Former Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello was interviewed by Lars Ulrich on Beats 1’s It’s Electric on Thursday, and he was asked how close Rage Against The Machine came to making a reunion album in 2007-2011. Alternative Nation transcribed his response.
“Zero, zero. We got together in 2007, we had a great time. We had fun onstage, offstage, playing ping pong, going out. It felt like there was a lot of camaraderie. But one of the ways we helped that was we took off the table everything that had been controversial before. Writing music, doing interviews, all of that stuff, we were just like, we’re not going to do stuff. We’re just going to play shows, and have a nice time, and be able to look each other in the eye, and not any of the stuff that stirred controversy in the past.”
He also said, “The four members of Rage Against The Machine disagreed about a great deal of many things, but politics were not one of them. Often there might be something that Zack is leading the charge on, or that I’m particularly passionate about, or something with a real punk rock non-comformist element that Timmy leads the charge on. But as a foursome, that was never an issue. Our first single was ‘fuck you, you don’t what you tell me’ 16 times followed by motherfucker. We couldn’t outflank ourselves in that regard. So when it came time to do activist work, that was where we really aligned.”