rage: Articles/Interviews

Rage Against the Machine

Articles/Interviews

Rage Against the Machine: "The World's Most Dangerous Band"

by RJ Smith

Rage Against the Machine have scorched America with their�Molotov Cocktail of hip-hop, hardcore, and Extreme politics.�� But are they too rad for Russia? RJ Smith moshes off to Moscow with rock's reigning revolutionaries.��

The Russian Revolution was supposed to lead to a higher human species, an evolutionary rold model for the rest of the world. Homo sovieticus. But the downfall of communsim instead suggests that the future may be more Beavis and Butthead than Brezhnev and Bukharin.� In the lobby of the huge DK Gorbunova cultural center where Rage Against the Machine will play tonight in Moscow, black-leather-jacketed teens are pounding each other on the shoulders, mouthing Rage lyrics like they're memorizing English-language tapes. Outsidem truly scary skinheads are robbing grunge kids. Beer cans dot the sidewalk, and the kids are scalping tickets at black-market prices for the sold-out show. We have defeated the Evil Empire! Backstage, in the halls twisty and windowless, you can smell about seven decades of damp funk. A Russian interviewer quizzes Rage guitarist Tom Morello: "Can you explain your attitude toward modern social reality?" Yes he can. Because while the USSR invented agitprop, the 31-year-old Morello's making sure the term at least survives. The interviewer asks him about his political mentors, and you can practically see Morello, good left-leaner, trying to come up with an answer that will be both pro-revolution, yet not seem, well, decom-four bonkers in a country not really in the market for a revolution right this very moment. He smoothly offers the names of Emma Goldman and Rosa Luxemburg-revolutionaries who thrived outside of Russia, and thus without the taint of the gulag. Asked what he thinks of the Russian Revolution today, Morello notes that today is the 4th of July, and ties the original hopes of the Russian Revolution to those of America's Revolutionary War. He brings it up to the present, observing "There's a permanent culture of resistance here in Russia, and I feel pretty confortable with that," before cautioning Russians fleeing the authoritarian past not to adopt the moden excesses of the West. "I would warn all your listeners to closely watch Boris Yeltsin and his masters on Wall Street," he finishes. As the Interviewer pads away, Morello looks quite pleased with himself "Doing interviews is a lot like freestyling," he says. I dare you to ask Nas about modern social reality. Elsewhere, the members of Rage are suiting up for battle. Tim Bob, 27, tall bassist with a shaved head has a good scowl on. Drummer Brad WIlk, 27, is chatting with friends, scoping out the boxer shorts the bnad has put on the contract rider; sometimes, free underwear is easier than doing laundry. Mostly the room is filled with relaxed banter, but in one chair sits 26-year-old singer Zach de La Rocha, staring a hole through his sneakers. He's got his show T-shirt on, with the two comic book eyes staring out at you. Intensely from behind a mask. But you can't read de la Rocha's eyes. He looks far-away, possessed, zoned way low... until he starts hopping like mad. The bnad meets up in the hallway behind the stage, nobody making eye contact, "We're going to teach these kids some iron discipline," says Morello. He means it."People of the Sun," the latest single from their second album, Evile Empire, starts the show. De La Rocha cannonballs from bass-drum level high into the air as he raps a fast-foward history of cowboys and Indians, this time with the Indians returning for blood. Dreadlocks shooting out like sunbeams, he railing about gut-eaters, and suddenly 2,000 Russians are also hopping..well not as one, but as 2,000 individuals. Many are literally figuring this rock stuff out for the first time; they are slamming, twirling, hair-whipping, pogoing-pogoing!-doing everything but the Patty Duke. Rage follows with "Bullet in the Head", a rant against blindly accepting your gang or your nation."They jump, you say how high" de la Rocha shouts mockingly-to Russians! After which the crowd shouts back "Inside Out", the name of de la Rocha's first group. Nobody back in Orange County even remembers them. This is love. This is a little bit crazy. And when "Vietnow" begins, everybody elevates. Morello's deck of guitar effects is out of control; he's part Fripp and part Flipper, Robin Tower sent to reeducation camp. Wilk seems to backshade the beat a touch more live; you wait for his bassdrum like you wait for that bead of sweat to roll down your neck. And Bob, stripped to the waist and jumping up and down, he's a Stakhanovite dream, an unfaltering man-machine. "Fear is your only God!" screams de la Rocha, but it ain't fear the Russkies are registering. "The main thing with Rage Against the Machine is that when it comes to rocking a crowd, no way you can beat them," says Morello's friend Beastie Boy Mike D, when the Russian trip is over. He knows, because weeks before Moscow, Rage played at Adam Yauch's (Beastie Boy) Tibetan Freedom concert in San Francisco, and promptly made everyone forget that the Dalai Lama is a man of piece. How undeniable were they? Standing at the edge of the stage between Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic as Rage rocked 50,00 people, San Francisco Mayor Wille Brown looked like he'd found Buddah. "I love them!" Brown beamed. "I love the spirit, and I love the energy-- I think it's just beautiful." As he shouted this, Rage was blasting "Killing in the Name," a James Brown groove with a fused vertebrae. "I mean," the mayor said incredulously, gesturing to the sea of slammers, the cloud of dust hanging over the crowd, "do you see that scene out there?" If Rage are a band of many ideas, live they are a juggernaut. And if the juggernut has any ideas, it has only one: knock it down. They will rock revolution's children, machine policiticans , and everyone in between.

Since the fall of Communism in 1991, much has been learned about the former Soviet Union. One small thing we now know is that hundreds of feet beneath Lenin's Tomb, a decades-old chamber equipped with bar and buffet was keep for the needs of visitiing Communist Party dignitaries. Red banquets might be too much to hope fir, but surely there was wine-- perhaps the sweet Georgia reds that Stalin prized-- and even song. The time has come to take the party above ground. Today, Russia wants to rock. Its political candidates camp it up with pop groups in Red Square. That should make musicians visiting from the West very, very happy. But several hundred feet above the Politburo's private martini lounge and currently eye to eye with Lenin, Rage Against the Machine seem only very, very confused. "I want to put my hand on him and see him spin," de la Rocha says half-jokingly. He's wearing a T-shit with pictures of Malcolm X and Emiliano Zapata, which says �REVOLUCI�N X Y Z! Lenin, on the other hand, sports a traditional dark suit and a bold print tie, set off by his bright yellow fingers.� After exiting the mausoleum, Morello blinks in the bright sun and readjusts his Havard basebal Hey buddy, the party's over," de la Rocha taunts. The band preaching "the party's over" to millions of teenage capitalists has come to a place where it's barely gotten started, and the contradictions are piling up in drifts at our feet. After Tim Bob departs Lenin's Tomb, he does his Alanis Morissette impression, singing "isn't it ironic?" "I Haven't fared very well with the band's popularity," says De La Rocha. "I'm at Constant Odds with it." "I don't know, I didn't read a lot of books about it, I haven't studied Marxism," Tim says. "But a lot of people died, and a lot of people killed them. And I don't think anything improved after Communism. "It's the Morello Irony. I know he's down with Communism and stuff, but Rage wouldn't be playing here if Communism was still kickin." Just days ago, the band's Russian promoter nervously faxed Rage's manager in Los Angeles to say it might not be a good idea for Morello to wear one of his favorite baseball caps, the one that says COMMIE, because well, kids in Moscow don't like Communists these days. "At a time when critics justly bemoan the dissapperance of politics just not from the pop charts but even from the fringes, here is a platinum act brazenly craving paybacks from all kinds of worthy villians --- Ollie North, violent West Bank settlers, mainstream radio, Pete Wilson, agribusiness. Here are lyrics that plead for class war: on "Bulls on Parade," de la Rocha tells the Pentagon that "tha triggers cold empty ya purse." It's Independence Day, and the aliens have come to free Leonard Peltier. ARM THE HOMELESS, it says on one of Tom Morello's guitars. Another reads SENDERO LUMINOSO (the Shining Path). Plenty of populist acts have made great popular music (the Clash, Merle Haggard, Ruben Blades), and radicals have long tied their ideas to radical sounds (Linton Kwesi Johnson, Gang of Four, Boggie Down Productions). But Rage's music and politics cross at right angles, they work in very different ways. And while Rage's words are aimed through a laser scope, their hybrid of hip-hop and metal strikes like a paintball -- splat -- right between the clavicles. It's fun as hell a head rush you walk away from. It's happened fast as a head rush, too. In 1991, they played their first public show. A year later they had signed with Epic. They released Rage Against the Machine that year, and industry approval was instant. Bill board editor-in-chief Timothy White and Los Angeles Times pop-music critic Robert Hilburn, critical biz barometers, wrote paeans. They landed a Lollapalooza slot. If the Black Panthers, to cite one of their heroes, had packed this much industry heat, today we'd all be eating free lunches.� As it is, Rage have an amazing way of having their free lunch and eating it too. In 1993 they appeared naked at a Lollapalooza stop in Philly, standing motionless for 15 very long minutes with their mouths duct-taped, a silent protest of PMRC. They blasted an important Los Angeles radio station from stage because the station was editing a four-letter word out of a Rage song. And then there was this year's Saturday Night Live debacle, when the band got the boot for disrespecting the American flag. Nobody regrets taping flags upside down to their amps, which outrage SNL brass. "It would have been another thing if that show had been really funny," says Wilk. "But I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup with orange juice and shit out better skits than I saw that night." Ironically, Rage got more publicity for their eviction that if they'd played the damn show.� Give'em enough rope and they'll hang who? Morello on Saturday Night Live It was three years since Rage's 1992 debut, and a rumor was circulating in Los Angeles. De La Rocha had been interested in the Zapatistas, a.k.a. the EZLN, from the moment the indigenous group rose up aginst the Mexican government in the southern state of Chiapas on New Year's Day, 1994. It seemed that de la Rocha had been visiting Chiapas so often, and the label was so desperate for a sequel, that Epic executives flew down to the south of Mexico witha suitcase full of money to entice de la Rocha to return home. De la Rocha laughs and dismisses the story, but even as a fable it reveals a pair of truths. One is how badly Epic hungered for a follow-up. They'd already talked the band into renting a house in the neutral territory of Atlanta, provided them with a single car (the better to tie them down), and requested that they stay until a record emerged. It didn't. Instead, Atlanta put a whole lot of disagreements, musical and personal, on the living toom couch.� "I wish I could say there were a lot of positive things that came out of it, but there weren't," says de la Rocha. "Look, I don't particularly case for [Black] Sabbath, and Tom doesn't particularly care for a lot of the hip-hop riffs that I come up with. But the two, when fused together, make something unique." Beyond their jazzbo tendencies -- de la Rocha touts Wayne Shorter's The All Seeing Eye, Wilk admires drummer Elvin Jones, and Bob, who owns three stand-up bases, want to be Christian McBride -- there may be a few bands which members have so little in common, This is not a crew that hangs out when they're off the road. The differences amoung them are fixed most clearly by comparing de la Rocha and Morello, the two most responsible for the songs; de la Rocha writes most of the lyrics, and together they hammer out the basics of the sound. De la Rocha is explosive and evasive, capable of disappearing for days. Ask him the question Morello swatted over the fences, the one about the fate of the Revolution, and he's endearlingly self-conscious. "Because I had such difficulty getting through high school, Marx is difficult for me to understand. I've got the principals down, but...." Morello talks about issues with self-confident detachment, enjoys turning political talk into collegiate talkathons. He's the Rage member most concerned with the band's image and the business. Buttoned-down about much of his personal life, Morello's far more comfortable answering questions about Mumia Abu-Jamal than about the last book he read for pleasure (Watership Down). On the subject of band tensions he sounds like Warren Christopher trying to smother a flare-up but impolitic de la Rocha comes clean. " I think throughout the last few years we've all gone through a series of ego explosions, and it's been very difficult to resolve them," de la Rocha admits. "The band has gotten very big. It's often very difficult for me. I haven't fared very well with the band's popularity, with the position that I've found myself in. I'm at constand odds with it." One more thing about the suitcase story: it also hints that de la Rocha's sense of divided obligations. He'd rather talk about the Zapatistas than about himself or the band. And sometimes ut seems like Rage matters most to him as a vehicle for aiding and promoting the Zapatistas, whom he's visited four times. He's just returned from his most recent trip, where he shot some footage he's hopin MTV will air. Once while he was down there, de la Rocha, who speaks only English, was asked to teach school so that the teachers could work in the fields. "I couldn't really call it a classroom, it was more like a boarded tomb. It had a dirt floor, and was very poorly constructed out of wood, very desolate in there.. "The classroom was stuffed with 40 children, all the way from kindergarten to sixth grade. We taught basic math to these kids. The supplies we had were minimal; we had to break pencils several times and sharpen them so everybody had something to write with." The lesson began, but de la Rocha had to step out of the shack and steady himself. "I realized that the Mexican government had been spending hundreds of dollars a week just to keep the military force in those communities, when there was nothing these kids had to write with. That shook me. It was a haunting reminder." De la Rocha traces his interest in Chiapas, as well as his entire poltical sensitivity, back to his father. Beto de la Rocha was part of Los Four, an artist collective who in 1974 became the first Chicanos to exhibit in the L.A. County Museum of Art. Their art, full of Mexican folk icons and references to the Chicano political movement, was crucial to a thriving East Side cultural scene. "At home, my father often reminded me about who we were as a people, that we were indigenous," says de la Rocha. "My father helped me understand...the devestation that the Mexican people felt under the Spanish conquest in the early 1500s. I began to draw sense of how that particular struggle and resistance affected my life. The slaughter of it is just so amazing and hidden. Seeing it through my father, in his art work, had a profound effect on me. "so when the uprising in happened in Chiapas and unmasked the conditions down there, I was drawn to it in a way that I can't fully explain." De la Rocha's parents divorced when he was 13, and he lived mostly with his mother, and Irish-German-Chicana studying anthropology in Orange County. But on weekends, Zach stayed with Beto in East L.A. About that time, Beto began a downward slide, triggered by a severe nervous breakdown in 1981. Zack's father drew the drapes, put huge locks on the door, and spent day after day reading a dog-eared Bible. He'd go on 40-day fasts, and when Zack came to stay, Beto forced his son to take part in his delusions. Beto would deprive his son of food, and keep him under close guard while wandering the house interpreting the Bible. "I'd spend three weekends out of the month at my father's house, eat on Friday night and not eat again until Monday morning when I'd get back to my mother," Zach says, his hands making the smallest of movements. "I was so young at the time that I didn't really question it too much. I love my father, dearly, and didn't understand the level of abuse that was happening. I'm not sure that he did, either." During one visit, Zack pointed to a painting on the wall and asked, "Daddy, can I have that?" "Hey that's mine," Beto snapped. And then, flushed with guilt for denying his son, Beto began pulling down all his artwork --paintings, prints, drawings -- and shredding them all. The frames he smashed. Then he took his pain and brushes and hurled them into a trash can that he set on fire. "He burned over 60 percent of his artwork," says Zack. The art that had given Zach a sense of identity was going up in flames. "It was very, very, very difficult, and at one point he foreced me to burn it for him. These were paintings that I grew up around and loved and admired him for creating. I had no clue why he'd want to destroy them. "I am not anywhere near as self-destructive as he is," says Zack. "Although I'm very critical of some things I've written, I value them very much. "I worry more just about what that experience did to me, how it affected my way of thinking. I think it affected me in good ways too, because I feel like at this point what could anyone possibly do to me that could hurt me more?" Hours after he tells me this in Moscow, de la Rocha says he wants to talk more tomorrow, that he was pretty nervous about the interview and wants to expand on some answers. After weeks trying to get him to sit down and talk, now it seemed he didn't want to stop. And so the next day we talked for another hour and a half. Completely about Chiapas: Everything else was off the table. When I'd ask him about his father, he'd talk about Chiapas. But ask him about Chiapas or his poetry or who his heroes were growing up, and he'd talk about his father. Come to think of it, there may be a third lesson to be learned from that story about the suitcase full of money : Chiapas is de la Rocha's release. It's a place he goes when he wants to get away from everything that's pressing down on him -- the label, fame, his past. � �� Thanks for the Inspiration: Beto (your struggle I will never forget) it says in the notes to RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. In recent years, Beto has returned to painting. Limping around a small studio in Highland Park, the Los Angeles neighborhood where father and son, by L.A. standards, live virtually next door to one another, Beto de la Rocha shows impressive paintings and collages in a variety of styles lining his walls. When he sits down, a portrait of Zack peeks out just above his right shoulder. The resemblance --most of all in the curly hair -- is unmistakeable. Today Beto says, "I took [the Bible] to literally." He refers to the commandment against making graven images. "It says, 'Make no image'..... I was an image maker, so I said, 'Okay, I quit." I quit being an artist and destroyed my work. Whic Beto acknowledges that he'd make his son fast along with him. "Wrongfully, and on occasion. He was too young for that." I ask if he's talked with Zack about how those years of Darkness affected him. "I only heard he had remembered this through other sources," Beto says. "We've never talked about it. He'll come around when he's older, like I did," he chuckles. Of what Zack went through, Beto says, "I don't regret it. It's a learning experience."� �� When Zack was a teenager, neither moms student housing in Orange County nor dads East L.A. felt like home - the only Chicanos he saw in Orange County were mostly pushing brooms or picking strawberries. And in his pops largely Latino neighborhood, a Minor Threat-loving skateboarder didnt have much in� common with the homeboys on the block. He was in high school then, perfecting break-dancing moves at lunchtime, rummaging through subcultures, looking for an identity. And its that subcultural signage - the skate-shop clothes, and the traces of Dischord-label hardcore and Public Enemy hip-hop - that he� brings to Rage Against the Machine. Theyve helped him cobble out a sense of himself. Then Chiapas come along, and brought it all back home.� "He identifies with the indigenous people of the Americas,� his father says,� a faint touch of worry in his voice. "That has him in quite a grip.� I feel� like saying something that may not reassure Beto: Actually, it seems that� working for the Zapatistas had freed Zack from some kind of grip. Its brought� part of him, unknown even to himself, to life.� With Tom Morellos genes, perhaps he was born to be the bands diplomat without� portfolio: Morellos father was Kenyas first representative to the United� Nations. Before that he was a warrior in the Mau Mau rebellion that freed the� country from British rule. When his parents divorced a year after Morello was� born (Morello just met his dad two years ago), Tom left Harlem with his mom,� a white high-school teacher, and moved to Libertyville, a town outside of� Chicago.� Perhaps being the very first black kid in a place called Libertyville is� enough right there to insure a lifetime of dissidence. On one hand, Morello� had plenty of friends, and thrived in the drama club (he starred in How to� Succeed in Business Without Really Trying). On the other hand, hed go out to� his garage to ride his bike, and hed discover a noose.� Often in interviews people will ask, "When did you become politicized?� � Morello says. "Well, the second you have brown skin and you walk out on an� interracial playground, your political education begins.� Having a progressive mom helped. Today Mary Morello heads the Parents for� Rock and Rap, the anti-PMRC. "Shes the coolest mother that anybody could� imagine having",� raves Brian Grillo, singer for Los Angeles band Extra� Fancy. Grillo and Morello played together in Lock Up, a leftish, flashy funk� group that put out an interesting record on Geffen five years ago. "When we� were on the road, his mom would send him copies of The Nation in the mail� instead of clean underwear.� �

Morello grew up on Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath, his first concert was Kiss� - there is a shopping mall deep within him. The recognition of it made him� desperate to leave. "You have to understand the area- its a place where if� youre under 18, you dont really have rights,� explains John Rory Eastburg, a� student at Libertyville High School. "Bill Clintons call for teenage curfews� at eight might go over well here.� Eastburg is the first recipient of the� Freedom in Libertyville award, a $500 scholarship Morello and a few other� battered suburban survivors pledged to free-thinking graduates of their alma� mater. (Eastburg protested the cancellation of the schools spring play due to� pressure from a conservative Christian group.)� "Ive felt lines my entire life. And its not just being African-American,� �says Morello. "Obviously growing up, that was one which kind of set me� apart. Then as my political views traveled leftward, that set me very much� apart. Then being at Harvard with the aspiration of being a rock musician set� me apart. Then being a rock musician with a Harvard degree, which is,� surprisingly, incredibly alienating....� The Harvard connection (graduate with honors, social studies degree, Class� of 86) is not his favorite subject; he rattles off other bands with alums in� them (Trip Shakespeare, Weezer, uh, Trip Shakespeare) to show it isnt such a� big deal, let alone a contradiction, for a guy who calls public school� "publicly funded bullshit.� But then, some dissidents are born, and others are made - a personal turning point came after college, when he moved to Los Angeles to get a band� together. He landed a day job as scheduling secretary for California Senator� Alan Cranston. Morello was the guy who would get off the phone and write down� Charles Keating, appointment, 6-9. Hed see the Senator, a dependable liberal,� spend all his time dialing contributors for money. "The underlying principles� are lost in the wash of sucking up to power",� he says disgustedly. He quit� his day job, with a fresh understanding of how money runs the show.� Morellos absorbed the writings of linguist/anti-imperialist Noam Chomsky, and� shares with Chomsky an abiding belief in a monolithic conspiracy among big� business, the media, and elected officials. Whatever his shortcomings,� Chomsky does a useful job producing tons of circumstantial evidence� documenting the American juggernauts involvement in evils around the world.� And Morello does a great job of disseminating the information. With a few� thousand more Rage Against the Machines and Noam Chomskys to even the score,� wed at least have a fair fight.� Thats what I generally think. But then I specifically ask Morello, over lunch� one day in a Los Angeles Chinese restaurant, who his heroes are today. For� starters, he mentions the EZLN. "And in Peru theres a revolutionary struggle� as well, which is also....� "Youre referring to the Shining Path?"� I ask. Or, as these millennarian� extremists are known in their native Peru and on Morellos guitar, Sendero� Luminoso.� "Yeah."� "You feel no qualms about identifying yourself with the Shining Path? Pretty� murderous people.� Its not uncommon that the U.S. press will take a group which is so� threatening to its interests and demonize them, vilify them",� Morello� begins. "You see it happen every day. To use a Chomsky quote,The greatest� acts of international terrorism are planned in Washington....� "Cmon",� I respond, "a lot of reports - not just from right-wing media -� indicate that those people in villages are told that if they want to eat, if� they want to not be shot, they better do what they are told by Shining Path� people."� "I think you should take those [reports] with a grain of salt",� counters� Morello. "Consider the source. And Im not disputing the fact that in� liberation struggles theres often an enormous amount of violence. The� centuries of deprivation and brutality that have been heaped upon people� sometimes has a boomerang effect. Theres been insanely genocidal� U.S.-paid-for behavior on the part of the Peruvian government. When the� mostly indigenous rural poor finally stand up for themselves and take up arms� against their oppressors, suddenly Uncle Sam starts whiningterrorist!� terrorist! terrorist! "� The restaurant was getting dark, the fortune cookies had arrived. The� late-afternoon quiet just made the strangeness of what was being said even� stranger.� The truth about the Shining Path wont fit on a guitar. They are lead not by� indigenous people but by light-skinned Maoist urban intellectuals. They in no� way resemble your average liberation movement. "We reject and condemn human� rights because they are bourgeois rights, reactionary, counterrevolutionary,� � their leader Abimael Guzmn has decreed, and hes backed it up, too.� Sojourners magazine has called them "one of the most brutal and violent� movements in the world today".� "The Shining Path, for its part, frequently� murders civilian noncombatants, including engineers, priests, teachers,� peasants and journalists,� The Nation has reported. Leftists who agree on� nothing else acknowledge the atrocities of the Shining Path.� A few weeks later, at a photo shoot, Morello urges me to check out a BBC� documentary that will change my understanding of whats happening in Peru. He� sends me to a small bookstore in downtown L.A. which -surprise - is to all� appearances run by fringe Maoists the Revolutionary Communist Party. At the� front counter theres a display promoting RCP confreres Refuse and Resist,� which has had great good luck duping well-meaning musicians into playing� benefits that seem to benefit only the party. (Rages Evil Empire booklet� gives R&R a free plug.) Tables are piled with the numerous pronouncements of� Bob Avakian (sort of the Robyn Hitchcock of indie politics - been around� forever, nobody understands him), as well as works by Mao and Guzman.� Maybe Morello just gets off playing air guitar for the last Maoists on earth.� But something about the way hes talking reminds me of other animated� conversations Ive had outside the music world. Who does he remind me of? I� wonder. Comic-book-store clerks? No, Morellos far too self-possessed, more� driven, smarter. Flying saucer enthusiasts? Closer, but still not quite� right. Fringe political sect members?� Who knows. All I can say is, they sure grill you in that bookstore. How did I� hear about them? What was my name? Looking for anything in particular? And� when they asked who sent me and I answered, "Tom from Rage Against the� Machine",� a clerk said, "We usually agree with Rage, but we take issue with� some of their statements regarding human rights in Tibet,� and then tried to� interest me in a bunch of anti-Dalai Lama literature. All I know is, I got� the hell out of there.� The Moscow show has ended. No encore - none necessary. Theres a stack of� socialist realist pizzas backstage, curdled and imposing, ready to be hauled� back to the hotel. In the hall outside the dressing room, teenager Vasya� Gavrilov, guitarist in a local band called Against the Stream, leans against� a wall.� "I have no papers, you know,� he says in broken English with a big smile on� his face. No backstage pass.� To get here I was being like a tomcat".� While he waits for the group to come out, Gavrilov asks me, "Do they really� like Communism?� He says it the way kids once asked if Ozzy really bit the� head off bats.If they lived here for 70 years, they would not play this kind� of music. Only patriotic songs".� �A joke circulated in Moscow punk rock circles just before the election, he� says, the Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov was down in the polls, so he� asked Rage to come to town and help him campaign.� "My friends, we have a joke. It goes that everything rules or everything� sucks.� Thanks, but I think Ive heard that joke somewhere before. "Zyuganov� sucks".� Just then, Morello comes out of the dressing room, wearing his cap that says� Commie, and Gavrilov buttonholes him for an autograph. While he runs up to� the band, I ask him, if hes so un-sure of Rages politics, why is he here? He� just shoots me a look that says forget the contradictions, dude. It says:� Because they rule.