Rage Against the Machine--Stage Fighters by Paul Stenning

Author:Paul Stenning [Paul Stenning]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784189679
Publisher: John Blake
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

So You Want A Revolution

With the success of Evil Empire, Rage Against The Machine had proved they were no one hit wonders. It had taken some time for that second record to come together but they’d made sure the album was immensely strong before releasing it. Now it was time for the band to truly take advantage of their position and increase their activism.

After an appearance on the soundtrack to Higher Learning, with ‘Year Of Tha Boomerang’ (a demo version of ‘Tire Me’ also appeared in the film), RATM were booked to appear on the American variety show Saturday Night Live. Whether the band knew in advance is unclear, but that night the SNL guest host was Republican, and then-Presidential candidate, billionaire Steve Forbes. His father Malcolm was the editor-in-chief of business magazine Forbes as well as President of its publisher, Forbes Inc.

In protest at Forbes’ appearance on the show, given that to RATM he was the embodiment of the right-winger lambasted in ‘Vietnow’, the band attempted to hang two American flags upside down over their amplifiers seconds before they performed ‘Bulls On Parade’ – the flags were removed by stage-hands before the statement was broadcast. According to the online RATM fan club, Tom Morello stated the reason for hanging inverted flags was their “contention that American democracy is inverted when what passes for democracy is an electoral choice between two representatives of the privileged class. America’s freedom of expression is inverted when you’re free to say anything you want to say until it upsets a corporate sponsor.” Rage’s statement prompted exactly that response.

The producers for SNL told the band they’d had to remove the flags in the interest of keeping Forbes happy, that they had to run a “tighter ship” with his appearance. The band was even told that the performance of ‘Bullet In The Head’ would be censored, with any “objectionable” lyrics being muted.

Through the Rage fan club, Morello intimated that the SNL cast and crew, whom he did not name, “expressed solidarity with our actions, and a sense of shame that their show had censored the performance.” RATM were incensed and told to leave the building but not before Tim Commerford was alleged to have stormed into Steve Forbes’ dressing room and littered it with shreds of one of the flags.

“SNL censored Rage, period,” explained Tom Morello in the aftermath, on www.esquilax.com. “They could not have sucked up to the billionaire more. The thing that’s ironic is SNL is supposedly this cutting edge show, but they proved they’re bootlickers to their corporate masters when it comes down to it. They’re cowards. It should come to no surprise that General Electric would find ‘Bullet In The Head’ particularly offensive. GE is a major manufacturer of US planes used to commit war crimes in the Gulf War, and bombs from those jets destroyed hydroelectric dams which killed thousands of civilians in Iraq.”

Zack had been prompted by Morello before the gig to mention this during ‘Bulls On Parade’, yet

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