Rage Against The Machine released “Guerrilla Radio” as a retail single on October 12, 1999. The first single from their third studio album, The Battle of Los Angeles, introduced a record produced by Brendan O’Brien with the band, ahead of its November 2 arrival through Epic.
Getting there had required patience. In an interview with Reuters’ Gary Graff around the album’s release, Tom Morello explained that most of the music had been written more than a year before the record was finished. Zack de la Rocha’s lyrics took longer, and work continued until July 1999. Morello accepted the delay because he valued what happened when the singer, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk played together. “It would have been a tragedy to put something out before all four of us were behind it,” he said.
Commerford described a more comfortable band in a separate interview with MTV News. By their third album, the musicians understood their writing process and could enjoy being in the studio. Wilk felt the result captured more of their live performances, including the quieter passages as well as the forceful ones. That balance mattered to a group whose arrangements depended on the rhythm section moving between hip-hop grooves and heavier passages.
“Guerrilla Radio” preserved that human timing even as Morello altered its guitar sound. He told Guitar Player’s Matt Blackett in July 2000 that the idea for the pulsing intro came after the track had been recorded. There was no click track to provide a fixed tempo, so the delay and gate were triggered from the snare hits. The effect followed Wilk’s performance; onstage, Morello used a tremolo pedal to recreate it.
The solo also combined separate parts. One track used a talk box and the guitar’s pickup selector to interrupt the sound. Another paired the switch with a wah pedal and a Whammy set an octave higher. An Electro-Harmonix Small Stone supplied the phased sound leading into the break.
Those experiments sat inside an album Morello considered more concise than the debut. He told Reuters that the early band had sometimes extended songs simply because another riff was available. On The Battle of Los Angeles, tighter structures gave the material greater impact. “Guerrilla Radio” put that approach at the front of the release campaign, with its repeated refrain and sharply defined instrumental break.
The same single gave the band another outlet for its work against sweatshop labor. The video parodied Gap advertising, linking its promotion to a cause Morello had pursued before the album sessions. He had been arrested during a Santa Monica protest against Guess in December 1997. In its March 2000 cover story, SPIN described his continuing work with the garment-workers union UNITE and the video’s connection to the anti-sweatshop movement.
Listeners had encountered the song before it reached stores. Billboard’s October 9, 1999 issue reported that Epic serviced it to mainstream and modern rock radio on September 29 and made it available online through a RealNetworks promotion that same day. The downloads were temporary, part of a campaign intended to introduce music from the album before its retail release.
“Guerrilla Radio” went on to win Best Hard Rock Performance at the 43rd Grammy Awards in 2001.
