This is a page dedicated to one of the most popular and greatest bands of all time. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. RAGE WILL LIVE ON!!
HISTORY
Tom Morello had just left his old band and decided to start his own band. Morello and Brad Wilk were in a club in L.A where Zack de la Rocha was rapping. Morello was impressed by de la Rocha, and asked him to join his band. De la Rocha had a childhood friend, Tim Commerford, who was drafted in on bass. The band was now composed of Tom Morello (guitar), Zack de la Rocha (Vocals), Brad Wilk (Drums) and Tim Commerford (Bass). Their name was derived from the unreleased album "Rage Against the Machine" by de la Rocha's former group, Inside Out, as well as being a reference to a speech by Karl Marx, where he told workers to "Rage Against The Machine". Shortly after forming, they gave their first public performance in a living room in Orange County, California and self-produced a 12-song cassette which already included songs like "Bullet in the Head" [1]. Several record labels expressed interest and they 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."
Their debut album, the self-titled Rage Against the Machine was released in late 1992. To promote the album and its core message of social justice and equality, the band went on tour, playing at Lollapalooza II and as support for Suicidal Tendencies in Europe.
Mainstream success
Their second album, Evil Empire entered Billboard Top 200 chart at number one in 1996. A live video, also titled Rage Against the Machine followed in 1997. 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.
Renegades, released shortly after the band's dissolution, was a 2000 collection of covers of bands as diverse as Devo, Cypress Hill, Minor Threat, MC5 and even Bob Dylan. The following year saw the release of another live video, The Battle of Mexico City.
A bootleg album of live and rare material fittingly titled Live & Rare from 1997, was followed up by a proper live release, Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in 2003, an edited recording of their last shows, September 12 and 13, 2000 at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. It was accompanied with an expanded DVD release of the concerts.
On May 4th, 2006 the song Bulls on Parade entered VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs at #15.
Political Beliefs
RATM burned the American Flag at the 1999 woodstock festival.Integral to their identity as a band, the group voiced far left viewpoints highly critical of the domestic and foreign policies of the U.S. Throughout its existence, RATM participated in political protests to advocate these beliefs, including an infamous performance outside the 2000 Democratic National Convention and a performance on Wall Street earlier that same year. In the case of the latter, on January 26th, 2000, filming of their music video "Sleep Now in the Fire" — directed by Michael Moore — shut down the New York Stock Exchange. The NYSE locked its doors midday in response to fears of crowds gathering to watch the filming. Footage of enthusiastic Wall Street employees headbanging to Rage's music was later used in the completed "Sleep Now In The Fire" video.
The band primarily saw its music as a vehicle for social activism. Tom Morello, in a February 1997 interview with Guitar World, said,
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.
Meanwhile, detractors on the Radical Left pointed out the tension between voicing commitment to leftist causes while being signed to Epic Records, a subsidiary of media conglomerate Sony Records. In response, Morello pointed out,
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.
Rage Against the Machine protesting
Parents Music Resource Center.Some controversial stands taken by the group include tireless advocacy for the releases of former Black Panther death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal and life-sentenced political activist Leonard Peltier. The band were also supporters of the Zapatistas, especially de la Rocha, who has taken several trips to the Mexican state of Chiapas to aid their efforts, and whose travels were soon ..ed, in part, in one of the band's concert videos.
The song Bulls on Parade was performed on Saturday Night Live in April of 1996. Their two-song performance was cut to one song when the band attempted to hang inverted American flags from their amplifiers, a protest to having presidential candidate Steve Forbes as guest host on the program that night.
At a Lollapalooza appearance in 1993 in Philadelphia, the band stood onstage naked with duct-tape on their mouths and the letters "PMRC" painted on their chests for 15 minutes in protest against censorship by the Parents Music Resource Center. The only sound emitted was audio feedback from Morello and Commerford's guitars. Regarding this event, Morello told Revolver magazine in 2003 that "after 10 minutes the crowd turned savagely hostile and people started throwing things."
Break-up
Renegades, RATM's last studio album.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.
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 ex-Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell to form a new band, Audioslave. The first Audioslave single, "Cochise", was released in early November 2002, and the first album followed to mainly positive reviews. However, Cornell's preference to be in the band without rampant political messages have detracted some of Rage's core fan base. Their second album Out of Exile debuted at the number one position on the Billboard charts in 2005. The band are currently recording a third one, stated for a summer 2006 release and has vowed to have "one-album-per-year" schedule.
In September 2004, de la Rocha released a song called "We Want It All", produced by Trent Reznor, on the Songs and Artists that Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11 soundtrack. Tom Morello, credited as "The Nightwatchman," also contributed a song entitled "No One Left" to this compilation. De la Rocha was also featured on the song "Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare)" on Saul Williams' self-titled album.
According to a Spin magazine interview, de la Rocha has recorded several tracks with various artists, among them Reprazent and DJ Shadow intended for a solo album. He appeared in the first part of Blackalicious's 9+ minute, multi-sectioned song "Release" on the 2002 album Blazing Arrow. In 2003 a song called "March of Death" that he recorded with DJ Shadow was released in protest of the war on Iraq.
Source: wikipedia
