Rage Against the Machine were locked in a room by US Secret Service after their 1996 SNL performance – after Tim Commerford planned to throw a balled up US flag at presidential candidate Steve Forbes
Rage Against the Machine once found themselves in a tense standoff with the US Secret Service following a controversial performance on Saturday Night Live.
Appearing as musical guests on the 13 April, 1996, episode of SNL, which was hosted by centi-millionaire and then-presidential candidate Steve Forbes, RATM were ready to bring their signature rebellious energy to the stage.
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Recalling the incident in a new documentary titled Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years Of SNL Music [via NME], guitarist Tom Morello describes the series of chaotic events that followed their performance of Bulls On Parade.
“One thing I think is very important is to weave your convictions into your vocation, whatever it is, whether you’re directing a film or running a camera or playing guitar in a rock ‘n’ roll band,” Morello begins.
“And for a band like Rage, SNL was a perfect opportunity to do that. Being on SNL was something that was valued. It was a part of the DNA of American culture and entertainment. So, when the offer came to be on it, we were like, ‘We’d be happy to.’ But Rage never did things in a normal way. So, we were thinking, like, ‘how do we make this into some sort of crazy performance art thing?’”
“We heard that Steve Forbes was going to be the host. He had just been a Republican candidate for president. He’s Forbes of Forbes magazine, one of the richest people in America, and one of the driest and most boring humans to ever walk the face of the earth… Let’s see how that works out.”
During the rehearsal, the band displayed upside-down American flags on their amplifiers, and were told to remove them because it wouldn’t sit well with advertisers: “We were like, ‘You invited Rage Against the Machine, the ‘fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me’ band,” Morello recalls.
“So, the night of the show comes, and our roadies are primed … We’re about to rock Bulls On Parade and our roadies put the upside-down flags back up onto the amplifiers. The stage manager is barking into his headset like, ‘Take those down right now!’ Our roadies have been told to like, defend the perimeter.”
“There’s 35 seconds ‘till we’re live. The stage manager sends the SNL crew. There’s a quick scrum onstage. Unfortunately, the burly New York City union men are able to wrestle the flags off of the amplifiers with seven seconds to go before we go live.”
After delivering a “rockin’ performance”, the members went back to their dressing room – where it’s right across the hall from Forbes’ – and “it’s tense,” Morello says. The band was eventually told that their scheduled performance of Bullet In The Head had been cancelled.
“And then they leave us alone. That was their mistake. [Bassist] Timmy [Commerford] doesn’t like things like that. And he expresses himself. So, what he did was he took one of the American flags and he tore it up and he knotted it into a ball. You might call it a weapon. And he entered Steve Forbes’ dressing room across the way to attack him.”
“Steve Forbes was not in his dressing room, but his family was. So Timmy launches his American flag ball rocket at aunts, cousins, wives, children. Fortunately, the kind of solid integrity of it is not so great. So … it flaps apart, hurting no one.”
“However, did I mention before that Steve Forbes had just been a presidential candidate? The hallway floods with Secret Service. We’re now locked in our room,” Morello continues. “They’re protecting Steve Forbes and his family.”
“We get escorted out and put on the sidewalk at 30 Rock. You might notice Rage is not in the farewells on that particular show,” says the guitarist. “I still went to the after party [Laughs].”
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