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Rage Against the Machine (often abbreviated as RATM or shortened to Rage) was an American rap metal band formed in 1991 in Los Angeles, California. The band consisted of vocalist Zack de la Rocha, bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commerford, guitarist Tom Morello, and drummer Brad Wilk. They melded heavy metal and rap music, punk rock and funk ...
Zacharias Manuel de la Rocha[1] (born January 12, 1970) is an American musician, rapper, singer, songwriter, and political activist. He is best known as the vocalist and lyricist of the rock band Rage Against the Machine. [2][3] Through both Rage Against the Machine and his activism, de la Rocha promotes left-wing politics in opposition to ...
- Overview
- History
- Political views and activism
- Notes
is an American rock band, formed in Template:City-state in 1991. The band's continual members are singer Zack de la Rocha, guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford, and drummer Brad Wilk. Rage Against the Machine is noted for its blend of hip hop, heavy metal, punk and funk as well as its revolutionary politics and lyrics. Rage Against the Machine drew inspiration from early metal instrumentation, as well as rap acts such as Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa. The group's music is distinguished primarily by de la Rocha's rhyming styles and powerful stage energy, and Morello's unorthodox guitar techniques.
Rage Against the Machine released their debut album Rage Against the Machine in 1992, which became a commercial success. Following a slot in the 1993 Lollapalooza, the band did not release a follow-up record until Evil Empire in 1996. The band's third album The Battle of Los Angeles was released in 1999. During their initial nine year run, they became one of the most popular and influential political bands in contemporary music.
Early years (1991–1992)
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 free-style rapping. Morello was impressed by de la Rocha's lyric books, and asked him to be a rapper in a band. Morello drafted drummer Brad Wilk of Greta, who had previously auditioned for Lock Up, while de la Rocha convinced his childhood friend Tim Commerford to join as bassist. The newly christened Rage Against the Machine named themselves after a song de la Rocha had written for his former popular underground hardcore punk band, Inside Out (also to be the title of the unrecorded Inside Out full-length album). 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."
Mainstream success (1992–2000)
Template:Sound sample box align right Template:Listen Template:Sample box end The band's 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 Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, burning himself to death in Saigon in 1963 in protest of the murder of Buddhists by Prime Minister Ngô Đình 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. Template:Sound sample box align right Template:Listen Template:Sample box end Rage Against The Machine's 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 sign of distress or great danger)[citation needed], a protest against having Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes as guest host on the program that night.[citation needed] In 1997, the band opened for U2 on their PopMart Tour, for which all Rage's profits went to support social organizations. including U.N.I.T.E. , Women Alive and the Zapatista Front for National Liberation. Rage subsequently began an abortive headlining US tour with special guests Wu-Tang Clan. Police in several jurisdictions unsuccessfully attempted to have the concerts cancelled, citing amongst other reasons, the bands' "violent and anti-law enforcement philosophies". 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.[citation needed] That same year the song "Wake Up" was featured on the soundtrack of the film The Matrix. The track "Calm Like a Bomb" was later featured in the film's sequel, 2003's The Matrix Reloaded. In 2000, the band planned to support the Beastie Boys on the "Rhyme and Reason" tour; however, the tour was canceled when Beastie Boys drummer Mike D suffered a serious injury.
Break-up and subsequent projects (2000–2005)
On October 18, 2000, de la Rocha released a statement announcing his departure from the band. He said, "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." The band's final studio album, 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, EPMD, Eric B. and Rakim and Bob Dylan. The following year saw the release of another live video, The Battle of Mexico City, and 2003 saw the release of a live album titled Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium, an edited recording of the band's final two concerts on September 12 and 13, 2000 at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. It was accompanied by an expanded DVD release of the last show, and also included the previously unreleased music video for "Bombtrack". 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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] The band released a third album named Revelations on September 5, 2006. The band vowed to have a "one-album-per-year" schedule, until the departure of Chris Cornell on February 15, 2007. Morello began his own solo career in 2003, playing political acoustic folk music at open-mic nights and various clubs under the alias The Nightwatchman. He first participated in Billy Bragg's Tell Us the Truth tour with no plans to record, 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, entitled One Man Revolution, which was released in April 2007. 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. Recording was completed, but the album will probably never be released. 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, and the 2004 soundtrack Songs and Artists that Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11 included one of the collaborations with Reznor, "We Want It All". In late 2005, de la Rocha was seen singing and playing the jarana with Son Jarocho band Son de Madera on multiple occasions. Members of the band had been offered large sums of money to reunite for concerts and tours, and had turned the offers down. 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.
Integral to their identity as a band, Rage Against the Machine voice revolutionary viewpoints highly critical of the domestic and foreign policies of the U.S. government. 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; de la Rocha explained that "I'm interested in spreading those ideas through art, because music has the power to cross borders, to break military sieges and to establish real dialogue." Morello said of wage slavery in America:
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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:
At the Coachella 2007 performance, De la Rocha made an impassionated speech during "Wake Up", citing a statement by Noam Chomsky regarding the Nuremberg Trials, as follows:
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The event led to a media furor. A clip of Zack's speech found its way to the Fox News program "Hannity & Colmes." An on-screen headline read, "Rock group Rage Against the Machine says Bush admin should be shot." Ann Coulter (a guest on the show) stated, "They’re losers, their fans are losers, and there’s a lot of violence coming from the left wing." On July 28th and 29th, Rage co-headlined the hip hop festival Rock the Bells. On July 28, they made a speech during Wake Up just as they had done at Coachella. During this, De La Rocha made another statement, defending the band from Fox News, who he alleged misquoted his speech at Coachella:
1.Cite error: Invalid tag; no text was provided for refs named allmusic
2.Devenish, Colin (2001), Rage Against the Machine: St. Martin's Griffin ISBN 0-312-27316-6
3.Myers, Ben (October 16, 1999), Hello, Hello... ...It's Good To Be Back, Kerrang!. Retrieved February 27, 2007.
4.McClard, Kent, History of Ebullition Records. Retrieved February 19, 2007
5.Template:Cite web
6.Rage Against the Machine FAQ, Internet Archive cache of FAQ on the official Rage Against the Machine website. Retrieved February 17, 2007
Jul 8, 2020 · Here’s how it works. But newly discovered footage has emerged of a short-haired Zack playing guitar with his very first band, Californian straight-edge crew Hard Stance at a gig in Hollywood in March 1990. While the 32-minute video suggests that future bandmate Tom Morello has nothing to worry about, Zack clearly knows his way around a fretboard.
- Bulls on Parade (Evil Empire, 1996) Set off by an ear-demolishing two-note main riff within an F♯5 power chord, Bulls of Parade is the Rage song that has it all, and an ultimate demonstration of Morello’s wide-ranging abilities.
- Killing in the Name (Rage Against The Machine, 1992) The big one, Rage’s most iconic and enduring song is a lumbering giant of peerlessly sculpted riffs, working in tandem with De la Rocha’s most universally beloved (and oft-quoted) lyrics, which boils down the whole Rage ethos into the universally relateable mantra, “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!”
- Know Your Enemy (Rage Against The Machine, 1992) A paramount track on both Rage’s first album, and their live set. Know Your Enemy is notable for a range of astonishing guitar moments.
- Guerilla Radio. Armed with his specially customised Ibanez Arstar hollowbody (which contained a multitude of onboard effects) Morello propels us into The Battle of Los Angeles’s lead single with an unrelenting Apache helicopter of a riff.
Jul 7, 2020 · The clip finds the Rage Against The Machine frontman playing guitar for his straight edge punk band in Hollywood, CA in 1990. Hard Stance marked the beginning of de la Rocha’s public music ...
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Jul 7, 2020 · The group went by the name of Hard Stance. Video footage of Rage Against the Machine singer Zach De La Rocha playing in his pre-RATM straight-edge band Hard Stance has recently surfaced online and ...
