Rage, Reborn Dent’S Particular Brand of Populism, but He Does Have a Window Into Its Appeal
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Montage Art, books, diverse creations 64 Next Steps 65 Not “Mickey Mousing” 66 Off the Shelf 68 Cold Comforts 70 Chapter & Verse Tom Morello at a 2016 show in Inglewood, California behind legendary hip-hop groups Cypress Hill and Public Enemy, respectively)—to propose a col- laboration. Their previous proj- ects were all expressly political; by performing those songs again, Morello hypothesized, perhaps they could alert audiences to the dangers they perceived in a possi- ble Trump presidency. And so the all-star touring machine Prophets of Rage was born. Morello doesn’t identify with the presi- Rage, Reborn dent’s particular brand of populism, but he does have a window into its appeal. He The latest act of rock guitarist Tom Morello ’86 grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, a town by max suechting near the Wisconsin border that he mo- rosely describes as Trump Country. He remembers “feeling totally politically im- uitarist Tom Morello ’86 was record in 1992. Morello was furious at the potent in a small town where the options watching CNN one day in 2016 comparison drawn between the Republican were trying out for the wrestling team or when a peculiar headline caught candidate’s pledge to “drain the swamp” and working at Dairy Queen—all while apart- G his eye: “Donald Trump Rages Rage’s anti-authoritarian and socialist ide- heid raged in South Africa and government Against the Machine.” als. So, he says, “I did what any self-respect- death squads killed nuns in Central Amer- The chyron cheekily referenced Rage ing pissed-off person would do: I wrote a ica.” Music was “a tether,” something that Against the Machine, the 1990s rock band snarky tweet about it.” “made me feel like I wasn’t alone in my whose pioneering synthesis of hip-hop’s Then he called some friends—his for- worldview or in my small town.” By the rhythmic lyricism and heavy metal’s gui- mer Rage bandmates Brad Wilk (drums) end of high school, Morello, then a self- tar-driven pyrotechnics Morello helped to and Tim Commerford (bass), as well as described “Spandex-wearing metalhead,” define on Rage’s airwaves-incinerating first emcees B-Real and Chuck D (the vocalists had developed both a love for the guitar 62 July - August 2018 Photograph by Kevin Winter/Getty Images Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE and what he describes as “a great revolu- tionary fervor” to raise awareness of dis- OPEN BOOK tant social problems and arm people with both the desire and knowledge necessary to make change. We Would Have Known At Harvard, this passion led him to concentrate in social studies—an honors program that he didn’t initially realize re- quired significant academic effort. Balancing Facebook’s recent admission that tens of millions of users’ schoolwork and mastering an instrument personal information had been repurposed for political ends posed “serious time-management challeng- dramatizes concerns about digital-era privacy. But long before es.” He often wondered if he was “wasting the Internet, “privacy was the language of choice for addressing my time in the stacks of Widener Library the ways that U.S. citizens were—progressively and, some when I should be spreading the message, would say, relentlessly—rendered knowable by virtue of living playing barrooms across Ohio.” in a modern industrial society,” writes Sarah E. Igo ’91, in The Gradually, however, this contradiction Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America (Harvard, began to appear more like a harmony. Mu- $35). Igo, associate professor of history (and of political science STEVE GREEN sic, Morello felt, was a natural vehicle for the and sociology and law) at Vanderbilt, uses all those disciplines Sarah E. Igo political ideas he was honing in class. As he in a sweeping overview that manages, fortuitously, to be espe- devoted long hours to the guitar—polishing cially timely and engagingly written, as the introduction, excerpted here, attests. At Harvard, Morello In a sardonic poem of 1940, composed convenience, social welfare, or scholarly just after his migration to the United research. Indeed, the proper threshold wondered if he was States from Great Britain, W. H. Auden for “knowing” a citizen in a democratic, memorialized an “Unknown Citizen.” capitalist nation would become in the “wasting my time in Written in the form of an epitaph for an twentieth century one of Americans’ “unknown” and yet all-too-knowable most enduring debates. How much the stacks of Widener citizen, the poem offers a capsule biogra- should a society be able to glean about phy of an unnamed individual from the the lives of its own members, and how Library when I should point of view of the social agencies much of oneself should one willingly re- charged with tracking and ordering his af- veal? What aspects of a person were be spreading the fairs. The citizen…is identified by a string worth knowing—and to whom—and of code similar to a U.S. Social Security which parts were truly one’s own? Where message, playing bar- number…and his life amounts to a com- and when could an individual’s privacy be pendium of details gleaned by employers, guaranteed? As the century advanced, the rooms across Ohio.” hospitals, schools, psy- questions became more chologists, market re- insistent. Were private his technique, gigging with cover bands, and searchers, insurers, jour- spaces and thoughts, un- beginning to write songs—academic work nalists, and state bureaus. discovered by others, felt less like a distraction than “a way to arm The poem’s final lines even possible under the myself intellectually.” Now, he chuckles at point simultaneously to conditions of modern the memory of “practicing guitar for four the hubris and the limits life? What would an ever hours a day in a stairwell, trying to read of society’s knowledge of more knowing society Max Weber at the same time.” this man. “Was he free? mean for the people After graduating, Morello headed for Was he happy? The ques- caught in its net—and Los Angeles, where he played in several tion is absurd: Had any- for the individual liber- bands and worked in the offices of U.S. thing been wrong, we ties that Americans sup- senator Alan Cranston before forming should certainly have posedly prized? To wit: Rage Against the Machine with Wilk, heard.” Could known citizens be Commerford, and vocalist Zack de la Ro- If seldom as eloquently happy? Were they, in cha in 1991. His adopted hometown has as Auden, contemporary fact, free? played a huge role in his work. Both Rage Americans raised similar This book borrows and Prophets are, by his account, “bands questions about those the poet’s questions to that could only happen in Los Angeles.… who sought to know pry open the conten- The music sounds like the city: there’s hip- them, whether for the tious career of privacy in hop, punk rock, hard rock—all of which purpose of governance the modern United are huge cultural components of Los An- or profit, security or W.H. Auden LIBRARY OF CONGRESS States. geles’s music history. But you can also hear Harvard Magazine 63 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE a class tension in the music, where you see dark, slinky funk. The songs mix hip-hop’s on older tracks like Rage’s “Vietnow” and Lamborghinis rolling by homeless encamp- grooving tempos and syncopated backbeats Audioslave’s “Set it Off.” ments on Sunset Strip.” with the simple harmonies and overdriven The smile is almost audible in Morello’s Morello’s ability to channel that ten- crunch of heavy metal, with Chuck D and voice as he happily reports that a large per- sion into his guitar work is a large part of B-Real delivering plenty of timely political centage of their audience is too young to have what keeps Prophets of Rage from becom- observations (reflecting on LA’s homeless- been original Rage fans; he is excited to be ing, in his words, “a nostalgia act.” Proph- ness epidemic, B-Real raps, “Living on the attracting and, he hopes, converting a new ets of Rage, the album of original material 110, four sharing one tent / Can’t afford no generation of listeners. But more broadly, the band released last fall, sounds less like rent, forgotten by the government”). But al- he continues, he thinks of the album as ad- a truly new work than a synthesis of the though the album features somewhat less of dressed to…well, everyone. “I hope the album members’ previous groups: Rage Against Morello’s signature FX-driven experimen- is a clarion call to those who know in their the Machine’s raw heavy-metal power; the talism, his guitar is its strongest aesthetic hearts that the world is not owned and run contemplative melancholia of its succes- anchor. The rhythmic swagger of “Strength by people who deserve to be owning and sor, Audioslave (which Morello, Wilk, and in Numbers”—a paean to working-class running it—and that there is a better way, a Commerford formed in 2001 with Sound- solidarity—and the slithering, metallic an- different way, to achieve a more decent and garden singer Chris Cornell); Public Ene- ti-nationalist anthem “Who Owns Who” humane planet. And if you take that to heart, my’s machine-gun lyricism; Cypress Hill’s keep easy pace with his fiery performances you can be the David to any Goliath.” Madelyn Ho during a playful moment in Esplanade, one of choreographer Paul Taylor’s most famous works, and (right) in his balletic Mercuric Tidings, set to music by Franz Schubert entwined with one in medicine.