Rage Against The Machine

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Contents:

3.Intro

4.History.

5,8 Band members.

9,10. Albums.

11. Style of music, what they stand for, the future.

12. Resources


The intro.


I chose Rage Against The Machine because it is my favorite band.
The main reason I like them is their way to mix Rap/Rock together and because they sing for a reason, like trying to stop police violence and racism, not like other bands that sings about nothing and only doing it for the money. This essay will tell you about how they got together, their music style, the band members and what they stand for. What they have done through out the years, a list of albums, tour dates, songs that have been on the toplists, the bands that imitates RATM, will also be included.

The first time I heard RATM was back in 1996 when they released their second album “Evil Empire”. I was at my friends house and he was listening to it, I really liked it so I vent to the music store in vilhelmina and bought their self-titled album “RATM” and “Evil Empire”. I have been listening to those CD’s everyday for 5 years!

The history.

Rage Against the Machine was formed in Los Angeles in 1991. Vocalist Zack De La Rocha was previously in a band called Inside Out and took the name Rage Against the Machine from Inside Out´s second unreleased album. Their first public performance was in a living room in Orange County. Shortly after this the band recorded a 12-song demo tape which included "Bullet in the Head" later released on RATM´s self titled debut album. They managed to sell 5,000 copies of the demo tape through their fan club and at various live performances around L.A. Rage then supported Porno For Pyros on their debut performance. Rage then got to play two shows on the second stage at Lollapalooza II at Irvine Meadows, California where they were spotted and signed by Epic. In October 92, rage toured Europe supporting Suicidal Tendancies then shortly after the tour finished Rage Against the Machine was released on November 10, 1992. The album recieved a lot of attention from critics. The album went on to sell over one million copies and was on Billboard´s top 200 chart for 89 weeks peaking at #45.

In 93 Rage appeared at Lollapalooza III this time on the main stage and without playing a single note. They made a silent protest against the P-M-R-C (Parents Music Resource Center) with each band member standing naked on stage for 14 minutes each with tape across his mouth and the letters "P" "M" "R" "C" written with one letter on each of the members chests. The idea of the protest was if we don´t take action against censorship soon we wont be able to see bands like rage. Later In 1994 rage played two benefits for Leonard Peliter. The first was organised by rage and called "For the Freedom of Leonard Peltier". It was played in California with acts including Cypress Hill and a guest appearance by the Beastie Boys. The second Benefit was "Latinpalooza" which was a joint benefit for Leonard Peltier, United Workers and Para Los Ninos.

With the extreme tour schedule rage had been engaged in they hadn´t got the time to really know each other and rumours of their break up began to circulate. So the band moved to Atlanta and started living together. They attempted to record a new album but found it didn´t work. The came back to L.A and started to work effectively on recording their second album "Evil Empire". In 96 rage appeared on Saturday Night Live and had their two song performance cut to just one song after the band attempted to hang inverted American Flags from their amps as a protest against having president candidate Steve Forbes on the show that night. The next day Bulls on Parade was premiered on MTV´s 120 minutes. Then two days later on April 16, 1999 Evil Empire was released entering the Billboard top 200 charts at #1. In July, 96 rage begin a headlining US tour which toured across the US until October that year.

In February 97, "Tire Me" won the best Metal performance in the Grammy awards. In August rage began a headlining US tour with the Wu-Tang Clan. Foo Fighters and Roots. On November 25 Rage released it´s first home video more to keep the fans happy than anything else. The video featured live concert footage as well as all the video clips rage had made up to that point. An extra incentive to buy the video was it came with a CD single: a cover of Bruce Springsteen´s The Ghost of Tom Joad. In Santa Monica that December Tom Morello was arrested for protesting against sweatshop abuses by Guess?.

Early in 98 rage recorded "No Shelter" which appeared on the Godzilla Soundtrack. Midway through 98 rage began to write songs for "The Battle of Los Angeles" and by September they had recorded the instrumentals for 14 songs with the lyrics not completed. In January 99 rage organised a benefit for Mumia Abu-Jamal. The benefit attracted a lot of attention and at one point wasn´t going to be allowed to go ahead. But in the end it was allowed and acts including Black Star, Bad Religion and the Beastie Boys appeared. In Geneva, on April 12 Zack appeared before the United Nations on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal and and the death penalty in the US. Rage then went on to play the Tibetan Freedom Concert and Woodstock 99. At Woodstock, rage again made their presence felt by burning the American flag on stage as the played their last song - Killing in the Name. On october 12, Guerilla Radio, the first single from the new album was released. This was followed up by the Australian release of "The Battle of Los Angeles" on October 25. The album hit US shelves on election day November 2, 1999. On the same day rage made an appearance on David Letterman performing the new single Guerilla Radio boycotting the NBC network for allowing rage to play.

The band members:

Zack De La Rocha – Vocals.
Tom Morello – Guitar.
Tim Commerford – Bass.
Brad Wilk – Drums.


Zack


Zack de la Rocha was born in Long Beach, CA, on January 12th, 1970 to his mother, Olivia and his father Beto. His parents divorced when Zack was 1 year old. Beto was a Chicano muralist, a member of the political art group the "Los Four" which depicted pictures of the Mexican farmers, and paved the way for Chicanos in the artistic community with their mix of Hispanic iconography, graffiti and vibrant portraiture. Among their first works were street paintings with three words: "Here We Are!" In 1983, his
father suffered a nervous breakdown due to excessive religious ideals. He strictly applied the Bible´s teachings to every aspect of his life. Of the commandments, "Thou shalt not make engraven image," Beto interpreted as reason to destroy his work and quit painting. When Zack went to visit him on weekends in LA´s Lincoln Height, he would be forced to fast for days, to sit in a room with the curtains closed and the door locked. He would eat on Friday, and not eat until he returned to his mother on Monday. While there, he was forced to help Beto destroy the paintings that established a sense of Chicano identity for him. After a while, he couldn´t cope with a such a lifestyle any longer, and he permanantly lived with his mother in Irvine - which was, at the time, perhaps one of the whitest cities in
Souther California, but is currently a racially and culturally diverse area.


Tom




Tom Morello was born in New York City May 30th, 1964. He grew up in Libertyville, IL. His mother´s name is Mary Morello, who is the founder of Parents for Rock and Rap, an anti-censorship organization. His father was a guerilla in the Mau-Mau uprising that freed Kenya from British rule. His political education, as he says, "began the first minute you have brown skin and walk onto an inter-racial playground". He went to pre-school in Libertyville when a little white girl kept on calling him "nigger" and other racist remarks, and although he didn´t know what it meant, when he told his mother about it, she showed him information on Malcolm X, and talked with him. The next day, the girl said the same things again, and he replied, "shuttup! whitey!", and then punched her in the face. He lived in Libertyville most of his life while he was in the high school drama club, played Dungeons and Dragons, and was into Marxist politics. It also appears that he was somewhat of a sci-fi geek. He was in a band when he was younger called ´Electric Sheep´. His first experience with guitar, was when he heard a KISS song that he wanted to play. He paid some guy $5 to teach him how to play, but instead, the first thing the man taught him was to tune the guitar. He came back the next week, coughed up another $5, and was taught the C scale. That was it for him, he didn´t touch a guitar for years after. Then when he heard a song by the Sex Pistols, he thought that he might be able to channel his feelings and political ideas through a guitar too, so he learned how to play.


Tim


Tim´s father is aeronautics/space engineer, who works on the space shuttle. His mother was a mathematician, but died for brain cancer when Tim was 20 years old. His father divorced, and re-married after she got cancer, and the family kind of dissapeard after that. Tim listens to Inside Out, (Zack´s first band), and really likes jazz. He´s currenltly playing the upright bass more than his electric bass. He vents his feelings through poetry, writing, and drawings. He has a certain hatred for police, due to the way they treat people, and he´s drawn pictures of what he´d like to do to them. But he says they are too horrible, and it scares him because it´s a side of him that doesn´t usually come out. So, maybe someday, he´ll release some of his work. He also changes his name on every album. (1st: Timmy C., 2nd: Tim Bob, now: Simmering T).


Brad


Brad was born in Portland Oregon, in 1968. Brad is probably the most well rounded member of the band, and the least political. He´s in it more for the music than the politics. His father died during the Lollapalooza season in 1994, and that was troubling for Brad. Brad says he´ll never put alot of value on money, because his father was obsessed with it, and never really looked at what really mattered. Wilk moved around alot as a child with his father´s changing jobs. He is most likely, the one of the band who cares alot about others feelings, not just his own. He says, "I just wish sometimes I could be a fucking asshole."

Albums and hits.

“Rage Against The Machine”
1992

This is RATM’s first album, also the most famous one.
In this album they really managed to put together Rap/Rock (also called Rap core).
The album was not played so much on music channels such as MTV, but got on the top lists as well, with 89 weeks on the list.

The burning monk on the cover is Thich Quang Duc immolating himself on a main intersection in Saigon, Vietnam on June 11, 1963 to protest the rule of Ngo Dinh Diem, the American backed leader of Vietnam who was leading an anti - buddhist campaign in southern Vietnam.
The photo won the Pulitzer prize in 1963.


“Evil Empire”
1996


In this album, RATM had 3 different styles of music, the first is the old style they had in the self-titled album, Rap-core. But now they did some rock/hip-hop songs and 2-3 punk songs, one of the punk songs “Tire Me” won the grammy awards for best metal performance 1996.

The name:

President Ronald Reagan used to speak of the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire". Rage is simply throwing this back at him, hinting that maybe he should evaluate his own country before labeling others.

The cover:

The kid´s name is Ari Meisel, and he is 15 years old. He attends the United Nations International School in New York.

”Battle of Los Angeles”
1999

In this album, RATM combined their other 2 albums together, creating a whole new music style, Tom Morello doing even more strange sounds with his guitar.
The song “Guerilla Radio” won the year 2001 grammy awards prize “Best Metal Performance”


The cover was created by Tom Morello on a wall in LA.

Why they chose Battle Of Los Angeles as their name is because it was an “battle” to create this album, and that they got together there.

RATM had many ideas how the cover should look like, here is some of the examples:


The music style-What they stand for.


Rage Against The Machine are known as the creator of Rap-Core when they released their self-titled album. Some other bands did play the same type of music but could never mix it as good as RATM did.
Today there is a lot of bands that plays the same music as RATM, such as Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linking Park etc.
The different between those bands are that RATM has a message in their songs, such as freeing Mumia Abu-Jamal who has been sitting in an jail cell for 20 years for a crime he did not commit.



Rage´s politics are generally "leftist". Left-wing politics are usually those concerning the working class, the environment and the general restoration and preservation of integrity and truth.
The "machine" in question can be quickly defined as the state propaganda system of media, corporations, and government. Rage is about generating social conciousness, urging activism & involvement, and fighting for change.
I believe they are on a mission to educate and inspire people all over the world, especially American teenagers. To quote Zack de la Rocha: "We´re not going to play to the mainstream. We´re going to hijack it." In this aspect, they are using the "machine" against itself by making commercially viable music, that is still rebellious and sincere in it´s nature.




What will happen in the future is not so clear, since Zack left the band, lots of rumours have been spread, such as the band will not continue, Zack will return and stuff like that, But RATM will continue, with...