Rage Towards The Machine had been locked in a room by the US Secret Service after bassist Tim Commerford tried to “assault” billionaire Steve Forbes backstage at Saturday Evening Reside.
Guitarist Tom Morello discusses the altercation in new documentary Women & Gents… 50 Years Of SNL Music. It occurred the night time the California rap metallic band performed Bulls On Parade on the weekly TV programme in April 1996. Forbes, the editor-in-chief of Forbes journal who ran for US president in 1996 and 2000, hosted the present that night time.
Morello remembers the night being fraught with issue and censorship. Rage Towards The Machine tried to hold upside-down American flags from their amplifiers earlier than they had been eliminated by the SNL crew.
“We had been like, ‘You invited Rage Towards the Machine, the “fuck you, I received’t do what you inform me” band,’” the guitarist states (through NME), referencing the well-known lyric in breakthrough single Killing In The Title.
The band additionally had a deliberate second music, Bullet In The Head, minimize from their efficiency on the final minute resulting from time constraints. At this level, the frustration bought an excessive amount of for Commerford, who balled one among Rage Towards The Machine’s US flags up right into a “weapon” and marched into Forbes’ dressing room.
“Timmy doesn’t like issues like that,” Morello continues. “And he expresses himself. So, what he did was he took one of many American flags and he tore it up and he knotted it right into a ball. You would possibly name it a weapon. And he entered Steve Forbes’ dressing room throughout the best way to assault him.
“Steve Forbes was not in his dressing room, however his household was. So Timmy launches his American flag ball rocket at aunts, cousins, wives, youngsters. Thankfully, the sort of strong integrity of it’s not so nice. So, it flaps aside, hurting nobody.”
Though nobody was injured within the “assault”, it spooked the Secret Service members accompanying Forbes. The billionaire’s 1996 bid for the Republican presidential nomination had ended solely a month prior.
“The hallway floods with Secret Service,” says Morello. “We’re now locked in our room. They’re defending Steve Forbes and his household.
“We get escorted out and placed on the sidewalk at 30 Rock [New York’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza]. You would possibly discover Rage will not be within the farewells on that exact present [but] I nonetheless went to the after-party. Ha ha!”
Rage Towards The Machine had been no strangers to controversy throughout their preliminary 1991-to-2000 run. In addition to the “assault” on Forbes, the band filmed a music video on Wall Avenue and compelled the doorways of the New York Inventory Trade to close. In addition they held a unadorned onstage protest towards the Dad and mom Music Useful resource Heart (PMRC) at Lollapalooza 1993.
Rage Towards The Machine have reunited a number of instances since their preliminary break up, most not too long ago in 2020. Nevertheless, in January 2024, drummer Brad Wilk introduced that the band had been as soon as once more on ice.
