In a new interview with BBC6 Music’s Mary Anne Hobbs, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, discussed how Rage Against the Machine clashed with Simon Cowell, and how the band’s label Epic rejected the campaign which led to a reunion show. In the late 2000’s, Rage Against The Machine joined an online campaign rallying fans to buy its song “Killing in the Name,” which had been originally released back in 1992. The song contains the eventful line, “F— you, I won’t do what you tell me.” Howard Stern recently discussed hanging out with Rage Against The Machine.
Hobbs: Of course, I guess, one of the moments we love the best about your history with Rage Against The Machine is the fact there was an entire movement created in your name in the United Kingdom and you took down Simon Cowell.
Morello: Sure, I wouldn’t say we took down Simon Cowell but rather that the people of the United Kingdom took down Simon Cowell. It was for the Christmas number one which is now coming up on it’s tenth anniversary, I believe. It’s tenth anniversary. It was an extraordinary event where we were going about our lives in Los Angeles and some friends of mine in the United Kingdom texted me and went:
“Do you know what’s going on?”
Morello: And we didn’t have an idea, we didn’t know what “X-Factor” was, we didn’t know who Simon Cowell was but we didn’t know what “X-Factor” was and we learned it was this kind of rigged system where they have this TV show, someone wins the TV show and they sing the song that everybody buys the next day. It’s the Christmas number one and they all pat themselves on the back. However, a suburban couple, a London couple who was actually at the show – Prophets of Rage show recently made a Facebook campaign to dethrone the X-Factor and it’s in the Guinness Book of World Records.
It’s the song most downloaded in one week, in history, Killing In the Name and it stands as a high water mark. Despite the fact that our record company, which was Sony did everything to make us lose because they also represented Simon Cowell and they knew which side their bread was buttered. They didn’t return the band’s phone calls, or emails. We were excited because this was a seventeen year old song, it might be number one – dead silience, dead silence from them.
Rage Against The Machine rejecting a bold Tool demand was recently revealed. Morello continued:
Morello: Also, despite the fact we had no physical copies, you couldn’t buy it in a store and you had to download it, it was over six hundred thousand downloads in one week and we crushed him. It was awesome.
