For Jimmy Page, Rage Against the Machine is hardcore
Jimmy Page recently praised the live musical energy of the Rage Against the Machine publishing on his Instagram channel a photo of a concert by the American band in Finsbury Park, London, on 7 June 2010, accompanied by this caption: “This concert was a thank you from Rage Against the Machine to the British fans who, through a clever Facebook campaign took “Killing In the Name” to the Christmas number one in the UK in 2009, beating the X Factor.”
The former guitarist of
Led Zeppelin
thinking back to the American group's performance and style he went on to write: “This band generated such intense energy you could cut it with a chainsaw. This was a hardcore concert, I left with a renewed respect for the band.” RATM guitarist in the comments
Tom Morello
He thanked
Jimmy
Page
nei saying it was “great to see you at the side of the stage.”
You can read what happened in that winter of 2009 below in the article we published at that time on the race for the coveted position of number one Christmas song.
It started out as less than a bet.
It seemed like a joke. A small group of people on Facebook who had made up their minds, thanks only to word of mouth, to counter the excessive power of “X Factor”. In short: in the UK charts, for four years, the first single of the winner of “X Factor” automatically shot to first place in the local charts. Fed up with automatism, a small association had arisen on the well-known social network whose aim, apparently impossible, was to subvert things: to bring to number 1, precisely in the week of Christmas, the one that most excites His Majesty's subjects, a tough album instead of the usual ditties. So “Killing in the name” by .Rage Against The Machine was chosen. Within a few days the snowball became an avalanche. And here's the unimaginable: the Facebook group managed to make RATM's single triumph against the decidedly weaker “The climb” by the winner of “X Factor”, Joe McElderry. 500,000 download copies of “Killing in the name” were sold, 450,000 of “The climb” both in download and on “physical” media; it is David's victory against Goliath. Even if, in the end, the only one who really wins is Sony BMG because both RATM and McElderry are its artists.
