He recollects, “What if he’s saying, ‘Bring the shiteen,’ cause shiteen is the Aztec word for ‘freedom.’ So what if we are bringing the ‘shiteen’ in and there’s no cursing?” Rather than "Bring that shit in," he offered that de la Rocha was saying something else. It’s an extemporaneous remark that Zack makes before the beat drops where he says, ‘Bring that shit in.'”īut that offhand remark at the front raised some concern for certain, before Morello says they came up with a work-around, revealing the remark at the beginning wasn't what it may have sounded like. “The secret underlying reason was that there were no curse words in the lyrics of the song so they might actually be able to get it onto MTV," recalled Morello.Īs the guitarist tells it, “We make the video and it’s fantastic and I’m watching the video in the back of the bus with our A&R guy and it goes by and I’m like, ‘What do you think?’ And he’s like, ‘We’re doomed, because there’s cursing in it.’ And I’m like, ‘We’ve forensically gone through this video with all of our litigation staff and we’re like, 'no, no, no, it’s not in the lyrics. record company was embarrassed that they’ve got this band that is a political Led Zeppelin-Public Enemy thing that nobody knows about.”Īfter three singles ("Killing in the Name," "Bullet in the Head" and "Bombtrack") couldn't make the cut stateside due to the curse words included, the band's A&R rep came to the group with a proposal to go with "Freedom" as the fourth single and allowing the band the opportunity to shoot a video about freeing Leonard Peltier if they could ensure there was no cursing for airplay. The guitarist recalls, “We’re playing these huge festivals over here, and we’re opening up for House of Pain in small clubs in the U.S.,” then adding, “The U.S. record label was unable to break the band due to the curse words that populated their material. That led to quite the challenge as Europe had fewer restrictions and the band caught on fast overseas, but the U.S. Morello spells out the biggest issue right off the bat, explaining, “With Rage Against the Machine we were not going to censor the lyrics for any of our songs for radio, so in the United States, you couldn’t play most of the songs on that record.” Downey about how they eventually found their way around the censorship restrictions without having to censor their art. In a new video for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (seen below) and shared by Spin, guitarist Tom Morello told host Ryan J.
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