Rage Against the Machine

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RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

Formed: 1991, Los Angeles, California; Disbanded 2000

Members: Tim Commerford, bass (born Irvine, California); Tom Morello, guitar (born New York, New York, 30 May 1964); Zack de la Rocha, vocals (born Long Beach, California, 12 January, 1970); Brad Wilk, drums (born Portland, Oregon, 15 September 1968)

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Rage Against the Machine (1992)

Hit songs since 1990: "Killing in the Name," "Bulls on Parade," "People of the Sun"

Few bands in the history of popular music have blended righteousness and rock as potently as the volatile group Rage Against the Machine. With bombastic messages and left-wing political stances that matched the fiery sound of their music—a combination of heavy metal guitars and hip-hop lyrics and beats—Rage Against the Machine stood as one of the most principled, socially and politically active bands of the 1990s. The formula, however, proved too volatile, and the band collapsed in 2000 under the pressure of the internal tensions between its members.

The nucleus of Rage Against the Machine was formed in Los Angeles in 1991 by a pair of young men from politically active, socially progressive families. The singer Zack de la Rocha is the son of the Mexican muralist Beto. The band gelled when de la Rocha met the guitarist Tom Morello, whose father had served as a member of the Mau Mau guerrilla organization that had freed Kenya from colonial rule in the 1960s. Morello's mother, Mary, was a schoolteacher who later formed the anticensorship organization Parents for Rock & Rap.

Morello and de la Rocha, along with the singer's friend, the bassist Tim Commerford, joined with the drummer Brad Wilk to release a self-produced twelve-song cassette in early 1992 featuring the incendiary gun-violence song "Bullet in the Head," which later appeared on the band's major label debut. Featuring the combination of de la Rocha's mesmerizing, high-energy stage presence and Morello's ostentatious guitar playing, the cassette sold more than 5,000 copies through the group's fan club and at concerts.

After getting assurances that they would be free to express their opinions in song, the band signed with Epic Records, which released their self-titled debut in November 1992. The album is a musical hand grenade, with de la Rocha shouting and rapping his lyrics to songs such as "Bombtrack" and "Freedom," while Morello manipulates his guitar to sound like everything from an air raid siren to a turntable. Though rock with a hip-hop edge became de riguer by the late 1990s, in 1992 Rage's combination of abrasive rock energy and a hard-rapping style was bracing and unconventional.

The album's highlight is the explosive hit single "Killing in the Name," which features the lyrics, "Some of those that work forces / Are the saints that burn crosses." The song contains all of the elements that helped the album sell more than 4 million copies: Morello's alternately funky, heavy metal, and electronic-sounding guitar playing; de la Rocha's shouted, impassioned vocals; and Wilk and Commerford's ominous rhythm tracks. After a year the album climbed to number seventy on the Billboard charts with little or no airplay, but it rebounded in December with the band's first MTV-aired video, for the song "Freedom."

With liner notes that read like a political manifesto, the group made it clear that their music had a message; they supported groups such as the prochoice Rock for Choice, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), and the activists campaigning for the release of the African-American journalist and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Whispers of the group's demise dogged them when a follow-up album was slow to come. The rumors were fueled by their admitted reluctance to spend time together when not performing or recording. But the group silenced doubters with Evil Empire (1996), a blistering album that entered the Billboard charts at number one, launching the strident hit single "Bulls on Parade." Their April 1996 appearance on Saturday Night Live was cut from two songs to one when the band ended a song by attempting to hang an inverted American flag—a sign of distress—on their amplifiers. Like their first effort, the second album's liner notes mention that every note was created by just bass, guitar, drums, and voice; Morello's guitar once again sounding like everything from a keyboard to a turntable to a video game.

De la Rocha's lyrics burn with a renewed intensity on tracks such as "Vietnow," "Revolver," and "Down Rodeo," on which his intricate wordplay touches on topics ranging from media manipulation to immigrant labor without resorting to blunt, obvious imagery.

A fall 1997 tour with popular rap group the Wu-Tang Clan fell apart after one week, with the rappers dropping out. Toning down the ferocity a notch, the band included a meditative cover of Bruce Springsteen's Steinbeck homage, "The Ghost of Tom Joad," on its self-titled home video released in November of 1997.

The group's third album, The Battle of Los Angeles (1999), also debuted at number one on the Billboard chart, preceded by the single "Guerilla Radio." Recorded in just one month, it is the group's most fully realized effort to date, with Morello's gigantic, eclectic guitar riffs complementing de la Rocha's even more rap-like lyrical delivery on songs such as "Calm Like a Bomb" and "Mic Check."

De la Rocha announced plans to record a solo album in early 2000, and the group played a riot-marred, explosive set outside the Democratic National Convention in August. Just a month after a drunken Commerford was arrested for climbing a set piece and interrupting an acceptance speech by Limp Bizkit at the MTV Video Music Awards in September, de la Rocha announced his departure from the group, citing breakdowns in communication. Renegades, an album on which the group covers songs by rappers Eric B. Rakim and EPMD and protest rockers Bob Dylan and MC5, was released in December.

Rage Against the Machine was one of the most beloved, outspoken, and hard-rocking bands of the 1990s. Never content to create mere entertainment, the group sought to educate, uplift, and provoke with their sophisticated, radical songs and activities, melding 1960s political commitment with a thoroughly contemporary 1990s sound.