Tom Morello has heard those Rage For the Machine jokes, and isn’t laughing. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the Rage Against the Machine guitarist made a point to clarify the vaccination policy for the band’s recent reunion tour, and also addressed the pricing of tickets.
“There’s a lot of ridiculous people who disapprove of Rage’s political outlook, who were not at the shows, who… just to be clear, no fans at any show in the history of Rage Against the Machine have ever had a vaccination requirement to be in the room. Ever. People say that and it’s just foolish,” Morello said.
Rage Against the Machine were originally supposed to tour in 2020, but pushed back their dates by two years due to the pandemic. The band never declared its own specific vaccination policy, but when they initially rescheduled dates in 2022 several states did still have vaccine mandates in place. By the time they did hit the road, however, every state had lifted their vaccine requirements.
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Morello also pushed back at criticism over the ticketing prices for the band’s tour. “I think by this point, I think everybody is familiar with the awful idea of dynamic ticket pricing. There was that big uproar with Springsteen and this one and that one. Just to reiterate, every ticket for the show was $125 with the exception of about five to ten percent of tickets, which we did the dynamic ticket prices with, and gave away 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 organization charities. There was a total of about six or seven million raised on that tour in what was basically a Robin Hood tactic. I wanted to say those things out loud since there was a lot of misinformation in the world about those two things.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Morello discussed Rage Against the Machine’s uncertain future going forward.
Photo Gallery – Rage Against the Machine at Chicago’s United Center (click to enlarge and scroll through):
