The Story
Zack's involvement started with his hardcore band, Inside Out. Vic, the band's guitarst (at the time) wrote up a timeline of the band's activities. Read it here.
I suppose "Rage Against the Machine" goes all the way back to when Zack de la Rocha and Tim Commerford were in elementary school. They met when Zack taught Tim how to rip off food from the college cafeteria, and a friendship soon followed. Since Zack had an obvious interest in music, he naturally introduced his friend to it - this is when Tim started playing bass. Over time, Zack was involved in the hardcore scene in Huntington Beach and played guitar for a straight edge band called "Hardstance", and eventually a hardcore band that became nationally popular, "Inside Out". All the while, Tom Morello was in Libertyville, Illinois practicing guitar and playing in high school garage bands, like "Electric Sheep" which he founded with Tool guitarist Adam Jones. Tom had moved to Los Angeles from Illinois under the impression that L.A. was the place to go in order to get a real "rock band" going. Tom first saw Zack rapping with some of his friends at a club, but the PA was so bad, he couldn't get the full magnitude of why Zack was so angry. Later when Tom looked through his lyric book, he realized what Zack was all about. Now, Tom knew Brad Wilk previously, because Brad responded to an ad looking for a drummer that Tom put out. Zack brought Tim back into the picture, and things began to take place.
The band's first "gig" was in the living room of one of Tim's friends in Huntington Beach, CA. The band played only 5 and 1/2 songs that they had written, but the audience liked it so much, they made them repeat them. They decided that they had something going for themselves, so they decided to put 12 songs they had written onto a self-produced demo tape they recorded at a local recording studio. They started playing shows around the L.A. area, and eventually sold 5,000 copies of the demo tape. They were beginning to gain attention around the music scene, and they were lucky enough to support Porno For Pyros on their first major performance. They got on the second stage of Lollapalooza II, in L.A. California, where a corporate record scout spotted them. They were signed onto Epic's label (a division of Sony), and continued touring while they started recording "Rage Against the Machine". They began their first European tour with Suidical Tendancies, until October of '92. Rage Against the Machine was released on Epic, which remained the Billboard top 200 chart for 89 weeks. They went on tour, where they did several benefit concerts for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, The Anti-Nazi league and the "Rock for Choice" benefit. In '93, they appeared at Lollapalooza again. In Philidelphia, they further elevated the notoriety, when they created a protest against censorship and the PMRC, by standing on stage completely naked for a total of 14 minutes, with the bass and guitar feedback buzzing. They put duct tape over their mouths, and the letters, "P" "M" "R" "C" written on the four band members chests. Tom said, "It was to show that if the fans didn't take matters into their own hands, they wouldn't be able to see bands like us." It wasn't meant to be a "feel good" protest. It was to wake people up to a reality haunting the artistic community.