Leftist Rockers Are All the Rage

Rage Against the Machine finds itself in a potentially awkward position. The rock and rap quartet has become a commercial powerhouse while singing songs railing against the oppressive forces of capitalism.

The L.A.-based band’s two albums together have sold more than 3 million copies in the U.S. This bit of irony--skeptics may call it a contradiction--hasn’t been lost on the group’s outspoken lead guitarist, Tom Morello.

It’s not a sellout, he said, because Rage’s message ultimately reaches the most people by using the corporate machinery at hand.

“I don’t understand why some people feel that when a band achieves a certain level of success, like being No. 1 on the charts, then their message is somehow undermined,” Morello said during a recent phone interview. (The group’s latest album, “Evil Empire,” reached No. 1 in Billboard last year.)

“Causing meaningful social change is not an elitist endeavor,” he said. “It needs to reach and include people willing to come out from all corners and take a stand. I mean, you organize a union on the shop floor, right?”

Inspired by the sociopolitical activism of Malcolm X and Marxist Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara--and musically by such intensely defiant bands as the Clash and Public Enemy--Morello graduated from Harvard University in 1986 with the ambition of becoming a revolutionary.

Since the band formed in 1991, Morello and his three bandmates have used a combination of music and activism to communicate their leftist politics. In 1993, when the group’s debut album, “Rage Against the Machine,” came out, what was arguably its most noteworthy act of rebellion occurred during a concert at Lollapalooza III in Philadelphia. The band members protested against censorship by standing naked onstage for 25 minutes without singing or playing. Each member wore only duct tape across his mouth and a letter scrawled on his chest, spelling out P-M-R-C (referring to the Tipper Gore-led Parents Music Resource Center.)

Rage also has played benefit concerts for numerous organizations, including the Anti-Nazi League, United Farm Workers, Rock for Choice, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,) the Leonard Peltier Defense Fund and the Milarepa Fund, a San Francisco nonprofit group working for the cultural survival of Tibet.

While it’s obvious that many fans are buying the group’s records and attending its explosive concerts, it’s less clear whether they are also buying into Rage’s socialist stance, or merely digging the hard-edged sonic assault unleashed by Morello, rapper-singer Zack de la Rocha, bassist Tim Bob and drummer Brad Wilk.

“We don’t pussyfoot around when it comes to bringing the noise,” Morello said. “On one level, a Rage concert is a very visceral thing. As well as carrying a potent message, there’s a subversion in the [musical] track as well as in the words. I think that’s why we relate to people in Indiana and Ohio and Alabama, as opposed to coffeehouses on both coasts.

“What’s encouraging on another level is the positive feedback we’re getting from the activist groups we’ve brought on tour with us. They tell us how much interest--or at least curiosity--so many of our fans show in their causes. So, night after night, more information gets disseminated to more people.”

When the foursome performs Thursday and Friday at Irvine Meadows, it will be a homecoming of sorts for De la Rocha and Bob. They attended University High School in Irvine in the ‘80s, although neither felt they fit in with the status-conscious surroundings of that city.

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De la Rocha has said in interviews that he felt particularly alienated living there. “I was a Chicano in a town where you are the exception to the rule if you are Mexican and you don’t have a broom or a hammer in your hand,” he told The Times last year.

Does performing in a county famous for its political conservatism pose any special challenges for Rage Against the Machine?

“I don’t know, I constantly feel like we’re playing behind enemy lines,” said Morello, 32. “I really don’t think there’s a homogenous whole of an audience out there, whether we’re [performing] in Brooklyn or Irvine. Rage Against the Machine tends to bring disenfranchised folks out of the woodwork . . . people you might not find at a No Doubt concert. . . .

Morello hopes the group inspires both anger and compassion in others.

“The engine for any kind of effective [social] movement is indignation. . . . Every instance of progressive change has come from ordinary people standing up, pushing back and saying they’re no longer willing to take it,” said Morello, whose mother was active in civil rights groups and father was part of Kenya’s first United Nations delegation. “Courage and fortitude comes from the anger of witnessing oppression on a daily basis.

“And yet, despite a willingness to confront the oppression they faced, leaders like Martin Luther King and Che Guevara had tremendous love for the downtrodden, for the underdogs. You have to have room to open your heart, too.”

When Morello graduated with honors from Harvard, he easily could have followed other career paths. Yet he says he’s happy with his choice, knowing that the revolutionary spirit of rock ‘n’ roll drives him still.

“I just try to communicate with an audience the way Bob Marley, the Clash and Public Enemy spoke to me,” he said. “I felt very alone and isolated growing up in Libertyville, Ill. [a predominantly upper-middle class suburb of Chicago]. Then I bought [the Clash’s] “London Calling” and “Sandinista!” records, and I thought, ‘This is a group that’s telling the truth!’ . . .

“It gave me the courage to be part of a community larger than the narrow one I was [living] in. There’s a line in ‘Clampdown’ [a song from “London Calling”] that goes, ‘You grow up and you calm down.’ Man, when I heard that, I said, ‘No, that’s never gonna be me.’ It gave me the fortitude to follow a righteous path, both as an activist and musician.”

* Rage Against the Machine appears Thursday and Friday at Irvine Meadows Ampitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. With the Roots (Thursday) and Atari Teenage Riot and the Foo Fighters (Friday). 8 p.m. Thursday’s concert is sold out. Tickets for Friday’s show are $20. (714) 855-4515.