Rage Against the Machine - Take the Power Back
The movements in motion with massive militant poetry.
Album: Rage Against the Machine [debut album]
Recorded: Van Nuys, California
Genre: Metal, Alternative Metal, Rap Metal
Album Release: November 6th 1992
Length: 5:36
Producer: Rage Against the Machine & GGGarth
Vocalist: Zach De La Rocha [age 22]
Label: Epic Records [subsidiary of Sony]
Official Audio
Live in Chicago
Live in 1993
Charts, Streams & Sales
Australia (albums): 5x platinum
Dutch (albums): #5 [1x platinum]
France (albums): #8 [1x platinum]
Japan (albums): 1x gold
UK (albums): 3x platinum
USA (albums): 3x platinum
Spotify: 76,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 24,000,000 +
Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time: #24
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2020): #221
Credits
Bass, drums, guitar
Details
- 'Take the Power Back' is about how the education system cultures students to see the world in a way that benefits the dominant class.
- The track features slap bass.
- Rage Against the Machine are self described communists and as such believe in an ongoing class struggle between the proletariat, the workers, and the bourgeoisie, the employers. The ostensible aim of their music is to therefore expand the knowledge of the workers so they will rise up and cast off their chains.
- Despite their revolutionary bravado RATM are signed to a subsidiary of Sony and, as such, list themselves as "guilty parties" in the liner notes of their albums. While it's true that you have to be a capitalist to survive in a capitalist system does that mean you have to sign for a major label when other bands have plenty of success with independents? Do you have to make millions for the masters that keep your brothers and sisters in chains?
On the face of it, RATM are a perfect band for an independent label because of their uncompromising, stick it to the system attitude but really what angry, young men want is to be heard and signing with a major gave them the platform they craved. With the entire world listening they could hopefully, bring about some real change. Of course, it wouldn't hurt if they made a few million while they were at it.
It's also surprising that Epic Records allowed RATM to speak about their political beliefs so openly. On 'Take the Power Back' the band say they "see through the red, white and blue disguise" which is an anti-American sentiment and also claim that the system only care about one culture, which most likely refers to white Americans. In the late 60's, this kind of divisive and inflammatory lyricism would get you banned from TV but had become a unique selling point by the early 90's. Ultimately, a multinational corporation will sell what people want to buy because they are driven by the profit motive. In capitalism, it's the bottom line that speaks loudest and RATM had a huge buzz surrounding them after the release their 1991 demo tape.
So a Faustian pact was formed, a deal with the devil was struck, a marriage of convenience consecrated between a revolutionary communist band and their capitalist overlords. Rage Against the Machine and Sony made strange bedfellows and both of them used each other to get what they wanted. Rage got a platform and everybody got paid. I don't mind Rage making a profit but did they have to make millions for Sony when a label like Matador or Sub Pop would have been able to adequately promote them?
I'd expect the greedy capitalist to sell out for money but I'd expect more of the militant revolutionary communists. I'm disappointed in RATM because they made millions in profit for a corporation unnecessarily and in doing so allowed themselves to become the product. It's like Che Guevara taking up arms to overthrow the bourgeoisie while at the same time mass producing replica busts featuring his likeness to sell at inflated prices on the free market.
If I was in LA, and so inclined, I could go the mansion of revolutionary communist, and RATM guitarist, Tom Morello and see what government he was planning to overthrow this week. Also, now that Rage have made their money, if they were really communists why do they continue to sell merchandise on their website? They are, ludicrously, communists with merchandise! I'm not joking. You can get a RATM camo anorak for £75 online and a RATM ski mask for the cheap, cheap price of only £30.
To the people who say RATM don't want to overthrow the system they want to revise it I say in this very song 'Take the Power Back', the band use the words "The movements in motion with massive militant poetry." MILITANT! As in through the use of force, which would involve killing people. You don't have to get out the grenades to make a few slight adjustments.
Zach de la Rocha actively supported the militant Zapatista's in Mexico, even going as far as traveling to Mexico to engage in political activism. I concede the band do not actively seek to overthrow the American government through action but their rhetoric and outlook that support it are of a militant tendency.
In 2012, de la Rocha said of the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan "Paul Ryan's love for Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. You see, the super rich must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while millions of children in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night."
It would be reasonable to assume Zach de la Rocha, who has had two number one albums in the US, and whose band have sold millions of records worldwide, is most likely a millionaire himself. If that doesn't make him super rich, he's at the very least rich. The notoriously unreliable net worth sites online list de la Rocha's wealth at $25m. If the true number is one tenth of that is still leaves him with $2.5m. Is this not rich? If so, what makes him different than the Paul Ryan he so clearly disdains? Zach specifically stated Ryan's wealth as the reason why he is the embodiment of the machine his music rages against. The same online net worth sites estimate Ryan's wealth at $8m.
According to the Kiplinger personal finance company having a net worth of $2.7m puts you in the top 2% of America's richest people. I personally don't begrudge RATM making money from music, but if you present yourself as a revolutionary communist and are also a part of the 5% of richest Americans then it undermines your position. Maybe this is why the band split in 2000.
Artwork
