Even Tom Morello isn’t sure when, or if, Rage Against the Machine will go back on the road. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the guitarist said that after the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees were forced to cancel their planned 2022 European fall tour due to the serious foot injury suffered by rapper/singer Zack de la Rocha on the second show of their North American tour things were thrown into a state of flux that continues to this day.
Asked if the tour could be re-booted once Zack is healed up, Morello said, “We’ll see. If there is to be any more shows, we will announce it as a band. I don’t know. I know as much as you do, honestly. Right now we’re in a time of healing.”
Rage’s eagerly anticipated reunion tour hit a snag in Chicago on July 11 when de la Rocha suffered a severe tear of his left Achilles tendon four songs into the set. He soldiered on through the rest of the North American dates by rocking out while sitting down on the band’s first extensive tour since their last reunion wrapped in July 2011.
Morello said the energy on stage during the dates that went off was “great,” which he knew it would be from the moment they got back together to practice. “I knew pretty early on in rehearsal that we were going to sound fu–in’ great,” Morello said. “We’d never sounded better. It was a reaffirmation of the power of Rage Against the Machine, and the transcendence of Rage Against the Machine as a live act.”
Ironically, he added, he had just recovered from a ruptured Achilles before the tour and was on crutches in rehearsals, so when he saw de la Rocha go down in Chicago he knew it was bad. “I recognized the gait,” he said. “But Zack toughed it out that night. And for the next 17 shows, he was more compelling as a frontman sitting on a box in the middle of the stage than 99 percent of the frontmen in the history of all time.”
As for why the European dates had to be scotched after Rage successfully toured the U.S., Morello said it was doctor’s orders. “I don’t know all the details, but there’s dangers of flying. There’s danger of blood clots and all that,” he said. “I wasn’t in the room. But it’s not the optimum care to be on the road with a newly-ruptured Achilles.” The injury also resulted in the band cancelling their planned 2023 North American tour.
Morello also weighed in on the band’s fifth nomination for the RRHOF, saying he’s a “big proponent” of the Hall. “I like the idea there’s somewhere on the planet that celebrates music,” he said. “The thing I share, with many fans of many bands, is that if the Rock Hall is going to be inducting artists of so many diverse genres, there are a lot of artists from multiple genres that deserve to get in. It would be a great place to be. I certainly think Rage Against the Machine, among a lot of other bands, deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
The guitarist also touched on the controversy over the “awful idea” of dynamic ticket pricing, saying that every ticket for the shows they played cost $125, except for the 5-10% that were dynamically priced; Morello said the band “gave away every cent” over $125 on those tickets to charities in the respective cities, with a total of $6-$7 million raised on the entire tour.
As for the most pressing question: is Rage on yet another open-ended hiatus? Morello said the current state of Rage is “there is no term. Rage Against the Machine is like the ring in Lord of the Rings. It drives men mad. It drives journalists mad. It drives record industry people mad,” he said. “They want it. They want the thing, and they’re driven mad. If there are Rage shows, if there are not Rage shows, you’ll hear from the band. I do not know. When there is news, it will come from a collective statement from the band. There is no news.”
Faced with endless re-iterations of the “will Rage tour again/Is Rage on hiatus again?” question, Morello practiced his principled group’s steadfast omerta and declined to elaborate, offering up a perfectly zen answer to the thorny question: “We just don’t operate like other bands.”
