In hindsight, if Saturday Night Live wanted a show with no issues, their first mistake was booking Rage Against The Machine as the musical guest on the night billionaire Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes was serving as host. That’s like asking for trouble on purpose, then acting surprised when you get exactly what you asked for.
On April 13, 1996, Rage Against The Machine was scheduled to play two songs on SNL, but they only managed one before being banned forever. They took the stage to play “Bulls On Parade” first. But some initial set design choices kicked off the animosity. The band hung American flags upside down on their amps, but seven seconds before they went live, SNL crew members removed them.
After that, they were supposed to play “Bullet In The Head” near the end of the show. Instead, they were kicked out of Studio 8H and banned for life. A series of events involving the Secret Service had the band out on their a**es faster than they could say, “F*** you, I won’t do what you tell me.”
Guitarist Tom Morello recalled the incident during the 2025 Peacock documentary Ladies & Gentlemen…50 Years Of SNL Music. He explained that the band got through their first performance without too much trouble, besides the flag thing. But it was when SNL came to tell them the show was going long that things started to unravel.
How Rage Against The Machine Invoked the Wrath of Both Lorne Michaels and the Secret Service
“Our dressing room is right across the hall from Steve Forbes,” said Morello, setting the scene following the first song. “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.”
Apparently, Rage Against The Machine bassist Tim Commerford “doesn’t like things like that,” according to Morello. “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.”
Luckily for Steve Forbes, he wasn’t in his dressing room at the time. Unluckily, however, his family was there instead. “So Timmy launches his American flag ball rocket at aunts, cousins, wives, children,” Morello recalled. “Fortunately, the kind of solid integrity of it is not so great. So… it flaps apart, hurting no one.”
Despite being ultimately harmless, the balled-up American flag projectile was perceived as a threat against a presidential candidate. “The hallway floods with Secret Service,” Morello explained. “We’re now locked in our room. They’re protecting Steve Forbes and his family.”
Anyone who was up watching that episode in real time might have wondered, “Where’s Rage Against The Machine?” while the credits rolled over the farewells.
“We get escorted out and put on the sidewalk at 30 Rock,” said Morello, who added that he “still went to the after party.” But after that, Rage Against The Machine was never invited back to SNL. It’s possible they were also put on some sort of secret service watchlist, if they weren’t on one already.
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