Tom Morello has heard Rage For the Machine jokes, and he’s not laughing. In a new interview with Rolling StoneHowever, Rage Against the Machine guitarist made a point to clarify the vaccination policy for the band’s recent reunion tour, and also addressed ticket prices.
“There are a lot of ridiculous people out there who don’t agree with Rage’s political outlook, who weren’t at the shows, who…just to be clear, no fans of any show in the history of Rage Against the Machine have had a graft requirement to be in the room. Never.” “People say that and it’s just crap,” Morello said.
Rage Against the Machine was originally supposed to tour in 2020, but pushed back their dates by two years due to the pandemic. The band never announced its vaccination policy, but when it initially rescheduled the dates in 2022, many states still had vaccine mandates. By the time they hit the road, each state had raised its own vaccine requirements.
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Morello also disputed criticism over ticket prices for the band’s tour. “I think by this point, I think everyone is familiar with the horrible idea of dynamic ticket pricing. There was that huge hype with Springsteen and this one. Just to reiterate, every ticket for the show was $125 except for about five to ten percent of the tickets, which is what we did. With dynamic ticket prices, we gave every cent,” Morello stated.
“Every penny over $125 went to charities in those cities. In New York City, we raised over a million dollars for activist charities. There was a total of about six or seven million raised in that round in what was basically a Robin Hood tactic. I wanted To say these things out loud because there is so much misinformation out there in the world about these two things.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Morello discusses Rage Against the Machine’s uncertain future moving forward.
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Photo Gallery – Rage Against the Machine at the Chicago United Center (click to enlarge and scroll through):
