Rage Against the Machine 3.0 officially came to an end early Wednesday evening, when drummer Brad Wilk informed fans via Instagram that the group wasn’t going to resume their Public Service Announcement reunion tour. “RATM (Tim, Zack, Tom and I) will not be touring or playing live again,” he posted on Instagram. “I’m sorry for those of you who have been waiting for this to happen. I really wish it was…”
On one hand, the news was hardly surprising. Rage is an incredibly volatile band with a long history of dysfunction. They imploded in 2000 after cutting just three albums of original material; reformed in 2007 for a series of festival dates across the globe; and quietly dissolved again in 2011 without releasing a note of new music.
Frontman Zack de la Rocha largely dropped off the grid in the years that followed, but the band announced a reunion tour in 2020 that was delayed until 2022 due to the pandemic. They put 57 shows in North America and Europe on sale, but then de la Rocha ruptured his Achilles tendon just a few songs into the second gig. He finished the first leg of the tour by singing from a seated position on a road case every night; after that, they cancelled the remainder of the shows so he could properly heal. Once a solid year passed without any sign they were going to rebook those shows — even after a seemingly healed de la Rocha popped up at a Los Angeles Run the Jewels show — the prospect of future Rage activity started to look rather dim.
On another hand, it’s a little shocking to see this reunion come to such a definitive end. When they first informed fans about the injury-related delay back in 2022, de la Rocha wrote a rare public message. “It’s been almost three months since Chicago, and I still look down at my leg in disbelief,” he wrote. “Two years of waiting through the pandemic, hoping we would have an opening to be a band again and continue the work we started 30 some odd years ago. Rehearsing, training, reconciling, working our way back to form. Then one and a half shows into it and my tendon tears. Felt like a sick joke the universe played on me. As I write this I remind myself it’s just bad circumstance. Just a fucked up moment.”
He continued: “I hate cancelling shows. I hate disappointing our fans…You have all waited so patiently to see us and that is never lost on me. I never take that for granted. For you I have the ultimate gratitude and respect.”
That statement read like the words of a man determined to finish the tour. It gave hope to fans who had bought tickets to the 38 cancelled shows. It felt like just a matter of time until de la Rocha was back on his feet and belting out “Bulls on Parade” again.
But there’s still a ton we don’t know. Why did Wilk alone write this message to fans? Why wasn’t there a group statement? Did his bandmates even know he planned on going public like this? Do they share Wilk’s pessimism that there’s no hope for the tour? Is de la Rocha’s leg 100 percent healed? If it is, what’s holding him back from rebooking the shows? Did they have some sort of internal meltdown? They’re really going to disappoint all those fans and leave that much money sitting on the table?
The good news is that the 19 shows Rage managed to play in 2022 were absolutely incredible, even though de la Rocha was seated for 18 of them. “It was absolutely explosive,” guitarist Tom Morello told Rolling Stone last year. “It was different and unexpected for the band [to play with Zack seated], and for him as a frontman. It felt, in some ways, almost heightened. And that was in room after room. At the first couple of shows, however, we were like, ‘What is this going to be like?’ The third or fourth show was a festival [the RBC Ottawa Bluesfest] somewhere in Canada in front of about 90,000 people who just went bananas. It felt like the power of the band was undiminished.”
The tour wrapped up with a five-night stand at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The finale took place Aug. 14, 2022. Like every show on the tour, it closed out with an explosive “Killing in the Name.” Here’s fan-shot video of that final encore.
When the song ended, an amped-up Morello threw his guitar across the stage to a roadie. “We love you all,” de la Rocha says. “Check it out. We’re going to take a picture, so everyone smile.” Morello, Wilk, and bassist Tim Commerford then sat down next to the vocalist, smiled brightly, and raised their fists for a photographer as the crowd roared.
The crowd continued to roar as Morello, Wilk, and Commerford all leaned down to give de la Rocha tight bro hugs, looking like they were holding back tears. Wilk clutched the singer for a full 13 seconds. When the group embrace wrapped, two masked roadies lifted Zack up and carried him off the stage. His final message to fans was a peace sign.
It’s likely we’ll never know what transpired in the 17 months that followed this powerful moment of group solidarity. Rage isn’t a band like Aerosmith or Fleetwood Mac that airs their dirty laundry in public. Zack de la Rocha has barely said a word to the press in the past quarter-century. Let’s just be grateful we got 19 Rage shows in 2022. Every one of them was a tiny miracle. And let’s remain hopeful that at some point down the line, they’ll assemble the broken pieces of the band and give us Rage 4.0.