The “machine” that left-leaning political rap-rockers Rage Against the Machine were raging against during their ’90s heyday encompassed many things. Corporate-owned TV networks definitely fit under that umbrella, as did billionaire Republican presidential candidates. So it’s really no surprise what happened on April 13, 1996, when Rage got themselves banned from Saturday Night Live.
Hosting SNL that night was Steve Forbes, who had recently ended his campaign for president. The wealthy publishing executive’s political beliefs—including his endorsement of a “flat tax” system—were diametrically opposed to those of Rage Against the Machine, who’d been spewing revolutionary rhetoric since forming in 1991. Rage were vocally anti-authoritarian and pro-worker, and their signature song, 1992’s “Killing In the Name Of,” features the lyric, “F**k you, I won’t do what you tell me!”
Rage were on SNL to promote their sophomore album, Evil Empire, and on a run-through of the show on Thursday, they hung upside-down American flags on their amplifiers. This did not sit well with the show’s producers, who ordered the flags to be removed.
“They’re like, ‘Ah, you can’t do that because Steve Forbes and because of advertisers and this, that, and the other,” Rage guitarist Tom Morello told Talib Kweli on an episode of People’s Party.
Morello and company weren’t just trying to shock people. Traditionally, the upside-down flag signals distress, and Rage believed American democracy was under attack.
“The inverted flags represented our contention that American democracy is inverted when what passes for democracy is an electoral choice between two representatives of the privileged class,” Morello said in a press release issued via Rock Out Against Censorship. “America’s expression is inverted when you’re free to say anything you want to say until it upsets a corporate sponsor. Finally, this was our way of expressing our opinion about the show’s host, Steve Forbes.”
Just before the band was due on stage on Saturday night, during the live SNL broadcast, Rage’s roadies—or Evil Empire producer Brendan O’Brien, according to some sources, including Alternative Press—attempted to re-hang the forbidden flags. According to Morello, there was a “scrum” between NBC’s stagehands and the band’s crew, and in the end, the flags were torn down mere seconds before Forbes uttered the phrase, “Ladies and gentlemen, Rage Against the Machine.”
“Nobody really scrapped like I’d hoped they would,” Morello told Kweli, explaining that Rage had instructed their roadies to defend the flags at all costs.
Despite the absence of the flags, Rage turned in a spirited performance of “Bulls on Parade.”
Sometime later, the show’s producers informed them that their second song was cut for time. Fuming over NBC’s censorship, Rage bass player Tim Commerford ripped up one of the flags and threw it into Forbes’ dressing room (which was just across the hall from their own).
The former presidential candidate was still under Secret Service protection, Morello told Kweli, making this an especially provocative move. (Although Forbes himself was not in the dressing room, members of his family were.) As a consequence, Rage was told they had to leave the building—immediately.
“I was on the sidewalk in front of NBC while Steve Forbes was saying goodnight or trying to do a skit,” Morello told Kweli.
While Morello came away from the experience with a great story, he might have had an even better one if Rage had been allowed to play that second song.
“I was talking to [Rage singer] Zack [de la Rocha] about Plan B before we played,” Morello told Alternative Press. “I suggested that somewhere during the song that General Electric—who [owned] NBC [at the time]—made weapons that committed war crimes in the Gulf. It’s a general aesthetic of the inverted flag wouldn’t do, then let’s aim for the head. Unfortunately, we decided to wait for the second song.”
“If they only had a clue about some of the things that we were thinking of doing,” Morello added, “they probably would’ve thanked us for only turning flags upside down.”
