Rage Against The Machine engineer Garth Richardson discussed Zack de la Rocha losing his voice while recording the band’s debut album in a new retrospective.
“The songs were probably about 85 to 90% there. We made a few changes, mostly lyrically. Literally, somebody just had to capture them,” Richardson told Louder Sound.
RATM used a full concert PA system to replicate their ferocious live performances, but this caused some issues for Zack de la Rocha with his vocals.
“The problem is that sometimes Zack’s voice went. He was working it so hard. The end of Freedom, where he’s screaming, ‘Freedom!’, that’s just one take. Every time he sang, he gave it his all. Anybody that wanted him to hold back, he was, like, ‘No, fuck off, leave me alone.’”
Tom Morello said that he wrote “Killing In The Name” while teaching a guitar lesson.
“I remember coming up with that riff. I was giving guitar lessons at the time, and I was teaching some Hollywood rock musician how to do drop-D tuning. In the midst of showing him, I came up with that riff. I said, ‘Hold on a second’, and I recorded it on my little cassette recorder to bring into the rehearsal the next day, never realising that it would be the genesis of a song that would have that lasting impact.”
The Rage Against The Machine reunion just got expensive new merchandise. Chasinglivechicken posted on Reddit that he is disappointed with Tom Morello, “I’m kind of saddened to see Tom pushing people to vote dems (I would feel the same amount of sadness if he was pushing people to vote Republican) Am I just interpreting the message I have taken from rage incorrectly?
Partly because of rage I will never trust the government either side, a group of chosen elites who think that they are special enough to play the sims with the world. However these aren’t computer generated characters, they are our families, friends, people we love. These people decide who gets to eat today, who gets to work, who gets to live or die. Personally I feel anyone who thinks they are appropriate to undertake that role is a psychopath, they are liars and the media will feed us the shit to make us trust them.
Weren’t RATM’s best years during a democratic government?
I may have misunderstood the message and please tell me if I have. But how can you rage against the machine but then support and play a part in the machine.”
