Before being projected to icon status as frontman of Rage Against The Machine, Zack de la Rocha cut his teeth playing in straight edge hardcore band Hard Stance.
Footage has resurfaced of the Rage vocalist playing guitar in Hard Stance at a gig in March 1990. The footage, filmed at Hollywood Live in Hollywood, California, is testament to de la Rocha’s inimitable energy. It’s pure hardcore indulgence.
“The following footage was recovered from a tape owned by the Haworth family and provided to hate5six.com for digitization, restoration, and online preservation,” reads a disclaimer at the beginning of the video.
“The identity of the original filmer is currently unknown but will be made clear in the description should they come forward.”
Hard Stance initially formed in 1987 with de la Rocha on guitar and Eric Ernst on vocals. Following Ernst’s departure, de la Rocha took over the mic and formed the band Inside Out.
The year after this performance was filmed, de la Rocha would go on to form Rage Against The Machine. Rage initially split in 2000, after de la Rocha revealed the project was “no longer meeting the aspirations of all four of us collectively as a band, and from my perspective, has undermined our artistic and political ideal”.
Rage went on to perform a series of shows 2007-2011 before disbanding once more. Last year, the band announced that they had reformed once more, and were slated to play a slew of monolithic festival slots, unfortunately, under the stronghold of coronavirus, those shows never took place.
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Check out Zack de la Rocha performing with Hard Stance in 1990:
In other news, last month, Rage guitarist Tom Morello warmed the cockles of our collective hearts after he gifted young prodigious musician, 10-year-old Nandi Bushell, his signature Fender Soul Power Stratocaster.
The wunderkind musician caught Morello’s attention following a viral cover of Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Guerilla Radio’, performed as a reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests that unfurled internationally in the early weeks of June.
