Photo by Andy Kellen/Rolling Stone
Three weeks from now, while the whipped dogs still loyal to the GOP endure a four night buffet of freshly tossed Trumpian word salad, Prophets of Rage will be on the streets of Cleveland. Outside the walls of the Republican National Convention, the band—comprising members of Rage Against The Machine, Public Enemy, and Cypress Hill—will play the first show of a national tour running up to November’s presidential election.
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The band intends to “Make America Rage Again.” The slogan was plastered the streets of Los Angeles when their first posters appeared in May; they shouted it out at their first live show last month, unfurled it during the set’s airing of “Killing in the Name.” They’re trying to tap into discontent, to offer a new path to the restless anger that the last 12 months has thrown up. Their tour will take them across the country, but it starts in Cleveland, outside “Ground Zero of the ruling class’s little Trump party,” as guitarist Tom Morello calls it. We know they’re playing an announced show in the city on July 19th, but they’re keeping quiet on further plans for the week; no need to spoil the surprise for any Noisey readers in the Cleveland Police Department.
In an effort to “leave a Robin Hood footprint behind in each of the cities,” every show on the tour will offer $20 tickets with a cut of the proceeds going to local homeless shelters and food banks. It’s a show of inclusivity from the band, a move against the economic inequalities that Morello says they’ve been “raging against for decades.”
We spoke to Morello about the legacies of globalism, the widening income gap, and a possible scheduling conflict for Paul Ryan at the convention.
Noisey: So we’re going to be in Cleveland at the same time that you are. Do you still get nervous about playing shows like that in a protest environment, knowing the kind of atmosphere there’s going to be there?
Tom Morello: Heavens, no. I have a good deal of experience playing shows like that and atmospheres like that. I don’t get nervous. I mean, when you play a rock ‘n’ roll show in a rock ‘n’ roll venue, there are parameters: if it goes great, it’s on this end of the spectrum, if it goes less great it’s on that end of the spectrum. But on days like that, you have no idea what’s going to happen. But I’m not nervous about that. I look forward to that.
What kind of preparation goes into a protest show like that?
We’re still figuring out some of the details for that. One of the shows is going to be a show at the Agora Ballroom. That’s a rock ‘n’ roll show in a rock ‘n’ roll venue, so I’ve got some idea of what that’s going to be like. And then the stuff that we do beyond that, we’re not going to announce, but we’ll see. It takes a lot of preparation. You want to make sure that people are safe and that whatever action you’re undertaking is one that has—as much as you can control it—the desired result. Cleveland is the first stop on the Prophets of Rage US tour. We’re doing a warm-up gig down Skid Row in Los Angeles and then the RNC is the first stop on the tour and we thought that was very appropriate, a place to debut an original composition called “The Party’s Over” and to play at ground zero of the ruling class’s little Trump party.
You’ve described the Democrats in similar terms to how you’ve described Republicans during this cycle. Was there ever a plan to play the DNC a week later in Philadelphia?
I’ve played the DNC before. There’s a scheduling conflict with that, but we hope to have a Prophets of Rage presence at the DNC, even if we’re not performing in the streets. Hillary’s not getting off the hook, that’s what I’ll say.
What would that presence look like if you can’t perform?
These are the kinds of things that you just have to sit back and enjoy when they occur.
You’ve said the byline for this is Make America Rage Again. Isn’t America raging already?
Well one of the principle motivations for putting Prophets of Rage together was that the Trump campaign and the Sanders campaign were ceaselessly referred to in the media as “raging against the machine.” Bullshit. Let’s set the record straight when it comes to what literally “raging against the machine” means. And while both those candidacies reveal a healthy and deep-seated rejection of establishment politics, the electoral choices that people are being offered, in my view, are not enough. And it’s important to inject an alternate view into this campaign cycle. Trump is the wrong answer to some very legitimate questions: Do we actually have democracy or do the banks just decide? Who are the losers of globalization and why have they been neglected and discarded, not just by politicians but by the media elite? Is it fair that the rich capture all of the gains of these global trade deals?
Since the 80s, elites in rich countries have taken all the gains of the global economy for themselves and just covered their ears when anyone else talks. Now the rulers of the Democratic and Republican parties watch in horror as voters revolt. Trump has acted very cynically in exploting these legitimate concerns of the electorate for his own benefit and in the process has stirred up a lot of division and racism. And while some of his followers are real racists who must be defeated and shouted down, most of his supporters have legitimate concerns and the only electoral outlet they’re given to say “Fuck you” to the people who have disregarded them economically and not listened to their voices politically, the only choice they’re given is a terrible one. We’re trying to provide an alternate point of view to channel that legitimate rage that you see among Sanders followers and you see among Trump followers.
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Just in the last week, that seems more terrifyingly relevant than ever with what’s going on in the UK, voting to leave the European Union.
It’s identical. What I just said about the Trump thing, I think that is analogous in the UK.
In the same way, it was framed around the idea of throwing off their unelected leaders, doing away with beurocracy. Many people on the right will now feel like they’ve achieved a victory now by voting to leave.
Right. The temple is caving in because the High Priests of Capital are so proud of themselves for creating this globalism that now they can afford six yachts instead of two. But now the palace is surrounded by torches and pitchforks and they’re like, “What the fuck happened?” I think the key thing is that people being legitimately disgruntled by a system that cannot fix itself, rightly believing that the people who own and control the planet don’t deserve to.
What’s your audience for a protest show like the one in Cleveland? Is it the protestors out to attack Trump or those in support of the Republicans?
The most important thing that we have to do as Prophets of Rage is put on a great rock ‘n’ roll show. This is not a college lecture, this is not passing out leaflets outside of Starbucks. It has to be the most devastating rock ‘n’ roll coming through Marshall stacks with two of the dopest MCs in history fronting the band. If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything. The reason why we’re talking about something that has to do with Rage Against the Machine songs, 25 years after the first record came out, is because of the power of the music. So we’ve got to get that right. Having said that, the ire of people in Cleveland has been percolating and has been stirred by this outrageous political candidate coming to his coronation. And there are millions of people who are just like, “Not on my watch. Not here, not now. We cannot sit silently by and allow this racist demagogue to get a free pass in our city.” That’s who we’re playing for.
The fact that somebody like Trump is rising to power, somebody whose racism is more verbose but really no more present than it has been with previous Republican candidates, does that have an impact on Prophets of Rage getting in to the game now?
Of course, Trump should be the leader of the racist party. It’s much easier to deal with it when it’s out in the open. Racism and misogyny are not seen as character flaws in the Republican Party. Clearly. The Republican elites were outraged not because of his racism and misogyny but because he doesn’t follow Republican orthodoxy with regards to, say, gays in the military or whatever it is they find, some sort of New York, Manhattan views about that stuff. That’s what they’re outraged about. They could care less that he’s basically advocating ethnic cleansing in the United States by kicking out 11 million people and building a wall and banning Muslims. That’s basically an ethnic cleansing policy. They’re not at all outraged by that, they’re outraged because he maybe spoke up against some cultural orthodoxy.
So is it possible that Prophets of Rage might resonate more deeply now, in that instance, than before when somebody was dressing that stuff up in nicer language?
Well, what it does is it taints the legitimate concerns of a lot of his followers. That’s sort of the fascist angle. There’s this populism that they get stirred up by: “The problem is the brown people.” Rather than going, “No, the problem is the banking industry.” The reason why white people in Appalachia are going hungry tonight has nothing to do with Mexican immigrants or university professors from Syria who are teaching at Georgetown. It has to do with the belief within the ruling class that they’re the discarded tissue.
One last question. Do you expect Paul Ryan to step out and check out the show in Cleveland?
He’s always welcome! And if he does buy a ticket, I promise we will donate 100 percent of the proceeds from his particular ticket to a local labor union in the city where he attends the show.
Alex Robert Ross and Nik Kosieradzki are looking forward to tucking into some freshly tossed Trumpian word salad at the Republican National Convention. Follow them on Twitter here and here.
