Guerrilla Radio is a song by Rage Against the Machine released on October 12, 1999 as the lead single from their album The Battle of Los Angeles. It became the band’s only Billboard Hot 100 song, charting at #69. The band won the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance for this song.
“Guerrilla Radio” made its live debut on September 11, 1999, at the Oxford Zodiac in England. It was performed live on the Late Show with David Letterman in 1999. The performance was controversial due to Zack de la Rocha giving the middle finger on live TV and wearing a “Free Mumia Abu-Jamal” T-shirt.
The music video was shot by production company Squeak Pictures in Los Angeles in October 1999 and directed by Honey, i.e., the husband-and-wife directorial team of Laura Kelly and Nicholas Brooks.
The music video, which touches upon consumer culture and the exploitation of garment workers, parodies the popular late ’90s Gap commercials directed by Pedro Romhanyi. These ads featured attractive young people wearing Gap clothing singing songs against a white backdrop. The phrase “everybody in denial” is a play on “everybody in khaki”, which was a Gap TV ad campaign at the time. The workers featured in the video were union members of the United States and Canada trade union for needletraders, industrial, and textile employees UNITE (now UNITE HERE) as themselves.
Tracklist:
- Guerrilla Radio
- The Ghost of Tom Joad
- No Shelter
- Freedom
Credits:
Rage Against the Machine
Zack de la Rocha: vocals
Tom Morello: guitars
Tim Commerford (credited as “Y. tim K.”): bass
Brad Wilk: drums
