Rage Against the Machine (a.k.a. Rage or RATM) is a Grammy Award-winning American rock band, noted for their blend of hip hop, hard rock, punk and funk as well as their explicit revolutionary socialist philosophy and lyrics. Throughout their 9 year run, they became one of the most popular and influential political bands in music.
The band split up in 2000, with vocalist Zack de la Rocha starting a low-key solo career, and guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk forming the supergroup Audioslave along with former Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell. In April 2007 Rage Against the Machine performed together for the first time in 7 years at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
RATM drew inspiration from early metallic instrumentation, as well as rap acts such as Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa. Their music was based primarily on de la Rocha's rhyming styles and vocals along with their sound, especially Morello's unusual extended guitar techniques.
In 1991, guitarist Tom Morello left his old band, Lock Up, looking to start another band. Morello was in a club in L.A where Zack de la Rocha was rapping. Morello was impressed by de la Rocha's lyric books, and asked him to be the vocalist in a band. Morello called and drafted a drummer named Brad Wilk, who had previously auditioned for Lock Up, while de la Rocha convinced his childhood friend Tim Commerford to join as bassist.
The new band named themselves after a song de la Rocha had written for his former band, Inside Out. Kent McClard, with whom Inside Out were associated, had previously coined the phrase in a 1989 article in his zine No Answers.
Shortly after forming, they gave their first public performance in Orange County, California, where a friend of Commerford's was holding a house party. The blueprint for the group's major-label debut album was laid on a twelve-song self-released cassette, the cover image of which was the stock-market with a single match taped to the inlay card. Not all 12 songs made it onto the final album—two were eventually included as B-sides, with the remaining three songs never seeing an official release.
Several record labels expressed interest, and the band eventually signed with Epic Records. Morello said, "Epic agreed to everything we asked—and they've followed through.... We never saw a[n] [ideological] conflict as long as we maintained creative control."
The band's eponymous debut album, Rage Against the Machine, reached triple platinum status, driven by heavy radio play of the song "Killing in the Name", a heavy, driving track repeating six lines of lyrics. The uncensored version, which contains 17 iterations of the word fuck, was once notoriously played on the BBC Radio 1 Top 40 singles show. The album's cover pictured ThÃch Quảng Ä?ức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, burning himself to death in Saigon in 1963; Quảng Ä?ức was protesting the murder of Buddhists by Prime Minister Ngô Ä?ình Diệm's regime. To promote the album and its core message of social justice and equality, the band went on tour, playing at Lollapalooza 1993 and as support for Suicidal Tendencies in Europe.
After their debut album, the band appeared on the soundtrack for the film Higher Learning with the song "Year of tha Boomerang". An early version of "Tire Me" would also appear during the movie. Subsequently, they recorded an original song, "Darkness", for the soundtrack of The Crow and also "No Shelter" appeared on the Godzilla soundtrack.
Their second album, Evil Empire, entered Billboard's Top 200 chart at number one in 1996. The song "Bulls on Parade" was performed on Saturday Night Live in April 1996. Their planned two-song performance was cut to one song when the band attempted to hang inverted American flags from their amplifiers, a protest against having Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes as guest host on the program that night.
In 1997, on the Japan leg of their tour promoting Evil Empire, a bootleg album composed of the band's B-side recordings titled Live & Rare was released by Sony Records. A live video, also titled Rage Against the Machine, was released later the same year.
The following release, The Battle of Los Angeles also debuted at number one in 1999, selling 450,000 copies the first week and then going double-platinum. That same year the song "Wake Up" was featured on the soundtrack of the film The Matrix. In 2003, the song "Calm Like a Bomb" was featured in the film's sequel, The Matrix Reloaded.
On October 18, 2000, de la Rocha released the following statement:
I feel that it is now necessary to leave Rage because our decision-making process has completely failed. It is no longer meeting the aspirations of all four of us collectively as a band, and from my perspective, has undermined our artistic and political ideal. I am extremely proud of our work, both as activists and musicians, as well as indebted and grateful to every person who has expressed solidarity and shared this incredible experience with us.
— Zack de la Rocha, MTV News
Renegades, released shortly after the band's dissolution, was a collection of covers of artists as diverse as Devo, Cypress Hill, Minor Threat, MC5, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. The following year saw the release of another live video, The Battle of Mexico City.
Following the September 11th attacks, Clear Channel created a list of "songs with questionable lyrics"; RATM has the distinction of being the only band to have all its songs on the list.
A live album titled Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium, an edited recording of their last concerts on September 12 and 13, 2000 at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, was released in 2003. It was accompanied by an expanded DVD release of the September 13 show, and also included the previously unreleased music video for "Bombtrack".
Main article: Audioslave
After the group's breakup, Morello, Wilk, and Commerford briefly tried to replace de la Rocha in RATM. Rumoured vocalists at the time included Rey Oropeza of downset., Chuck D of Public Enemy, and B-Real of Cypress Hill. However, the band teamed up with former Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell to form a new band, Audioslave. The first Audioslave single, "Cochise", was released in early November 2002, and the debut album, Audioslave, followed to mainly positive reviews. Their second album Out of Exile debuted at the number one position on the Billboard charts in 2005. The band released a third album named Revelations on September 5, 2006. The band vowed to have a "one-album-per-year" schedule, but Audioslave's future has been cast into doubt following Cornell's leaving on February 15, 2007. Wilk and Commerford are contributing to Maynard James Keenan's side project Puscifer, set for release in mid-October 2007,[10] while Morello is focusing on his own solo project.[11]
Main article: Zack de la Rocha#Post-Rage work
Meanwhile, de la Rocha had been working on a solo album collaboration with DJ Shadow, Company Flow, and The Roots' ?uestlove, but dropped the project in favor of working with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor.[12] Recording was completed, but the album will probably never be released.[13] A collaboration between de la Rocha and DJ Shadow, the song "March of Death" was released for free over the World Wide Web in 2003 in protest against the imminent invasion of Iraq,[14] and the 2004 soundtrack Songs and Artists that Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11 included one of the collaborations with Reznor, "We Want It All".[12] In late 2005, de la Rocha was seen singing and playing the jarana with Son Jarocho band Son de Madera on multiple occasions.[15]
Main article: The Nightwatchman
Morello began his own solo career in 2003, playing political acoustic folk music under the alias The Nightwatchman. He played at open-mic nights and various clubs under the alias. He first participated in Billy Bragg's Tell Us the Truth tour[16] with no plans to record,[17] but later recorded a song for Songs and Artists that Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11, "No One Left". In February 2007, he announced a solo album, One Man Revolution, which was released in April 2007.[11] He currently is a part of the Axis of Justice band.
This section documents a current event.
Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.
Members of the band had been offered large sums of money to reunite for concerts and tours, and had turned the offers down.[18] Rumors of bad blood between de la Rocha and the other former band members subsequently circulated, but Commerford said that he and de la Rocha see each other often and go surfing together, while Morello said he and de la Rocha communicate by phone, and had met up at a September 15, 2005 protest in support of the South Central Farm.[19] Morello and de la Rocha were photographed together at the protest, the first photograph of the two since the band's breakup. [20]
Rumors that Rage Against the Machine could reunite at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival were circulating in mid-January,[21] and were confirmed on January 22.[22] The band was confirmed to be headlining the final day of Coachella 2007.[23] The reunion was described by Morello as primarily being a vehicle to voice the band's opposition to the "right-wing purgatory" the United States has "slid into" under the George W. Bush administration since RATM's dissolution.[24] Though the performance was initially thought to be a one-off,[25] this turned out not to be the case.
On April 14, 2007, Morello and de la Rocha reunited onstage early to perform a brief acoustic set in downtown Chicago at a Coalition of Immokalee Workers rally in support of fairness in the fast food industry. Morello described the event as "very exciting for everybody in the room, myself included."[26] This was followed by the scheduled Coachella performance on Sunday, April 29. The band played in front of an EZLN backdrop to the largest crowds of the festival;[27] their performance was widely considered the festival's most anticipated.[27][28][29] A speech was made during "Wake Up" in which de la Rocha, citing a statement by Noam Chomsky regarding the Nuremburg trials,[30] said:[29]
...if the same laws were applied to U.S. presidents as were applied to the Nazis after World War II [...] every single one of them, every last rich white one of them from Truman on, would have been hung to death and shot - and this current administration is no exception. They should be hung, and tried, and shot. As any war criminal should be. But the challenges that we face, they go way beyond administrations, way beyond elections, way beyond every four years of pulling levers, way beyond that. Because this whole rotten system has become so vicious and cruel that in order to sustain itself, it needs to destroy entire countries and profit from their reconstruction in order to survive - and that's not a system that changes every four years, it's a system that we have to break down, generation after generation after generation after generation after generation.... Wake up.
The event led to a media furor.[31]
Four more performances are planned as part of the Rock The Bells Festival with the Wu-Tang Clan.[32] Another concert at Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wisconsin on August 24 has also been announced with Queens of the Stone Age through the promotional website RATM82407.com.[33] RATM will make co-headlining appearances at New Orleans' Voodoo Music Experience in late October and the Vegoose festival which runs from Oct. 26th - 28th in the Las Vegas metropolitan area.[34] While there have been rumors of a full tour or permanent reunion since Audioslave broke up, a full tour is not planned as of June 2007.[35] Beyond the Coachella and Rock The Bells performances, the band's future is uncertain,[35] but reports of shows planned as far in advance as December 2007 have circulated.[36] When asked if the band were planning on writing a new album, Morello replied:
There are no plans to do that… That's a whole other ball of wax right there. Writing and recording albums is a whole different thing than getting back on the bike (laughs), you know, and playing these songs. But I think that the one thing about the Rage catalog is that to me none of it feels dated. You know, it doesn't feel at all like a nostalgia show. It feels like these are songs that were born and bred to be played now.
— Tom Morello, Blabbermouth.net[37]
The All Music Guide and others list a new video or compilation release entitled Lowdown due August 28, 2007 through Sexy Intellectual Records.[38]
Integral to their identity as a band, Rage Against the Machine voice revolutionary left-wing viewpoints highly critical of the domestic and foreign policies of the U.S. Throughout its existence, RATM and its individual members participated in political protests and other activism to advocate these beliefs. The band primarily saw its music as a vehicle for social activism. Morello said of wage slavery in America:
America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.
— Tom Morello, Guitar World[39]
Meanwhile, detractors pointed out the tension between voicing commitment to leftist causes while being signed to Epic Records, a subsidiary of media conglomerate Sony Records. Infectious Grooves released a song called "Do What I Tell Ya!" which mocks lyrics from "Killing in the Name", accusing the band of being hypocrites. In response to such critiques, Morello offered the rebuttal:
When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels. Would Noam Chomsky object to his works being sold at Barnes & Noble? No, because that's where people buy their books. We're not interested in preaching to just the converted. It's great to play abandoned squats run by anarchists, but it's also great to be able to reach people with a revolutionary message, people from Granada Hills to Stuttgart.
The band were vocal supporters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), especially de la Rocha, who has taken trips to the Mexican state of Chiapas to aid their efforts. The flag of the EZLN is also the primary recurring theme in the band's visual art.
The band were tireless advocates for the release of former Black Panther and Death Row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. De la Rocha spoke before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in support of Abu-Jamal on April 12, 1999. RATM wrote and recorded "Voice of the Voiceless" for their 1999 album "The Battle of Los Angeles" to show their support for Mumia and those fighting to have him released. They also performed at a benefit concert with all proceeds donated to the International Concerned Family And Friends Of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The band also raised funds and awareness for life-sentenced political activist and convicted murderer Leonard Peltier. At their live shows, before playing "Freedom", Zack would often repeat, "It's been 20 years, there's no proof and he's still in jail!" The music video for Freedom also documented the Peltier case.
At a 1993 Lollapalooza appearance in Philadelphia, the band stood onstage naked for 15 minutes with duct tape on their mouths and the letters PMRC painted on their chests in protest against censorship by the Parents Music Resource Center.[40] The only sound emitted was audio feedback from Morello and Commerford's guitars. Regarding this event, Wilk said "The first ten minutes they were going nuts, but after ten minutes they were getting pissed."[41] The band later played a free show for disappointed fans.[41]
Want me to be perfectly frank? The size of my penis — that's what was going through my mind in Philadelphia. It looked like I'd just stepped out of the ocean. I swear to God, it's bigger than that. So I was thinking: I wish I'd worn boxer shorts before instead of briefs, because briefs kinda like constrict me. I took them off and it was this ... half-roll of nickels.
— Tim Commerford [42]
I was thinking about how the wind felt underneath my scrotum, what the people in the front were thinking, and all the cameras flashing and what they were going to be thinking as they developed their film. Actually, doing that was no big deal. It didn't freak me out. That's how we all came into the world. It's a liberating thing.
— Brad Wilk, Modern Drummer [41]
On January 26, 2000, filming of the music video for "Sleep Now in the Fire" – directed by Michael Moore – caused the doors of the New York Stock Exchange to be closed, and the band to be escorted from the site by security, although trading continued uninterrupted[43]. The Stock Exchange locked its doors midday in response to fears of crowds gathering to watch the filming.[44] Footage of enthusiastic Wall Street employees headbanging to Rage's music was used in the final video. “We decided to shoot this video in the belly of the beast�, said Moore, who was threatened with arrest during the shooting of the video, despite the band having a federal permit to perform.
Further information: 2000 DNC protest activity
RATM played a free concert at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in protest of the two-party system. The band had been considering playing a protest concert there since April of that year.[45] Although they were at first required by the City of Los Angeles to perform in a small venue at a considerable distance, early in August a United States district court judge ruled that the City's request was too restrictive and the City subsequently allowed the protests and concert to be held at a site across from the DNC.[45] The police response was to increase security measures, which included a 12' fence and patrolling by a minimum of 2,000 officers wearing riot gear, as well as additional horses, motorcycles, squad cars and police helicopters.[46] A police spokesperson said they were "gravely concerned because of security reasons".[46]
During the concert, de la Rocha said to the crowd, "brothers and sisters, our democracy has been hijacked,"[45] and later also shouted "we have a right to oppose these motherfuckers!"[47] After the performance, a small group of attendees congregated at the point in the protest area closest to the DNC, facing the police officers, throwing rocks,[48] and possibly engaging in more violent activity, such as throwing glass, concrete and water bottles filled with "noxious agents,"[49] spraying ammonia on police and slingshotting rocks and steel balls.[50] The police soon after declared the gathering an unlawful assembly,[47] shut off the electrical supply, interrupting performing band Ozomatli,[48] and informed the protestors that they had 20 minutes to disperse on pain of arrest.[51] Some of the protestors remained, however, including two young men who climbed the fence and waved black flags, who were subsequently shot in the face with pepper spray.[50] Police then forcibly dispersed the crowd, using tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.[50] At least six people were arrested in the incident.[51]
The police faced severe and broad criticism for their reaction, with an American Civil Liberties Union spokesperson saying that it was "nothing less than an orchestrated police riot."[49] Several primary witnesses reported unnecessarily violent actions and police abuses, including firing on reporters[48] and people obeying police commands[51]. Police responded that their response was "outstanding" and "clearly disciplined."[51] De la Rocha said of the incident, "I don't care what fucking television station said the violence was caused by the people at the concert, those motherfuckers unloaded on this crowd. And I think it's ridiculous considering, you know, none of us had rubber bullets, none of us had M16s, none of us had billy clubs, none of us had face shields."[52]
Footage of the protest and ensuing violence, along with an MTV News report on the incident, was included in the Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium DVD.
Some other controversial stands taken include that of the music video for the song "Bombtrack", in which RATM expresses support for the Peruvian guerilla organization Shining Path and their incarcerated leader Abimael Guzmán. Over its career, the band played benefit concerts for organizations such as Rock for Choice, the Anti-Nazi League, the United Farm Workers, children's care organization Para Los Niños and UNITE.[53] The band also raised funds for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, Women Alive, and played at the Tibetan Freedom Concert on more than one occasion.[53] Album liner notes contained promotional material for AK Press, Amnesty International, the Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru, the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic, Indymedia, Mass Mic, Parents for Rock and Rap, the Popular Resource Center, RE: GENERATION, Refuse and Resist, Revolution Books, the Rock & Rap Confidential, and Voices in the Wilderness.
Main article: Rage Against the Machine discography
Studio albums
Date of Release
Title
Label
US Billboard Peak
US Sales
UK Album Chart
Rage Against the Machine
Epic Records
#45
3x Platinum[54]
#17
Evil Empire
Epic Records
#1
3x Platinum[54]
#4
The Battle of Los Angeles
Epic Records
#1
2x Platinum[54]
#23
Renegades
Epic Records
#14
Platinum[54]
#71
Grammy Awards:
MTV Video Music Awards:
It should be noted that the infamous event where Tim Commerford climbed to the top of the stage set and nearly brought the left stage down occurred at the 2000 MTV VMAs. Reportedly, Commerford did it in protest of the fact that Limp Bizkit, whose video was merely other celebrities lip-synching the words to the song "Break Stuff" in front of the band performing, won Best Rock Video instead of Rage Against The Machine's "Sleep Now in the Fire".
On May 4, 2006 "Bulls on Parade" entered VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs at #15.
In 2004, The Battle of Los Angeles and Rage Against the Machine both were entered into Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The Battle of Los Angeles placed 426 and Rage Against the Machine placed 368.
The phrase rage against the machine, used as a verb or noun phrase indicating rebellion, has become prevalent in popular culture with the band's success. On a podcast of The Ricky Gervais Show, Stephen Merchant joked that Gervais was "raging against the machine" when he wore a t-shirt with Bullshit written on it as a teenager. In another example, a conversation with one of the NPCs in the game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines contains the dialogue option, "So how long have you guys raged against the machine?"
In the band Harvey Danger's song, "Flagpole Sitta" off the album "Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?", one of the lines is "I wanna' publish zines / and rage against machines"
The phrase has also seen some popularity in politics. Raj Pannu led the social democratic party, the Alberta New Democrats, during the 2001 election under the slogan "Raj Against the Machine".[55]
Such wordplay with the band's name were common during the height of their success. Such puns included the musical comedy sketches "Rage against the Coke Machine (interlude)" from OPM's Menace to Sobriety and "Rage Against the Answering Machine" by Ugly Kid Joe. Alternative rock band TISM released an album entitled Machines Against the Rage.
The Simpsons has passed references to both the band and the phrase; In one episode, Bart says that his t-shirt, adorned with "Adults suck, then you are one", expresses his "rage at the machine",[56] and in a later episode Bart says "When I raged against the machine, money poured out" after destroying school vending machines.[57]
The band have also been referenced in musical parody and tribute albums. The band's name is parodied in that of the comedy band, Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine. That group's album Lounge Against the Machine contains a lounge version of the song "Guerrilla Radio". The "Weird Al" Yankovic album Straight Outta Lynwood contains the song "I'll Sue Ya", which he states is a parody of Rage Against the Machine's musical style.[58] Two various artists tribute albums were released, Freedom: A Tribute to Rage Against the Machine in 2001 and the Spanish language album Tributo a Rage Against the Machine En Español in 2005. Additionally, A Tribute to Rage Against the Machine, a knock-off labelled a "tribute" recorded by anonymous session musicians, was released in 2003.
