Rip Magazine Interview

Rip Magazine

Rage Against The Machine
Public Enemy #1
Chuck D, Rip Magazine August 1996

Atlanta 1996... "Fatlanta" as we in the hood call it... "Hotlanta" and 93 degrees of it. I'm at the airport half looking at the clear blue sky and half peepin' the international ticket counter. Usually a European trip during this time is completely out of the question, especially during my sabbatical from touring. (Thirty-two of them in nine years is a record for rap.) But I'm clear on why I'm going, and I ain't trippin'. I'm out to catch Rage Against the Machine at a festival near the Netherlands-Belgium border. Rage caught my attention early on by sending me their "Bombtrack" demo--an unlit match taped to it. Later, after a fierce bidding war, their first album lit up attention, and I was thrilled at the fact that this four-piece band of human dynamite included me in their liner notes as an inspiration. In 1994, during one of our stateside rolls, Rage opened up some Public Enemy shows on the West Coast. In 1995, walkin' down an L.A. street, I caught lead vocalist Zack de la Rocha self-serving gas to his ride. We kicked it about doin' a joint together, but '95-'96 schedules were hectic. So here I was, headin' to Europe to hang with the Rage, touring for Evil Empire, the hottest relevant world point of view that's kickin' the charts. And I wasn't trippin'. Amsterdam, 40 degrees. Late afternoon. While Rage was resting after the previous night's performance in Munich, Germany, I caught Zack in the lobby and kicked it back and forth--talking on issues and complimenting his vocal style and on vast sense of wording. The hybrid connection of punk, metal and rap has developed into a formula--but Rage owns the patent. Zack's focus and commitment are a rare breed in a for-corporate world, and his hijacking of the methodology of recorded works plants believer seeds in every continent. During our talk, Tim Bob enters the lobby. I introduce myself and together we venture into the streets for some grub, leaving Zack behind to rest. A couple blocks over we kick into an Italian restaurant and unanimously hold to my principle of "can't go wrong with spaghetti and tomato sauce." The discussion was straight up with Tim, a committed member who, in his travels, has discovered that the government to which he pays taxes has wrecked planetary shop. Tim's solid when it comes to his opinion of structure, be it family or band. He's a team player who individually can outshine but plays to put the total point across. The ability to balance a revolutionary artistic vision and a low-key, So-Called, chill lifestyle requires structure--and as a band, Tim's bass, Tom Morello's guitar innovation, Brad Wilk's funk-driven beats and Zack's chaotic rap vocal make for the most complete Rock-Punk-Rap meshing ever heard. Noon the following day we hit for the three hour bus ride to the festival. During the trip, I had on-off convo with Zack--hitting on issues of suppression and factions in Mexico. We talked about being TV idiots as kids and soaking what Americanism it offered, then spewing it back out in volcano form. We entered a muddy, 45-degree, rain-drenched tundra of a field packed with over 100,000 Pink Pop Festival fanatics. Away from the Euro press, I kicked the official interview with Zack and then Tom. Candid conversation--set off appropriately by an upside-down U.S. flag--knowing that the United States government needs to turn its shit around. One people. One planet. Bottom line. No supremacy whatsoever.

Speaking With Zack de la Rocha

CHUCK: What do you think is the difference between your first album and your second album--as far as the vibe?

ZACK: The first album was a lot more produced. We had this interesting fusion of sounds going on. We tried to fuse them as tastefully as we could, stuff we were listening to in hip-hop, and early-'80s punk rock that I was listening to in high school, like Minor Threat and Bad Brains. On the second record I think we have a much more tasteful arrangement. When we play hip-hop it is, no question, pure hip-hop. When we play punk, it's right in your face. And when it comes into a hip-hop section you know it's hip-hop.

CHUCK: Do you think that your live performances made you define those sounds a little bit better?

ZACK: I don't know if it was the live thing as much as we really wanted to take the time and write the right record. One of the things that makes what we do interesting is there is a lot of conflict in the studio. Tom comes in and pushes heavier stuff--Sabbath, Zeppelin--and I'm always coming at the scene with the hip-hop. It's musical antagonisms.

CHUCK: They blend into each other. The grooves switch on this joint like a war into another battle. how do journalists describe y'all?

ZACK: There were tons of misconceptions early on, like "These two genres don't belong together." That's the kind of thing I make real clear: these two genres were destined to be a part of one another. They're the most confrontational forms of grooves that exist--punk rock and hip-hop, two of the most critical forms that are most threatening to the power structure that stands in America or anywhere else. And they're both rooted in frustration and suffering. It was going to happen.

CHUCK: Give us a little history on the group's name.

ZACK: I was in a punk band before Rage. The title of their first LP was going to be Rage Against The Machine. I wanted to think of something metaphorical that described my frustrations living in a political and economic system which fuels itself off the blood of oppressed people all over the world for the last five centuries. A machine doesn't have any humane understanding. To me, it was the perfect metaphor to describe the structure of the establishment.

CHUCK: Two album covers: the first [a monk who had incinerated himself in protest over the occupation of South Vietnam] was to the hilt! The Evil Empire cover, what's the concept behind that?

ZACK: In the '80s you had the Reagan Administration waging a massive misinformation campaign about the movement in Latin America, and in particular [its relation to] the Soviet Union, which he described as "the evil empire." When you consider the atrocities we've committed in the late 20th Century you know that you can easily flip that on its head and apply it directly to the United States, so that's where we got the title. Image-wise, we got this Eagle Scout-looking white kid who's smiling 'cause he's in control, but if you look real closely you'll see that there's fear in his eyes as well. He's realizing that all this shit that he perpetuated on people is coming back.

CHUCK: Boomerang. Working with Brendan [O'Brien on Evil Empire] and GGGarth [Richardson on the first album], was there a difference?

ZACK: Oh absolutely. GGGarth, his approach was trying to capture the live element of the band on tape, so there wasn't much experimentation going on. But with Brendan we really tried to develop a fuller, richer sound, more in depth, into the grooves. Brendan's a musician himself, not like some car that's getting paid millions for coming in just to put his name on a record. He really understands where we're coming from, so that helps.

CHUCK: On your next record are you going to try another producer?

ZACK: You! We need some of that Bomb Squad [Public Enemy's production team] shit.

CHUCK: I don't know if I'm qualified to take you to the next level. I'm looking for you to produce. What have you picked up from touring, travel, going to different places seeing difference faces?

ZACK: You get a different perspective on what the States is all about, to say the least. One place in particular where I learned an incredible amount was Spain. In Spain during the '30s a huge artistic movement had a fight against the fascism that was Franco. As a result, a whole generation after the war was extremely politicized. We got to Spain and it was International Workers' Day, and I'm tripping out cuz I'm standing on this corner with this huge syndicate of mothers, fathers and kids all carrying banners saying something like "Support the Zapatista Movement in Mexico" and walking with Che Guevara flags. In the States the political culture is so beaten out of the people, whether it be through the media, or through the shit that went down in the '60s with the counter-intelligence program. There is a kind of cynicism that is spread throughout the young people's mid-set about becoming political, and Spain is the absolute opposite. People are constantly challenging power wherever it lies.

CHUCK: The message that you try to communicate with your music and your audience is groundbreaking. What are you trying to accomplish?

ZACK: When the band started out, [we said] we would put out our own record. We put out our demo tape and we were thinking we could access a massive communication network by being part of the Sony Corporation and use the machine in order to fuel its collapse. So one of the things we decided to do is hijack that motherf!?ker. Let's put in the face of as many people as possible movements from the past. For example, I'm working on a documentary with MTV called "The People's News", which is going to tell the story of indigenous campesinos of Southern Mexico and the farmers who have declared war on the Mexican government. It has relevance everywhere because there is poverty around the world. We want people to at least have the opportunity to see it. We've engaged in dialogue with millions of people about issues--the Black Panther Party, the American Indian movement and the Students for a Democratic Society during the '60s, or the unjust incarceration of Leonard Peltier. We put out the "Freedom" video and the response we got shocked us. Letter-writing campaigns, study groups and support groups started. So by seizing these mediums of communication and using them to inform young people about things that affect their lives in drastic proportions.

CHUCK: Does and idea strike you and you just write it?

ZACK: These delegations were going down to Southern Mexico and each time I went down I kept journals, driving through the jungle. You get and idea and work on it and store it and wait for something to bring it back out. I think lyrically I write from more of an abstract sense. I think that's important for me, considering you want people to get drawn in and interpret things from the music you write. The things that I was seeing during the Gulf War shocked me, man, the media treatment of the Gulf War was incredible. When I wrote "Vietnow" I had been driving around L.A. listening to AM radio, to these Nazis' right-wing, 24-hour war against poor people. I'm sitting there tripping. I mean, these motherf!?kers are war criminals! G. Gordan Liddy...motherf!?king Oliver North was in Nicaragua killing people. Now he's a war hero and on the radio, and come election time he's having a major impact for a swing to the right. People are losing their jobs on a massive level as a result of de-industrialization in the U.S., jobs are fleeing to the Third World. Capitalists are pulling out of the States and sending these jobs into Mexico, onto the backs of even poorer workers. how are you even going to get the people to realize that it's the economic system that's taking their jobs? They put it on the backs of immigrants or single-black women. AM radio has become a very significant tool for fascists in the U.S. to divide a populace that's getting beat up. F!?k, I got to hit these motherf!?kers as hard as I can!

CHUCK: At 26, you've had an accelerated learning process on the issues.

ZACK: Two things helped me understand. One was my father [Roberto de la Rocha] was a Chicano muralist, one of the pioneers in the Chicano art movement in the early '70s, Los Four. he was involved with the various movements of the time, particularly against police brutality and also with the United Farm Workers. He had a significant role in helping young Chicanos have a visible, tangible history on the walls of East Los Angeles. Growing up there, I become exposed to certain things.

CHUCK: Those brothers pull you to the side and school you?

ZACK: They were reading Mao and Fanon. They were very anti-Vietnam, so I grew up in that environment. Not only did I grow up in East Los Angeles, but I also spent a lot of time in Irvine, California with my mom. My parents split up when I was one. My mom went to Irvine, which is like the epitome of white suburbia. We lived in a little student housing complex, so I was forced to wage a war for my own identity, going to school and being surrounded by all whites. They had a completely different set of values and perceptions of the world, which contrasted to mine.

CHUCK: The U.S. tends to overlook its bigass feet while stepping on three-quarters of the planet. Do you find reasons to pull young brothers from East L.A. aside?

ZACK: At this point in time in East L.A., the drug economy has such a firm hold on young people. The education system hasn't really done anything much for them, so they find themselves very isolated from any real information about themselves. The music may serve that. I'm not the kind of person that can play big tours, collect my little royalty check and get off. I've been working to develop a center for political resistance in East L.A. The center itself provides a refuge for young people. We've been holding educational forums for young people to talk about the policies that are affecting their community. We're going to start developing a consistent educational program in East L.A.--for free. I don't recognize any difference between the music that we're playing and direct political action. This music could develop, assist and fuel grassroots movements.

CHUCK: In your world travels, what are a couple of the enlightening experiences that you've had?

ZACK: There's this place called Christiana that's kind of a self-governed community in the center of Denmark. They've gotten a lot of pressure from the Danish government because the government wants to develop it, but the young people there are like, "Hey, we're self-sufficient. We ain't bothering anybody. We want to live how we want to live." So they started this commune. I got into this conversation with these kids two years ago. We were just chilling and from around the corner these riot cops with face shields and billyclubs come marching in formation down the back alley towards us. My immediate response, judging by how cops are at home, is either to figure out what's going on or get the f!?k out. But these kids filled these plastic bags full of rocks and f!?ked these pigs up, rocks in the face! In East L.A., from 1986 to the current day, they've been nine unarmed children murdered with not one real account of justice against the police department in the Hollenbeck division. And these kids in Christiana are willing to take it to the level of using fists or rocks or whatever it takes. Until we use that same example at home and seriously challenge pigs who act with impunity and murder our children, they're gonna continue to do it.

CHUCK: There's songs that you guys got that should be played on black radio because they are just hard-driving rap songs.

ZACK: I think that rap music in general is under attack. It's based on two different fronts and one of those is the fact that, as an art form, the companies that are signing young brothers up have one thing in mind and that is to make their artwork commodified and to sell it as much as possible, move the units. And that can have a definite, stifling effect on the culture that is created through it, because it's a cultural resistance. And the other front, [anti-rap activist] C. DeLores Tucker and Bob Dole and the religious right, they're trying to attack it from that angle. That I think is the most threatening.

CHUCK: When you play live, I've been hearing that motherf!?kers really don't want to come on after you guys!

ZACK: Sometimes, I will admit, I think that's true.

CHUCK: They don't want to f!?k around with that intensity.

ZACK: We just keep focused. I come on-stage and think about people that are suffering. Every time I come down in [Mexico] I feel it a little more. I remember one time, we were sleeping in this little schoolhouse, me and a lot of the students that I helped organize to get down there, and the army would try to run weapons through the communities at night. We were f!?king terrified! I thought damn, if I had to experience this every day, that would be life in hell. So I came back here to try and let people know "Hey there's people that don't have what you have and are trying to get something to survive." Let me just say a couple things about Chiapas. That struggle began and emanated because of some very harsh conditions. In the last 10 years, 150,000 people have died there from curable diseases. The people there are responsible for producing 63% of all of Mexico's hydroelectric power, yet only a third of the people have lights in their homes. There's on doctor for every 1000 people in Chiapas. There are more veterinarians for rich landlords and hotel owners then there are doctors for the people. On January 1st of 1994, the people there decided there was no other option than to take up arms to try to acquire the basic necessities that were being denied them. The North American Free Trade Agreement nullified Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution. Article 27 is the article which guaranteed land rights to peasant indigenous farmers and their families as a result of [the Revolution] in 1910, in which a million people died in Mexico. [NAFTA] was a death sentence for people living down there. One of the things that we're gonna focus on with this record is to generate a strong solidarity movement and a strong, visible presence for the Zapatistas in the States, because people have a lot to learn from the example they're setting down there.

Speaking With Tom Morello

CHUCK: It's important to plant the seed, get with certain things that you guys are doing that mean a lot. It's about the niche that you guys are creating that a lot of people can't easily do.

TOM: Before you go anywhere, one of the reasons we have the groundwork to have any sort of platform to start from is cuz you set it. That's absolutely true, especially in the States. It's so rare to hear music that's the least bit political and confrontational. There's plenty of bands out there doing it, but when they don't move enough units to get the press and get the exposure, then those views stay underground with the band.

CHUCK: The business of record companies in the U.S. right now is really at an all-time F!?KED state. There's so much chart-chasing that the development of the artist, wherever they're coming from--left, right, center-- is just tucked down until they can move those units. That's why it's important that there's a group as important as you guys are that makes a statement amongst everything else. and you guys will dominate the genre with your point of view.

TOM: In every interview I get asked the same stupid question: "Do you think the kids really get it?" And I'm like, "Are we hiding the message?" It's right there at the front! In interviews we talk about revolutionary politics. Look at the T-shirts, look at the videos, look at everything. Can you begin to justify not thinking that people who are into the band are also into the message? I think there's a sort of denial, that people don't want to accept the fact that people really are alienated, that the system's got nothing for them. And when a band like your band or our band starts saying these dangerous truths out loud and people are like, "Oh, don't listen to the lyrics." I did an interview in Germany and the woman was like, "I bet the reason you sell records in Germany is because people don't understand the lyrics." And I'm like, "Well, they understand the lyrics in the United States. Are they buying it for a different reason?"

CHUCK: And they do understand the lyrics, thoroughly! There's a reason for us being here. It's the music and the words and vocals and the meaning all blended into one, and you guys have been pushing that out hard-core.

TOM: I think it's really insulting to say that people in the audience don't get it. I know when I listen to PE records, I got it. That's why I liked it. There are plenty of groups out there that had great grooves but didn't mean anything, and here was a band stepping up and saying the truth, and it was like, "Yeah! Yes, exactly." It's using the medium of music to start to organize people with similar points of view.

CHUCK: When we [Public Enemy and Rage] played together out in Bakersfield--

TOM: There were more cops at the show than fans! These white college kids were waiting for a riot to erupt at that show.

CHUCK: The Bakersfield police needed something to do.

TOM: They never had a greater day in the Bakersfield police department cuz they thought at last they're going to get to crack some heads.

CHUCK: You guys are one of my favorite groups, period, but also outside the genre of rap, still being one foot in rap. Lyrics-wise, Zack rises that f!?kin' groove. I hate the limitations with rap--that it either is or isn't--and I tell people all the time that I wish I could do a Rage Against The Machine-type cut. The genre I'm in right now is f!?ked-up. I was saying this yesterday, "I don't know how the f!? you get them sounds--"

TOM: I'll take you through it! It's all about Terminator X [Public Enemy�s DJ], sitting and listening to those records and trying to figure that out on guitar.

CHUCK: There's some shit that'll put an ugly look on your face.

TOM: Seriously, there was a time when I stopped being influenced by guitar players and started being influenced by DJs. First it was Jam Master Jay [Run-DMC] even industrial records. I was like, I'm gonna try to figure out how to do that on guitar.

CHUCK: You're the most incredible guy I've heard on guitar, I have to go back to f!?kin' Hendrix. I know you've got a different set of influences, but I know I always liked the noise and the bending of the f!?kin' pitches and when I heard the first album, I was like, "DAMN!" cuz it was rhythm and the bending of the pitches and the noise, but on this album you just made that shit go off into some more zones, more transitions of the groove switches. It's like you guys got your game down; like, here's what we're doing and nobody is doing this shit.

TOM: We all kind of wished we had a record out sooner but that's one of the advantages, having a lot more to choose from and getting that down.

CHUCK: From the first album, "Bullet In The Head" is my favorite. On the second album, of course, "Bulls On Parade," "Vietnow" and "Without A Face." When you're playing live, do you do things that you retain, say, "Oh shit, I've got to go back and use that"?

TOM: After a while you get like the bluesman on his porch, that's just how that cat plays. The last four or five years or so, I turned away from traditional rock soloing. There's one part in the solo in "Revolver" and "Without A Face" which are delay things. I remember tapping with a pencil on the string with the delay on and it just went ph-FFF and I went "DAMN! Write that down." My memory's so bad there are just so many different combinations of pedal and switch.

CHUCK: Do you see a different level of consciousness internationally?

TOM: The second you get in Europe there's consciousness that's just different, and that's not the fault of young people in America, because they're just anesthetized by the media and by what advertising agents to just worry about what they're wearing and drinking and sitting in front of the TV dreaming someone else's dream. You get over here and all of a sudden people in Italy--and it's like at a full-on metal monster magazine, so you expect maybe a less intelligent question--but they just hit you with the full-on question and it's like, "Wow!"

CHUCK: That's one thing when I was checking out the video for "Bulls On Parade" that was something I wanted to see.

TOM: Australia is a different story. I was expecting it to be this aboriginal wonderland, but you get off the plane and there's Kentucky Fried Chicken! Anytime you go somewhere and there's a KFC you know that some imperialist has kicked around some indigenous person-- and that's a fact! Two years ago I was in Kenya. The British aren't ruling there anymore. You've got people with black faces in power, but the money's still flowing the same way.

CHUCK: I was in Suriname and this woman was telling me "Well, black men run Suriname now, there's just a white man with a gun behind them."

TOM: That's exactly true. They want to make the same cookie-cutter consumer from Amsterdam to Chicago to Suriname to Nairobi--sell the same shit and keep the profits high.

CHUCK: You live in Los Angeles now. Are you a native Californian?

TOM: No, I was born on West 142nd [in Chicago]. I spent my whole life in a small town called Libertyville outside Chicago, and hour north of the Loop--18 years of time. My mom's white and my dad's black. My dad went back to Kenya and my mom went to get a teaching job in Northern Illinois. They told her, "You can teach at school cuz you're a qualified teacher, but you're got an interracial family so you have to live in the ghetto." City after city. In Libertyville, they finally said, "Okay."

CHUCK: Libertyville--the name fits!

TOM: Yeah, I integrated the town. I was cool. Everybody was like, "Oh, he's Kenyan. He's not really a Negro per se." But Chuck, just wait till you get old enough to date their daughters, all of a sudden....

CHUCK: Things like that have to be done for people to realize that human beings are human beings and white supremacy is a tactic we hope to defeat, because there's no one person better than another, and basically what I'm saying about that is that we have a doctrine going around where people think they can wreck one side of the world and it won't affect this side. But if you get hit in the back of the head, there's gonna be a frown somewhere.

TOM: It's a silly question that only comes from white journalists. They say, "How did you become political?" And I say, "In kindergarten when I stepped on the playground and somebody called me a name, that's when your political education begins." There was one thing in my high school where there was racism. One day there was a noose in our garage, and stuff like that would go on. But it seemed like the white kids from the lower-class background had racist parents who were feeding them that. At the time, you're in it and you're fighting it, but later on you realize that you got these poor, lower-class white people and all their anger is misdirected. Instead of being like, "Maybe you and I got similar problems." Whenever you got two exploited or oppressed groups, you know you got a lot of rich white men laughing their asses off, dividing and ruling.

CHUCK: Of course, in America, underneath the class problem is a racist situation. That's something that affects your band when people look at the makeup and just don't get it. Mainly journalists asking stupid-ass questions, like "What are you guys, a rap band?"

TOM: Well, one of the good things, or maybe it's bad, about or band is that journalists are so blinded by the politics. They never ask a sexist band like, "Why are you a sexist band?" Or an escapist band like, "Why don't you sing about problems in the real world?"--just all this fluffy Disney crap. So Rage Against The Machine, they can't believe we're even talking about it, so we get asked, "Why are you a political band?"

CHUCK: So being from the Chicago area, right, would you be upset if the Bulls all of a sudden used your song "Bulls On Parade"? Dennis Rodman listens to Pearl Jam! I mean if they win the championship, it'll be blasting in his car.

TOM: As long as I'm at the game to see it happen. I want to be courtside. I hope Dennis is playing it, and I hope I'm right there with him.

CHUCK: Make a pitch to Dennis, "Okay we'll throw politics to the side for one second and the Bulls can use 'Bulls On Parade'." Do you get phone taps, wire taps, funny mail?

TOM: I look forward to the time when we're a big enough threat that *that* happens.

CHUCK: Believe it; it's really there.

TOM: When you--

CHUCK: Aw, man, of course! Shit, man, all the time my phones were cut off between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. every night, for a year. I told the phone company that my motherf!?kin' phone ain't working and they said there's no problem.

TOM: You had the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover calling you up.

CHUCK: F!?kin' 30-year boredom period where they had to f!?k with people instead of fixing people, because if you fix people, you don't have to f!?k with them. Take the power back. What do you feel about the support of Epic and Sony?

TOM: Before we even talked about a record contract we wanted complete artistic control, every single cover, every T-shit, all artwork, and off the bat they were willing to make that happen. And it followed through. Even if we've been difficult. There are people there that believe. It's not just 40,000 wet, muddy kids out there that believe it.

CHUCK: I've worked with the Sony system and they're very open to whatever I say. But there are people who are like, "Oh, you're working with Sony."

TOM: Yeah, it's like, if we're going to make an impact, are wee gonna put our heads in the sand and sell 45s off the back of a truck? Whether it's a Huey P. Newton book or a Noam Chomsky book or a Karl Marx book, you can buy them at Barnes and Noble. It's, like, get your head out of the sand. You're given a certain set of historical circumstances to work with and you have to come up with a plan to change that, and our plan starts with reaching people.

CHUCK: You can't do battle if you're not on the battlefield. A lot of time people come out of left field with these comments, but the whole thing is to do what you've got while having availability and riding that particular highway. What do you think of rap music?

TOM: I think that hip-hop was the most revolutionary change that came along in a long time. Because punk rock, which was important, said you don't need to have a $1,000 Les Paul [guitar] and intricate music lessons; you can have three chords, be angry about it and make music as powerful as any music ever made. Hip-hop took that one step further--you can sample the G chord--you can just apply your mind to the medium and make music that is....I think Public Enemy is more important than any Mozart song. Certainly more important than the whole Elvis catalog rolled up into one. I think now, in order for hip-hop to sustain it's importance, it's all about diversifying, and we're one part of that. It's always been critically important for us to play with hip-hop groups and that's one element of our music that we all love. We want to keep pushing out in our music.

CHUCK: Black radio, by not recognizing that the guitar is the key element in black music, has been downsized to bass and drums. People are like, "Guitars are for white boys," when they don't know what they're hearing is a developed blues player. in black music, what do you think the reasons are for the ignorance?

TOM: That's an excellent question because, from Charlie Christian to Albert King to Vernon Reid to Hendrix, guitar music and black music are one and the same. It's treated by black radio like it's an ugly stepchild, but there's a substantial part of our audience that's black and is able to get past that. I'm unsure of an answer to, "Why is black radio ignorant?" I think you've just got to follow the money, whatever payola schemes are going on to insure market share.

CHUCK: The combinations that you guys are coming up with, you're going from thrashing to grooving into psycho. You guys have a lot of groove transaction transition, then go from turbo to thunderstorm, but they're smoother on this album.

TOM: From guitar playing to arranging, it's all about just playing what feels true. That's how you find your own voice. You let whatever influences, let those seeds flower, throw in your own imaginations and get what happens to be, in this case, Rage Against The machine.

CHUCK: Do you think if people emulate your style, that might throw you into a period of creative abandonment? That's a big thing with me. I'd rather get dissed than do the same thing that other motherf!?kers are doing.

TOM: In the history of rock and rap, how many bands are there that have put together elements of the two: punk rock and hard rock? And how many of them are good? I feel good about the music we're making, and I think that it's evolved on the second record, and I think it'll continue to evolve. And the sure taste-test is in the rehearsal studio of ours when we bust our a groove. How that feels is a tell-all.

CHUCK: A lot of people say they don't want to play after you guys. You go on-stage with a mission--you've got a message but basically you've got to play to win, to be heard. Our first three years we were on a mission to conquer, destroy, and send those motherf!?kers back to their books cuz we're not going to take no prisoners. From that point of view, we had to shoot them out of the water and send them packing.

TOM: I've got a competitive streak in me when it comes to that. Because a lot of people that we play with are our friends. We enjoy them. But I like knowing that after we get up there are some people we've sent to the woodshed. A couple times we've played these one-off festival shows and it's funny to hear that everybody's scrambling to *not* play after Rage Against The Machine. "Just get somebody else in there!"

CHUCK: Cuz Rage comes along, next group on it's like "refreshment-time, take a break for a T-shirt."

TOM: Sometimes I feel a little guilty about that.

Rage's performance was supreme, rippin' 100,000 wet Euro-Bangers into beat Hell. The one-hour set was back-and-forth combo of first- and second-album shit, making it very difficult for the next act--whoever it was. Near the end Zack brought me out and I freestyled Public Enemy's "Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos." Rage continued a non-stop onslaught of cuts, looked on by every other band sittin' on the sideline. After the final joints, I gave Rage a pound and I was out toward the night, charged.