The ludicrous reason Rage Against The Machine were banned from Saturday Night Live

Authored by faroutmagazine.co.uk and submitted by altruismjam
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Rage Against The Machine were due to make a glorious comeback before the coronavirus pandemic scuppered their plans. The group were set to take the stage at Coachella in April before the festival was postponed following the outbreak.

The band will surely make their return at some point soon and, hopefully, it will be this year. However, one location that won’t be on their touring schedule, Studio 8H at NBC, also known as the studios for Saturday Night Live. That confirmation came a few decades back following a fretful night in 1996.

Like many a fateful act before them, we’re looking at you David Bowie and Elvis Costello, Rage Against The Machine would be punished for their political views and banned from ever appearing on the mammoth show again. Looking back on Lorne Michaels’ decision 24 years later it seems a ludicrous overreaction.

Rage had been challenging authority ever since their first gig in 1991. The group were born out of the fiery angst of an undervalued and underestimated generation and they weren’t shy about pointing the (invariably middle) finger at their oppressors. By 1996, with the dissolution of grunge, the band had ascended to the voice of an increasingly turbulent generation.

When the group were invited to the mainstream TV show on April 13th, 1996, eyebrows were raised by the loyal fans of both camps. While SNL had always been at the cutting edge of comedy, it really preferred that politics were left out of any musical performance and their ‘lifetime-ban’ of Elvis Costello for his mini-protest is a testament to that. Considering the majority of RATM’s popularity landed on their headstrong political viewpoint, surely a clash of cultures was about to ensue.

To make matters worse, on this particular night the show’s host was none other than billionaire and then-Presidential candidate, Steve Forbes. It was a recipe for destruction and one that RATM wanted to add their own ingredients to. According to guitarist Tom Morello: “RATM wanted to stand in sharp juxtaposition to a billionaire telling jokes and promoting his flat tax by making our own statement.”

The band made their statement by hanging American flags upside down from their amplifiers as the took the stage to perform ‘Bulls on Parade’. While it may feel a little tame by the band’s standards, it was enough to enrage the patriotic producers and stagehands were sent in to remove the flags. After the flags were pulled, almost instantaneously, the first performance of the evening concluded officials approached RATM and ordered them to immediately leave the building.

Rage wouldn’t go easy though. Instead, upon hearing of their expulsion from the building, bassist Tim Commerford stormed Forbes’ dressing room throwing bits of the recently torn flag as he went. Morello said that members of the SNL team “expressed solidarity with our actions, and a sense of shame that their show had censored the performance.”

Ever since this incident, Rage Against The Machine have not appeared on Saturday Night Live again. Whether they will again remains to be seen but if they do, we imagine they’ll have a few surprises up their sleeves.

MikeTate77 on June 14th, 2020 at 05:55 UTC »

Wait. So, SNL booked Rage Against the Machine as the musical act, and on the same night booked The Machine as the host? What did they think was going to happen?

mrpoopistan on June 14th, 2020 at 04:34 UTC »

The funny part is that they knowingly booked a band named Rage Against the Machine, and they complained when the band did the most modest version of what's in their frickin band name.

Seriously, people. When someone tells you their personal truth, listen a little. You might avoid a lot of confusion and trouble.

elfratar on June 14th, 2020 at 03:58 UTC »

From the interview with the band:

We planned on playing "Bulls On Parade" and "Bullet in the Head," but there's "objectionable" language in each of those songs. SNL insisted on muting the language during the performance within the studio itself, because they claimed they had to run a "tighter" show due to Forbes' appearance.

During rehearsal, our crew hung two American flags upside down on the grilles of the bass and guitar amplifiers. We thought that is was appropriate to demonstrate that, in our opinion, American democracy is inverted when your only choice is between wealthy representatives of the privileged classes. We already had to endure some of the Steve Forbes skits in which he incessantly promoted his flat tax. As the Republican Convention draws near, he just wanted to keep that on the agenda, and the show was on April 15th—Tax Day.

So anyway, they say we can't have the flags on-stage because it will "offend our corporate sponsors. It's about 5 p.m. and we say, "Okay, we'll take the flags down.”

Show time. We're standing on-stage thirty seconds before we're to begin performing "Bulls On Parade." Our roadies unfurl the upside-down flags. There's a panic among the SNL stagehands who rush to the stage to get the flags down. A melee ensues on-stage where our crew is grappling with their crew over the duct tape on the flags. They're successful in removing the flags. Steve Forbes introduces us. We play "Bulls On Parade."

As soon as we're offstage, the show's producer informs our tour manager that we have to leave the building.

Compared with some of the things we'd considered doing during our promised eight minutes on-stage, hanging two flags upside-down looked pretty pale. They should be writing us thank-you notes for only doing that.