummer Brad Wilk,
whom Knox had beaten out for the gig in Lock Up. Wilk had just flunked his
tryout to be Pearl Jam's new drummer, but then he got the job in Rage instead.
But before the final lineup came together,
the band nearly counted another noteworthy member among its ranks. Maynard James Keenan,
better known as the chief creative force behind the metal bands Tool and A Perfect Circle,
played with an early version of Rage. Keenan thinks it didn't work out because he was at a
quirkier place with his art than they were at. As he put it to Rolling Stone in 2016,
"They were looking for a more serious approach, so I think that was pretty much
immediate. If there was a consideration for that at all, it was very brief."
The first single Rage Against the Machine ever released was the caustic anti-establishment,
anti-police screed "Killing in the Name." Emerging in 1992 off the band's self-titled debut album,
it didn't chart in the U.S., though it did make it to a respectable number 25 in the U.K.
But more than a decade later, it would become one of the most unlikely chart-toppers in history.
Scoring the No. 1 hit in the U.K. the week of Christmas is a big deal. Prominent artists and
labels lobby to get their songs to the top, and it's often a sentimental tune or a holiday song.
But one year, Jon Morter, a DJ from Essex, thought it would be a fun prank to get a song
diametrically opposed to a schmaltzy pop ballad to the top of the charts.
So in 2009, he launched a campaign promoting "Killing in the Name." The idea went viral,
and thanks to the support of folks like Paul McCartney and comedian Peter Serafinowicz,
"Killing in the Name" indeed ended up at number one on the U.K. pop chart on Christmas Day.
"It's a real liberating musical revolution that people are on,
and again, we're really just honored to be a part of it."
Rage Against the Machine's music can certainly be characterized as protest rock,
as the band calls out injustice, inequality, and inhumanity as
they see it. That hasn't stopped them from injecting plenty of levity into their songs,
but their philosophy is unmistakable in their boldly and viciously funny protests.
For example, at a 1993 Lollapalooza stop in Philadelphia, Rage stood up to former Second Lady
Tipper Gore's Parents' Music Resource Council, the music industry watchdog group that drafted
the "Parental Advisory Explicit Content" album sticker. The band didn't play a single note,
instead spending their entire allotted stage time standing on the stage completely nude,
with each letter of "PMRC" painted on a different group member's chest.
In 1999, Rage released the single "Guerrilla Radio," which calls out corporate puppetry of the
American government. Meanwhile, the song's video parodies Gap commercials of the era, depicting the
band on a plain white stage, intercut with images of garment workers in sweatshop-like conditions.
Also in 1999, there were 300 police officers protesting a Rage Against the Machine show
outside Boston because of the band's work to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, an activist convicted of killing
a law enforcement official. So in response, Morello delivered donuts to the officers.
"Mmm. Donuts."
In addition to participating in wholesome protests with his bandmates,
Tim Commerford isn't afraid of breaking out on his own to express his profound
displeasure over injustices big and small. For example, during the Woodstock '99 festival, he
delivered quite the memorable stunt during Rage's performance of "Killing in the Name." As Zack de
la Rocha repeated the bridge at an increasing volume and incited the crowd to sing along,
Commerford got busy. He wandered over to some amps, and when he found an American
flag adorning some equipment, he lit it on fire, igniting a towering blaze.
A little over a year later, Rage attended the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, as they
were nominated for Best Rock Video for "Sleep Now in the Fire." They lost to Limp Bizkit's
"Break Stuff," so Commerford registered his disappointment by climbing the scaffolding
on the stage during the acceptance speech. Police arrested him afterward.
Rage Against the Machine's art is music that delivers the message that there are
some very bad things going on in the world, and those responsible won't get away with
it. For that message to get across, a certain anger-fueled intensity is a requirement. Zach
de la Rocha's vitriolic lyrics and Tom Morello's metallic guitar sound hammer that point home,
particularly at their live shows, which were often more demonstrations than rock 'n' roll concerts.
Early on in their time together, the band realized that their recordings
lacked a certain something. As Morello explained to Spin in 2012,
"From the very first shows, the music always felt alive and powerful. We went into the
studio to record, we were having a very difficult time capturing that.
The way we turned the corner was one night we invited a bunch of
friends into the studio and basically just played the set. So it was like a show."
About half of Rage's debut album was recorded live,
a rather unorthodox production style, but clearly, it worked out for them.
In April 1996, Rage Against the Machine released their second album, Evil Empire,
the title coming from former President Ronald Reagan's nickname for the Soviet Union.
As part of the promotional push, they were booked to perform as the musical
guest on the April 13 episode of Saturday Night Live. The episode was hosted by a
man with his own Republican presidential ambitions: businessman and publisher Steve
Forbes. Thus, a political statement from the left-leaning band was pretty much inevitable.
"Rage Against the Machine is here!"
And so, Rage's crew hung upside-down American flags on stage prior to their performance.
But then SNL stagehands ripped the flags down mere seconds before the
band tore into "Bulls on Parade." As Tom Morello later recalled,
"As soon as we’re offstage, the show’s producer, Marci Klein … informs our
tour manager that there will be no second song. No cozy wave goodnight at the end,
no hugging Steve Forbes. It’s just, 'Get out of the building right now.'"
To direct the video for "Sleep Now in the Fire," a single off of their 1999
album The Battle of Los Angeles, Rage Against the Machine hired documentary
filmmaker Michael Moore. The band and the director reportedly conspired to
film without permits or permission on the street facing the New York Stock Exchange,
a working symbol of the American corporate economy. As Moore put it in an interview with MTV,
"We decided to shoot this video in the belly of the beast."
Rage managed to play through the song six times with cameras rolling before
police arrived to shut it down. As Moore recalled,
"They ordered the makeshift concert to cease, but before we had a chance to stop,
four officers jumped me and put me in one of those police locks."
The crowd of 200 that had amassed to watch and support the performance retaliated by breaking
through the police-erected barricades and right into the anterooms of the Exchange,
with members of the band leading the charge. They were unable to get onto the trading floor,
but they still managed to send the Exchange into lockdown mode,
with steel gates preventing anyone from getting in. The makeshift-concert-turned-protest
also prematurely shut down commodities trading that day for about a couple of hours.
"That band is anti-family, and it's pro-terrorist."
The fourth and final Rage Against the Machine studio album was 2000's Renegades,
a collection of cover songs by artists that had inspired Rage. The track
list includes MC5's "Kick Out the Jams", Cypress Hill's "How I Could Just Kill a Man",
and Bruce Springsteen's "The Ghost of Tom Joad." But then Zack de la Rocha left the band,
telling Tom Morello of his decision at the same time he issued a press release informing the rest
of the world. He'd actually been planning to take a hiatus from the band for as long as two years,
but then he decided his departure would be permanent. According to both de la Rocha
and Morello, creative differences had simply boiled over. As de la Rocha put it at the time,
"It's not unique among rock bands to find the occasional dissension."
Meanwhile, Morello admitted,
"There's been a constant tension that's been an enormous challenge for us all over the years."
"Rock bands are rock bands. You know what I mean?"
So Morello, Tim Commerford, and Brad Wilk quickly reconvened as a less-political,
more radio-friendly hard rock band called Audioslave, recruiting Soundgarden belter
Chris Cornell to be their new frontman. The group sold millions of copies of its three
albums before splitting up, only for the three non-Cornell members to create another project,
Prophets of Rage. This was named after a song by politically-minded rap collective Public Enemy,
as they brought in that group's Chuck D into the fold, along with B-Real of Cypress Hill.
Rage Against the Machine is adamant and outspoken about its support for the overlooked,
the exploited, and those victimized by governments and the greedy. Nevertheless,
they're also all millionaire rock stars, and as such they could request
as many creature comforts as they wanted when embarking on their tours. With that in mind,
it's worth noting that their rider, an itemized list of needs and demands a concert promoter
must fulfill for a band, had a reputation for being extensive and extremely specific.
The rider for one of the band's 2008 shows was obtained by The Smoking Gun.
The contractually must-have items included six pairs of tube socks, six pairs of boxer shorts,
72 bottles of premium Fiji water, a case of Smartwater, 36 bottles of assorted beer,
24 cans of sugary soft drinks, 12 cans of diet drinks, 24 bottles of iced tea,
two bottles of top-shelf champagne, almond milk, honey, a "continuous supply of hot water,"
chips and salsa, and plenty of sandwich-making supplies. That doesn't even include the
freshly-prepared lunch to serve 40 and a hot dinner for 50 people, including dessert!
Zack de la Rocha's break from Rage Against the Machine eventually turned out not to be
forever after all, as the band's core four have reunited on occasion. In August 2008,
for example, there was a Rage concert in Denver, site of that year's Democratic
National Convention. It kicked off a 4,000-person strong anti-Iraq War protest and four-mile march
that led to Barack Obama agreeing to a meeting with leaders of Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Then less than two weeks later, the band played at the Target Center in Minneapolis while the
Republican National Convention was in town. All four musicians took the stage in prisoner
jumpsuits like the ones worn by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention center,
along with black hoods covering their heads. Near the end of the set,
de la Rocha implored the 13,000 people in attendance to, quote:
"Interrupt and disrupt the destruction that this party has brought to the world."
Then in 2020, Rage was supposed to embark on a world tour. But that's been delayed,
owing to COVID-19-related shutdowns and cancellations.
They finally managed to hit the road in 2022, with more dates upcoming through 2023.
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