The last time Tim Commerford stood in front of a large audience, Rage Against the Machine were wrapping up their truncated 2022 reunion tour with a four-night stand at New York’s Madison Square Garden. In the 18 months since that show, the Rage bassist has gone off the grid, and we mean that in a very literal sense. He now lives in a dirt road, mountaintop California house (he doesn’t want us to specify the location) that is removed from the electric grid. He powers everything via solar panels, and accesses the Internet via Elon Musk’s Starlink.
The isolation has given Commerford the chance to focus all his creative energy on his rock trio 7D7D, which also features drummer Mathias Wakrat and guitarist Jonny Polonsky. They’ve released a handful of politically-charged songs over the past few months, have another 30 or so ready to go, and are plotting their first tour. If everything goes according to plan, it’ll be the polar opposite of a standard Rage Against the Machine arena and festival run. “I want to play at the fuckin’ bowling alley,” Commerford says. “I want to play at coffee houses. I want to go out there and do this and not be the guy from Rage as much as I can be that.”
The roots of 7D7D go all the way back to Commerford’s days in Audioslave, when producer Rick Rubin brought in Polonsky to tune guitars and set up the studio during the recording of Out of Exile. The band came back one day after a lunch break and found Polonsky playing one of their unfinished new songs on a piano. “He was playing it like Thelonious Monk,” Commerford says. “I was fuckin’ blown away by it. But [Chris] Cornell told Rick, ‘I can’t have him here. You have to make him leave.’ I think it just made him uncomfortable since we were just coming up with things, and somebody wasn’t just listening, but also figuring out how to play it before we’ve even decided.”
Commerford had a very different reaction to Polonsky’s talent. He called him to jam alongside Rage drummer Brad Wilk, and they learned he could play guitar just as well as piano. “We felt like we were playing with Hendrix,” he says. “He could play any style, any song. I love those human jukebox-type people.”
Years later, when Commerford began thinking about new ways to make music with drummer Mathias Wakrat — who played with him in the short-lived hardcore band Wakrat — he thought of Polonsky. They tracked him down to New York, and sent him rough song sketches they’d created on drum and bass. It took him just a couple of hours to send back the files with fleshed-out guitar and keyboard parts that blew them away. This process continued for months, creating a series of songs gentler and more melodic than anything in the Rage or Warkat catalog. “A couple of months ago he finally came out to L.A. so the three of us could play in a room together,” says Commerford. “I thought it was going to be chaos. But it was magical.”
7D7D has no formal plans to make an album, but they’re been quietly dropping singles online since November 2022. Their first release was “Capitalism.” Like every song in their catalog, it features Commerford on vocals. The lyrics he penned (“It’s ok to take more than you’re given/Even if it might change someone’s life”) are as political as anything in the Rage Against the Machine catalog. “Politics are a huge part of my life,” he says. “I’m obsessed, to be honest with you.”
His views haven’t changed much since the heyday of Rage. “The United States of America has over one thousand military bases in the world,” he says. “Russia and China each have one. We are trying to take over the world, and we are doing it by bombing people in the name of peace. When I turn on the TV and I see the amount of war that is kicking off right now, I’m embarrassed to be an American.”
The 7D7D track “Misinformed” (“This democracy is not for you and me”) also reflects Commerford’s worldview, even though he admits he’s never voted for president. “I used to be embarrassed of that,” he says. “But there has never been a president that I’ve gone like, ‘Holy shit!’ It sucks that it doesn’t matter anyways, because if I live in California, my vote goes to Biden.”
Does he at least prefer Biden over Trump? “As much as I hate Donald Trump and I hate what he stands for, and the racist, sexist stuff makes me want to vomit,” he says, “I feel equal hatred for Joe Biden and for the wars. Anyone who endorses him, to me, is endorsing the military-industrial complex.”
The group’s 2023 single “Written on a Napkin” is about the South China Sea. When asked about the song, Commerford launched into a fiery monologue about that region of the world that touches on China claiming the South China Sea as its territory, the Philippines’ efforts to create manmade reefs, and the vilifying of Chinese president Xi Jinping. “It’s amazing how we can call Xi a dictator,” he says. He also claims Japan has “some of the most nuclear weapons in the world.” (Japan does not have nuclear weapons.)
In years past, Commerford has voiced many fringe theories, including his belief that the moon landing was fake, and ISIS beheading videos weren’t real. But he rejects the label “conspiracy theorist.” “That’s what they say about a lot of people who say great things,” he says. “A better way of putting it is I don’t trust our government.”
The conversation eventually drifts back to 7D7D and their tour plans. Commerford says the band is “75 percent of the way there” and has practiced eight times. “We’re playing about 10 songs. I really am excited to create 45 minutes of performance art and do it right,” he says. “I feel like shows are going to happen in the couple of months. I want to stick to Cali for now. I want to do it like a new band where we just drive the gear in our car and go and play.”
The eventual 7D7D tour will likely be much easier on Commerford’s body and psyche than Rage Against the Machine’s 2022 reunion run. It began shortly after the bassist was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had his prostate removed. “At that time with Rage, I was not there,” he says. “I was very emotional, and that was the hardest part. It wasn’t like the physical side. It was the psychological aspect of accepting that you have cancer. I was turning my back to my amp, and just fighting back tears. It was very difficult…people would ask how I was doing, and I would just cry.”
At the moment, Commerford has a completely clean bill of health but says he’s anxious about any signs that it could one day return. “I call myself Cancer Man. I’m 57, and I’m in the best shape of my life. The cancer will never be gone though. It’s always going to be there. When you have prostate cancer, they test your PSA [Prostate-Specific Antigen] level. I’m at a zero right now. But I get tested every three months. I’m going to be really stressed before the next test,” he says. “This is a different life now. It changed who I am, and in a lot of ways for the better. It slowed me down. It made me just take my time a little bit more on just noticing the world.”
That’s perhaps why he has such a sanguine attitude when it comes to the future of Rage Against the Machine. Frontman Zach de la Rocha ruptured his Achilles tendon on the second date of the 2022 tour and played the next 17 shows seated on a road case. But the group called off the remaining dates so he could properly heal. “I hate cancelling shows,” the singer wrote to fans. “I hate disappointing our fans. You have all waited so patiently to see us and that is never lost on me.”
But as the months ticked by, and a seemingly healed De la Rocha popped up at a Run the Jewels show and a protest march, questions started swirling about the status of the tour. “If there are Rage shows, if there are not Rage shows, you’ll hear from the band,” guitarist Tom Morello told Rolling Stone in March 2023. “When there is news, it will come from a collective statement from the band.”
When news of the tour cancellation hit in January 2024, it came not from a collective Rage statement, but in an Instagram post signed only by Wilk. “I don’t want to string people or myself along any further,” he wrote. “So while there has been some communication that this may be happening in the future…I want to let you know that RATM (Tim, Zack, Tom and I) will not be touring or playing live again. I’m sorry for those of you who have been waiting for this to happen. I really wish it was…”
Trying to get a straight answer about the situation from Commerford is not easy. “There’s four people in the band,” he says. “I’m just one quarter of Rage. I’ve spent the last two years healing. And there’s four people that all are living. Brad just had a brand new baby… Also, Zack fuckin’ ruptured his Achilles tendon. You can’t even go on a plane when that shit happens. That’s a fact. The healing process, as you can see in sports, takes a long time.”
Does Commerford think the band is over? “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t get involved in that. I’m the bass player. I just wait for someone to tell me what to do. Brad said what he said, but he’s one step above me. He’s in the number three spot. I am the low man on the totem pole. That’s all I can tell you. I’m the bass player. The bass players always are the last people to find out about shit like that.”
That doesn’t mean he isn’t ready, willing, and able to get back into Rage mode at a moment’s notice. “When the Rage light gets shined up in the clouds, like the Bat-Signal that Batman would see and would know that he had to go do some shit…that’s how I live it,” he says. “And that feels the best for me. This is the first time in my life that I’ve been able to really remove myself from it and be like, ‘Yeah, I live off the grid.’ And that in itself is enough.”
