Well, we’ve come to the last 24 hours or so of voting in the 2023 Rock And Roll Hall of Fame “fan vote,” and I thought I’d start expanding my territory, so to speak, into talking more often about things other than politics, by taking a look at this year’s Rock Hall vote – in part because it’s a pretty fascinating class and the decision-making was definitely not easy.
Do I even need to explain this? If the only impact Rage Against The Machine had was mainstreaming rap-metal crossovers with their blistering debut album featuring all-time greats like “Killing In The Name Of…” and “Bombtrack,” they’d be well worthy of this accolade, but the fact is that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
What Rage did was to define and energize an entirely new era of activism and speaking truth to power, in which the platitudes and calls for civility and decorum were firmly rejected with a rousing chorus of “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” Harnessing the power of the machine to destroy it while also hitting mainstream rock success with radio-friendly-ish stuff like “Guerilla Radio” and “Bulls On Parade,” Rage have used their platform to scream and aggressively demand social justice since their very first video for “Freedom” featured historical information related to imprisoned (and many say unquestionably framed) Chippewa activist Leonard Peltier and bold-faced on-screen calls for his release over a soundtrack of sneering, angry, and entirely well-founded criticisms of the so-called “freest nation on Earth.”
There’s probably not a standard-configuration rock band on the planet today that more successfully perpetuates and typifies the anti-corporate individualism of the hippie era. While it may be difficult to discern musically, thematically there’s a clear, bright connecting line leading directly from Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger through Buffalo Springfield and Ritchie Havens and CSNY directly to Rage, with a side trip through every Angry Young Man from Dee Snider to Chuck D along the way.
All of this, coming out of nowhere like a bullet in the head against a backdrop of lingering jingoism and nationalism related to the cold war, America’s emergence as the world’s “only superpower,” and the broadly popular Operation Desert Shield/Storm. At a time when much of the nation were as mindlessly patriotic as we’ve ever been, Rage stood up with a mirror and gave us no choice but to take a good hard look at ourselves.
That their fans have, over the years, included some incredibly right-wing figures who apparently had no idea what the lyrics were saying who later jumped up to express their disappointment at Rage “becoming political,” is just icing on the cake.
Unquestionably a vote for, and it should’ve happened the day they were eligible. “Freedom.” Yeah, right.
