It's not surprising Rage Against the Machine, with their politically charged music, would
encounter strife and challenges during their career.
In fact, the struggles of the band members had a heavy hand in shaping their ideals.
This is the tragic real-life story of Rage Against the Machine.
Zack de la Rocha was born on January 12, 1970, in Long Beach, California.
His father, Roberto "Beto" de la Rocha, was a muralist whose politically charged Chicano
artworks with Los Four introduced the radical art style to the area.
According to the L.A. Times, the elder de la Rocha was part of a landmark Chicano art
exhibition in the mid-'70s, but shortly afterward, he destroyed all his paintings and retreated
from the art world for 20 years.
The powerful messaging of these works was an early influence on Zack, one which would
later be reflected in the socially aware and righteously angry music he'd write with Rage
Against the Machine.
De la Rocha's parents divorced when he was still a baby, and he was raised by his mother
in the city of Irvine in Orange County.
There, in an overwhelmingly white area, Zack experienced racism and bullying for his Mexican
heritage.
One particular incident in high school, during which a teacher casually used an anti-Latino
racial slur to de la Rocha's classmates' amusement, reinforced for him the insidious nature of
racism, as noted in Rage Against the Machine: Stage Fighters.
According to Joel McIver's book, Know Your Enemy, de la Rocha called Irvine, quote, "one
of the most racist cities imaginable."
Born in 1964 to a Kenyan revolutionary father and a white American activist mother, Tom
Morello is known the world over as one of the great modern American rock guitarists.
But it took a difficult upbringing to get him there.
Like Zack de la Rocha, Morello's parents divorced when he was just one year old.
Also like de la Rocha, Morello experienced racism and bullying, in his case living in
a 99.9-percent white town with his mother.
According to Know Your Enemy, Mary Morello continued to devote herself to anti-racist
and social justice causes, even as hostility toward her mixed-race family made it difficult
for them to find housing.
Both mother and son were harassed, with Mary sometimes finding objects related to the Ku
Klux Klan in her office.
One time, she also found a noose hung in their garage.
Growing up, Morello was influenced as much by his personal experiences with racism as
by the radical political ideas first introduced by his parents.
The Black Panther Party was a regular topic of discussion during Morello's childhood,
and he was drawn to the writings of its founders, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.
"None, none of my heroes ever appear on the ballot."
Unsurprisingly, music also heavily influenced his worldview, particularly bands like The
Clash, who were using high-octane punk music to deliver criticism of U.S. foreign policy,
economic injustice, and other radical messages that would later appear in Morello's music
as well.
Bassist and backup vocalist Tim Commerford was born in Irvine, California, in 1968.
His father was an aerospace engineer, and his mother was a teacher and mathematician.
In an early, devastating blow, Commerford's mother was diagnosed with brain cancer when
he was just seven years old.
By the time Commerford was in third grade, his mother could no longer help with or even
understand his homework.
She left to get treatment and stay with her sister in Sacramento, while Commerford's father
remarried.
Commerford had a difficult relationship with his family, particularly his father.
He sometimes lashed out at or bullied other children, as noted in McIver's Know Your Enemy.
Thankfully, he developed a friendship with Zack de la Rocha in high school.
It was Zack who introduced Tim to the bass guitar and inspired him to find healthier
outlets in poetry and music.
Even though his upbringing was marked with serious challenges, Morello excelled in school
and was the first student from his high school to attend Harvard.
After graduating in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts in social studies, he moved to Los Angeles,
where even a history of hardship and a degree from an Ivy League school couldn't guarantee
him work.
With music already a driving goal of Morello's, he searched for daytime and part-time gigs
that could support him without getting in the way of his music.
In addition to odd jobs and menial labor, Morello took up exotic dancing to pay the
bills.
From there, he went to work for California senator Alan Cranston, an experience which
furthered his disillusionment with the American political process.
Right from the start, Rage Against the Machine wrote music that was loudly and fiercely opposed
to American systems of power.
Politically charged songs like "Bulls on Parade" and "Killing in the Name" were launched onto
the charts and into radio, controversial messaging and all.
Still, all the popularity in the world couldn't stop Rage Against the Machine from being censored
regularly.
One of the most infamous early examples of this was their first, and only, performance
on Saturday Night Live in April 1996.
According to Rolling Stone, the band's two-song performance was cut down to one after they
attempted to hang upside-down American flags on the amps during the set.
With billionaire and then-Republican primary candidate Steve Forbes hosting the show that
night, Rage saw the perfect opportunity to voice their opposition.
Instead, they were essentially chased from the studio and banned from performing on Saturday
Night Live ever again.
As with their history of censorship, Rage Against the Machine has a long and storied
tradition of having their shows disrupted or shut down by police.
According to The Seattle Times, Sheriff Bill Wiester attempted, and ultimately failed,
to block the band from performing a concert at Washington State's famous outdoor venue
The Gorge, claiming that Rage's presence would lead to disorderly behavior.
Furthermore, a performance and demonstration at the 2000 Democratic National Convention
led to a crowd of about 8,000 getting chased out and beaten with batons by mounted police
and fired on with rubber bullets.
At least six people were arrested, an action which was condemned by the American Civil
Liberties Union.
"You have 15 minutes to disperse."
Perhaps most notable was the New York Stock Exchange incident.
According to Rage Against the Machine, the band was in front of the building, filming
a music video for "Sleep Now in the Fire," helmed by documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.
Police eventually arrived and ordered the makeshift concert shut down, detaining and
removing Moore.
Rage Against the Machine, along with members of the crowd, attempted to enter the building,
and in an incredibly rare occurrence, the NYSE's security doors slammed shut, with the
entire exchange closed an hour early.
By 2000, the pressure on Rage Against the Machine was building to a breaking point.
Between pleasing their hungry fans, making their music industry handlers happy, and avoiding
police violence and national censorship here and there, it's a wonder that the band didn't
break up earlier.
In October 2000, Zack de la Rocha announced that he was leaving the band.
According to E! Online, de la Rocha felt the band's decision-making process wasn't working
and was undermining their, quote, "artistic and political ideal."
But the decision was very difficult, and it took a heavy toll on de la Rocha.
The rest of Rage Against the Machine, meanwhile, wasn't interested in breaking up.
Commerford, drummer Brad Wilk, and Morello issued a statement following the one from
de la Rocha, saying that they were committed to writing groundbreaking music that would
inspire political and social change.
In their search for a new lead singer, the band found Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and
formed Audioslave in 2001.
That band, too, would reach critical and commercial success, although their music was notably
not political.
Audioslave released three albums before breaking up in 2007.
Shortly after a reunion in 2017, Cornell took his own life.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
After leaving Rage Against the Machine, Zack de la Rocha continued to be a prolific songwriter
and collaborator.
He formed a short-lived duo called One Day As a Lion with Jon Theodore of The Mars Volta,
appeared in Run the Jewels songs, and worked on solo music.
Some of de la Rocha's unreleased material from these collaborations is the stuff of
legend.
According to MTV, there are almost two whole albums' worth of music from an early 2000s
partnership between de la Rocha and Trent Reznor that has yet to see the light of day.
De la Rocha was creatively restless and frequently unsatisfied, often remaining elusive for long
stretches of time following his departure from Rage Against the Machine.
De la Rocha would go on to reunite with his Rage Against the Machine bandmates at Coachella
in 2007 and played around 50 shows with them over the next four years.
However, he continued to go his own way.
De la Rocha was strangely absent during the highly charged 2016 election year, even as
his former bandmates got together to form Prophets of Rage with members of Public Enemy
and Cypress Hill.
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, broadcasting company Clear Channel
released a memo with a long list of music that was considered, quote, "lyrically questionable"
for the radio.
Included on the list were every one of Rage Against the Machine's songs.
In 2007, RATM shook the music world with their first reunion performance at Coachella.
According to MTV, Zack de la Rocha wasn't vocal between songs, until it came time to
discuss the Bush administration.
In a passionate aside during the song "Wake Up," the singer proclaimed:
"Our current administration needs to be tried, hung, and shot.
We need to treat them like the war criminals they are."
This, of course led to backlash, with some claiming that the band wanted the president
assassinated.
From de la Rocha's perspective, this wasn't true.
He differentiated between being tried for war crimes and being assassinated, but considering
his and his band's history of bold and controversial statements in direct opposition to the country's
systems of power, it's no surprise that nuance was missed.
If conservatives were hoping the 2007 Coachella outrage would keep Rage Against the Machine
off the airwaves, they were sorely mistaken.
In fact, although that performance was intended to be a one-off, the band went in the opposite
direction.
In 2008, they performed huge concerts coinciding with both the Republican and Democratic National
Conventions.
Rage's massive show in Minneapolis during the RNC was flanked with police in full riot
gear.
The band took the stage in Guantanamo Bay-esque orange jumpsuits and black hoods.
Accounts vary, but between 70 and 100 people were arrested after the performance when fighting
broke out between the police and the crowd.
Additionally, the band's twin performance during the Democratic National Convention
in Denver that year was no less controversial.
This time, the show was followed by an anti-war protest led by about 50 veterans of the Iraq
war.
Marchers said they wanted to hold Barack Obama to his promise of ending the war.
After they finished playing, Rage led more than 4,000 audience members behind the vets
on a four-mile march to the convention, leading to a tense five-hour standoff with the police.
Rage Against the Machine were set to reunite once again and headline 2020's Coachella festival.
As the coronavirus pandemic began to rapidly worsen, the spring event was postponed to
October, according to Billboard.
It was then cancelled outright.
Rage Against the Machine's own planned reunion tour was also canceled in the wake of the
pandemic, which, in many ways, is a tragedy in itself.
Critics have always sneered at Rage's ongoing struggle to use music to institute real social
change.
But the band never stopped backing up their ideals and their artwork with real-world action,
no matter what tragedies and challenges they were thrown against.
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