Rage Against the Machine bassist Tim Commerford is a self-described conspiracy theorist and that sort of thinking drives a lot of the music he makes. It’s also incredibly interesting, albeit perhaps a bit odd, to hear.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Commerford discusses his new project Wakrat, Rage and a whole lot of other things, but his unconventional take on history and current affairs stand out.
As conversation moved to politics, Commerford said he doesn’t believe the self-proclaimed Islamic State is real.
“I don’t believe that all the different factions in the Middle East have gotten together and said, ‘OK, we all hate each other and we all hate America, so let’s all put on the ISIS uniform and join forces and just become ISIS,'” he said. “That’s a bunch of shit. I don’t believe the Jihadi John beheading video. Go look at those videos and study them, and see if you don’t think they’re fake…. There’s too much stuff that doesn’t look real. They’ve edited out the parts that would be too hard to fake. We created Jihadi John and ISIS so we can go drop bombs.”
Commerford continued, saying that he’s always felt like the lunar landing was fake as well, even though his father worked for NASA on the Apollo missions.
He says, “The one thing I always questioned: We put the flag on the moon. Why did we put a metal rod on the top of it? Why wouldn’t we just plant it into the moon’s surface and have the astronaut pull it out and let it go and we can watch it do its dance on the moon? It would’ve been an image we couldn’t have faked and one that we would have never forgotten.”
The rocker even got into it with Buzz Aldrin five years ago at a movie premiere.
Watch Rage Against the Machine’s Tim Commerford’s New Video Feat. Lance Armstrong
“There were a bunch of people gathered around,” he recalled to Rolling Stone, “and I said, ‘I have a question: You have all these missions to the moon. How come there’s no pictures of the flags on the moon?’ He said, “Well, those are highly degraded by radiation by now.” I said, “You left a lot of stuff on the moon. It seems that somebody with a telescope or satellite would snap a picture of that so we could see it. It’d be on the cover of every newspaper.
“You could tell he was getting frustrated, and I asked him why he put a metal rod on top of the flag instead of just letting the flag out and do its thing. He gets all frustrated and says, ‘I’m just trying to remember what they told me to say.’ That’s what he said! Those were his exact words! Then he and his wife — all plastic surgery-ed up and fake as they can be — bolted out, and I watched them walking down the street and he was just yelling at her. It made him so mad. There are so many different facets of the lunar landing that are just bullshit. It was such a powerful propaganda tool at the time.”
As for music, Commerford is ramping up Wakrat and discussed Rage, clarifying the band is not broken up.
“We are still a band and we still might play again,” he said. “We don’t have anything scheduled right now, but you never know what the future will bring.”
Meanwhile, he said Rage frontman Zack de la Rocha is still working hard on his anticipated One Day as a Lion solo album. And as 2007 will mark the band’s first year of eligibility for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Commerford laughed at the idea of their joining the ranks of those other prestigiously famed musicians.
“If Rage gets inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’ll be interesting to see who shows up,” he said. “I think it’s pretty obvious. I think there’s somebody who’s going to show up and somebody who’s not going to show up and maybe somebody who’s going to show up with an enema filled with food coloring and shit all over the red carpet.”
Read the full interview here.