Rage Against The Machine Were Detained by Secret Service After Their SNL Performance

Rage Against The Machine have only played Saturday Night Live one time, due to getting themselves banned from the show, and it turns out that Lorne Michaels isn’t the only person they ticked off.

Back in 1996, RATM were musical guests on SNL, alongside host Steve Forbes, a billionaire businessman who was a Republican candidate for president at the time. During the new Peacock documentary Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years Of SNL Music, Rage guitarist Tom Morello revealed that, after taking the stage to perform their hit song “Bulls On Parade,” the band was detained in their dressing room by Secret Service agents.

The story goes that RATM had their crew hang upside-down American flags on the guitar amps, but SNL crew members removed the flags right before the band performed. Afterward, they were never brought back out to play their second song, “Bullet In The Head,” and subsequently have never been invited back.

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Reflecting on the situation, RATM guitarist Tom Morello recalled what went down when they finished their performance. “Our dressing room is right across the hall from Steve Forbes,” he shared, as transcribed by NME. “Time goes by. A representative of SNL comes to the door and says, ‘Looks like the show’s running a little long, and we’re gonna cut your second number’. And then they leave us alone. That was their mistake.”

“[Bassist] Timmy [Commerford] doesn’t like things like that,” Morello contained. “And he expresses himself. So, what he did was he took one of the American flags and he tore it up and he knotted it into a ball. You might call it a weapon. And he entered Steve Forbes’ dressing room across the way to attack him.

“Steve Forbes was not in his dressing room, but his family was,” Morello went on to recall. “So Timmy launches his American flag ball rocket at aunts, cousins, wives, children. Fortunately, the kind of solid integrity of it is not so great. So… it flaps apart, hurting no one.”

Due to Forbes being a U.S. presidential candidate, Morello remembered: “The hallway floods with Secret Service. We’re now locked in our room. They’re protecting Steve Forbes and his family.”

“We get escorted out and put on the sidewalk at 30 Rock,” he finally added. “You might notice Rage is not in the farewells on that particular show. I still went to the after party [Laughs].”