Rage On

The strange politics of millionaire rock stars

Brian Doherty from the October 2000 issue

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It’s not clear who is listening to Bennett and his ilk’s worries that record companies and others are "exploiting the youth rebellion instinct." Nor is it clear that music fans either understand or pay much heed to their favorite performers’ anti-capitalist rants. Beyond the question of whether the lyrics are actually intelligible, one great truth of capitalism is that the consumer is king and often, perhaps typically, uses products in unintended ways. (Just ask manufacturers of model airplane glue.)

This is certainly the case with music, often with comical results. During his 1984 re-election run, for instance, Ronald Reagan–dubbed Ronnie Ray-Gun by punk wags–coopted Bruce Springsteen’s anguished vet’s lament "Born in the U.S.A." as a feel-good campaign anthem. Springsteen and his leftish admirers cried foul and asked Mr. Ray-Gun–if he could read–to read the lyrics, for God’s sake. The song’s lyrics are about a shell-shocked vet with "no place to run, nowhere to go." But who’s to say Reagan wasn’t right to insist the song was an upper? When I hear those notes and that drumbeat, and the Boss’ best arena-stentorian, shout-groan vocals come over the speakers, I feel like I’m hearing the national anthem.

For its part, Rage Against the Machine performs music that eloquently conveys anger and the desire to tear things up; indeed, that inchoate destructive energy may be the real draw for the band’s largely adolescent male fan base. But what the lyrics actually convey is another matter. Not only are they frequently impossible to decipher, they are frequently incomprehensible even on paper. Try figuring out the specific call to action embedded in lines such as: "Merge on the networks, slangin’ nerve gas/Up jump the boogie then bang, let ’em hang/While the paranoid try to stuff the void/Let’s capture this AM mayhem/Undressed, and blessed by the Lord/The power pendulum swings by the umbilical cord/Shock around the clock from noon til noon/Men grabbing they mics and stuff em into the womb."

Politically engaged pop artists don’t like to think about the fact that most people don’t get what they’re trying to say. Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, arising from a punk rock bohemia that saw intolerant, stupid mainstream dudes and dudettes as the enemy, killed himself at least partially because of this dilemma. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine believes he doesn’t have to worry about fan misunderstanding (a much hardier type than Cobain, Morello presumably would just picket that Guess? Jeans store with an extra ounce of determination if his fans weren’t quite getting his band’s message). Morello doesn’t see Rage as educating its fans. He says, "It’s not at all the case where our audiences are empty glasses that we pour knowledge in…a lot of them are pretty pissed off and have got their own ideas."

Do they ever. If you surf Rage Against the Machine fan Web boards, you find kids shouting things like, "Spring break! Woooo!" On one board, an earnest Rage fan gives a long definition and defense of democratic socialism, while another, not clearly trying to be a wise-ass, replies, "Sweden is run by social democrats–All it really is is super high taxes."

The medium is resolutely not the message when it comes to rock songs and rock style. Aping their favorite performers, fans may dress like Che, sport a stylish, pre-Monica beret, or even get a tattoo of him. But that doesn’t mean they’re signing on to Guevara’s economic plan, which helped sink the Cuban economy during the ’60s.

On another popular Rage message board, a fan told of spotting a fellow high school student wearing a Rage T-shirt. The fan engaged the shirt wearer in a discussion of Rage’s socialism. But the shirt wearer didn’t believe it: How could his rockin’ rebels be socialists, since "socialists were fascists who stifle freedom"? The wounded reporter of this exchange noted, "I hope people will actually find out what a shirt stands for before they wear it."

But the other kid knew what he knew. And in the market system that pays Rage so handsomely for its anti-capitalist songs, he’s the one who imposes value on the objects that he uses to create his public personality. No matter what Rage’s members might think, he knows they stand for freedom when he listens to them.