The song Zack de la Rocha called “the greatest moment in American music”
Zack de la Rocha never wrote a line that meant nothing to him. From the minute the first song on the first Rage Against the Machine album dropped, Rocha was out for blood when bringing some of the world’s injustices to the forefront. Then again, rebelling against the norm wasn’t necessarily a new thing when Rage started out.
For years, artists had been revitalising what the sound of rebellion meant to rock ‘n’ rollers, culminating in the punk revolution in the late 1970s. While the rest of the mainstream was flocking to bands like The Clash and Sex Pistols, Rocha found his calling when listening to Patti Smith.
When discussing his influences, Rocha talked about the pure power that came from hearing Patti Smith’s magnum opus, Horses. When inducting Smith at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Rocha talked about her voice gripping his soul from the first few seconds of the record, recalling, “The opening to ‘Gloria’ might be one of the greatest moments in American music. The piano line and the space within it speaks to us like a dark gospel. And then you hear that voice, and you think that nothing could be this haunting and this healing at the same time.”
Being influenced by some of the greatest poets of her generation, Smith is looking to tear down the allusions of rock and roll, saying that Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not hers. Despite being a song made famous by a young Van Morrison in the group Them, Smith’s version became the clarion call for a new generation of punk rockers.
As Rocha looked on further, he knew that nothing would be the same, explaining, “By the end of the song, a couple of things were made apparent. Punk seeds had been planted, the culture would change forever, and it would be hard for me to listen to Van Morrison again.”
From there, Rocha immersed himself in the punk scene, forming his first bands when he was a teenager in the vein of hardcore punks like Minor Threat. Although the energy may have been channelled correctly, Rocha knew something was missing before incorporating hip-hop influences into the mix.
Paired with the chaotic guitar parts of Tom Morello, Rage was formed out of each member’s need to release all of their pent-up aggression with the horrific sights they saw every day. Even with the huge cultural shift in the instrumentation, Rocha kept all the lessons he learned from Smith fairly close to the chest.
As much as he may have been interested in cribbing from acts like MC5 or Bruce Springsteen, the spirit of Patti Smith turned up in some of their classics, including using multiple expletives throughout the entire breakdown of their song ‘Killing in the Name’.
Above all else, Rocha saw Smith as the way forward when making his first steps into his creative expression, recalling, “She seemed far more interested in creating transcendent poetic moments than fashionable hits because she had already carved her legacy into something much deeper. The movement she helped define explained why people like me could relate more to the Bad Brains than we did to the Eagles. Patti Smith, the poet, revealed truth regardless of the political and social consequences.”
