{"id":32881,"date":"2017-09-15T07:30:27","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T21:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=32881"},"modified":"2017-09-15T09:43:10","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T23:43:10","slug":"tim-commerford-prophets-rage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2017\/09\/tim-commerford-prophets-rage\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Commerford of Prophets of Rage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cUltimately we\u2019re taking that song to the stage and we are going to play that song better than we recorded it and better from show to show and that\u2019s what me and Tom and Brad have always strived for is to be better than what we recorded and to try to be better live\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

From Release: Prophets Of Rage came together during 2016\u2019s tumultuous election to combat the coming storm, wherever it may lead. Fresh off the road and riled up following last summer\u2019s highly successful MAKE AMERICA RAGE AGAIN tour, the group knew it could evolve from protest performance art with a tactical mission, to a stand-alone entity with creative ideas all its own. The band fused the diverse styles, sonic firepower and hard-hitting social consciousness of their previous work, into an inventive and compelling new musical statement, completing the album\u2019s twelve tracks in just over a month of recording. Prophets Of Rage quickly became as much a shared experience between its members as it was a call-to-action for the world at large.<\/p>\n

At a rehearsal facility in North Hollywood, Tim gave a call to talk about Prophets of Rage, the band, the music, the message, touring, history, and much more.<\/p>\n

So to start us off, the obvious question, can you tell us how Prophets of Rage came to be?<\/strong>
\nWell yeah we\u2019ve gotten this question a million times and part of me wants to give you an answer like well I actually woke up from a dream and there was a rock behind my house and an angel came to me and told that there was a rock and inside of it was an idea, but it wasn\u2019t like that. It was Tom Morello calling me and Brad and saying hey you guys want to jam with Chuck D, fuck yeah we want to play with Chuck D we\u2019ve played with him many times before when we were on tour with Public Enemy in 1991, so yeah we played with Chuck D. Then B-Real, could you imagine how cool their voice would be so let\u2019s do it, so we hit B-Real up and it was like of course, so now we are able to play music from all three catalogues and that\u2019s like thirty five years of all kinds of stuff and then we can mash up anything any way we want it and that\u2019s super fun and easy like Rage was easy back in 1991. We went on tour, played a bunch of shows, played from our catalogues, played a couple of Prophets of Rage and it\u2019s a great P.E. song to begin with but I like the way it sounds from what we did, and we got back how from our U.S. tour and wrote a record and in three months\u2019 time came up with the songs from nothing, recorded with Brendan O\u2019Brien who\u2019s been a guy we played with many times before, he\u2019s more than just an engineer he\u2019s a guy who\u2019s an incredible player on top of that and he knows how to use all the gear, he was like the engineer with Rick Rubin on \u2018The Ghetto Boys\u2019 album and stuff like that that I listened to when I was a kid and it sounded so sick. So Brendan is just an incredible engineer, knows his gear, collects gear, knows sounds and can be like \u201coh I know which guitar that is and amplifier\u201d and we made a record and brought Chuck and B-Real into a completely different recording situation in the way a rock band does it than the way a hip-hop producer has you come in and do it, it\u2019s a different environment and it was fun the way we mixed it up came up in the music and we wrote twelve songs, we went in thinking we\u2019d write a few and came out three months later with it recorded and mixed and it was twelve jams and I\u2019m proud of those songs and they sound sick. I\u2019m super into it and the most fun I\u2019ve had since the first Rage record, so there\u2019s the history, there you go.<\/p>\n

With the new album coming what are your feelings like around album release time?<\/strong>
\nI get excited because I feel like music is more than just the melody, it\u2019s the ideology and I love the ideology and I love to use music to earmark a time and the best way to earmark it the way I\u2019m concerned is politically, you speak up and use your music and whether people like it or not it doesn\u2019t matter, matter of fact the haters I love that more than the people that dig it *laughs* it means that it\u2019s going to be exciting, you know? So that\u2019s it, the music is incredible.<\/p>\n

What do you feel you\u2019ve been able to do with Prophets of Rage that you weren\u2019t able to do in any of your previous bands?<\/strong>
\nWell obviously it\u2019s a lot like Rage because Tom, Brad and I have a sound that we have been sort of honing in for years and it\u2019s partly luck and partly like attention, and we have that sound and it\u2019s something that we\u2019re confident. Then we also played besides Rage with Chris Cornell we became a more melodic band and we learned to work around a chord progression and this sort of thing, and here we are as older more seasoned players and we\u2019re able to incorporate that aspect into something that does have a heavier sound but I feel like it still stays heavy you know?<\/p>\n

Is there a message you want to spread with this band?<\/strong>
\nSpeak up, use whatever you have even if it\u2019s just your voice to speak up and confront things in the world, we live in a\u00a0 world of a lot of racism as far as I\u2019m concerned and if there was any one message it comes out in what you see on stage is ethnicity in this band that I\u2019m really proud of as well and it\u2019s great to come together both musically and culturally and ethnically on a level of art and playing in a band, so whatever it\u2019s all about at the end of the day you\u2019ve gotta use your voice, that\u2019s what this is all about.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen you play with Rage and Audioslave and the musical powerhouse that you are on stage is amazing, any idea of when we will get to see Prophets of Rage in Australia?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t know, man I hope it\u2019s tomorrow I know it\u2019s gonna happen, I don\u2019t know when. I\u2019ve been trying to deal with a guy down there now and you guys live on the other side of the planet *laughs* I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s tomorrow or yesterday but we\u2019re on a completely different time warp but I\u2019m excited and I know we\u2019re all excited to go to Australia and it\u2019s gonna be awesome when we go there because everything we\u2019ve ever done down there has been exciting.<\/p>\n

Over time obviously things change but what is the one thing you\u2019d say has stayed the same over your time making music?<\/strong>
\nWell for me, it depends on how you want to break it down, but for me it\u2019s the bass guitar, like I love the bass guitar and I at the end of the day I\u2019m in a band, I\u2019m a player and I play the bass guitar in a band and I love what I do, so the bass the guitar is the one thing for me that I focus on and that will never change. It\u2019s like I was saying before, the ideology and just the confidence in that we\u2019re not going to write music that doesn\u2019t have anything to say, that\u2019s not gonna happen, we\u2019re gonna always use our music as a voice of culture and that\u2019s what we do, so that\u2019s been a constant as well and there\u2019s a lot of things like that. They\u2019re all given and the beauty of it is when we get in a situation where we\u2019re together and we don\u2019t say \u2018OK this song\u2019s gonna be about this and that\u2019 we get together and we play music and the songs sort of write themselves. Ultimately we\u2019re taking that song to the stage and we are going to play that song better than we recorded it and better from show to show and that\u2019s what me and Tom and Brad have always strived for is to be better than what we recorded and to try to be better live and that\u2019s the ideology of the Prophets of Rage as well and it\u2019s exciting.<\/p>\n

You talk about the bass guitar and I have to say on a personal note I have to say that your bass part in the solo of \u2018Like a Stone\u2019 gives me absolute goose bumps every time, so thank you.<\/strong>
\nOh right on, see you\u2019re one of the Audioslave guys, you\u2019re leaning more Audioslave, I can respect that I\u2019m into that I think that\u2019s cool, but it\u2019s different, there are also those that are down with the Rage part and not into that, I\u2019m loving that too. That\u2019s what I think is so neat about the Prophets is that we do pull from Hip-Hop and R&B and fun and rock and metal and punk rock, but we\u2019re a band, we\u2019re a real band playing\u2026 I lost my train of thought. *laughs*<\/p>\n

I did want to touch on the fact that it\u2019s 25 years this year since the release of the debut Rage Against The Machine album, looking back what are you memories of releasing such a momentous album?<\/strong>
\nWe made music that we wanted to make that\u2019s the main thing about it, we didn\u2019t strive to make a momentous album, we just strove to make the kind of music that we like and at that time if anyone would\u2019ve asked us whether we would be here twenty five years down the road we would\u2019ve laughed and I\u2019m still laughing kind of about it to be honest with you.<\/p>\n

So what does the rest of 2017 have in store for Prophets of Rage?<\/strong>
\nMore songs, more videos, more shows, we haven\u2019t lined up everything yet but we\u2019re definitely going to be touring and we\u2019re gonna try and be better than the show before so that\u2019s where it\u2019s at and it\u2019s a shared experience between the audience and the band and we kinda need the audience. So the shows that are greatest are when the audience is just as good as the band. So it\u2019s exciting, I\u2019m excited, we\u2019re gonna be everywhere.<\/p>\n

Especially in Australia, yeah?<\/strong>
\nLike I said, it\u2019s not on the calendar but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not happening, I say we\u2019re coming soon.<\/p>\n

Lastly let\u2019s look ahead to the future, so finish this sentence for me, by the end of 2017 Prophets of Rage will\u2026<\/strong>
\nProphets of Rage will play shows in Australia and play songs from our new record that\u2019s coming out in a couple of days and be better than we ever were before.<\/p>\n

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Essential Information<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

From:<\/strong>\u00a0Los Angeles, CA, USA<\/p>\n

Band Members:<\/strong>\u00a0Tom Morello \u2013 guitar, Tim Commerford \u2013 bass guitar, backing vocals, Brad Wilk \u2013 drums, DJ Lord \u2013 turntables, backing vocals, Chuck D \u2013 vocals, B-Real \u2013 vocals<\/p>\n

Website:<\/strong>\u00a0www.prophetsofrage.com<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Latest Release: <\/strong>Prophets of Rage (Out Now)<\/p>\n

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