Remember When Rage Against The Machine Covered This Bob Dylan Classic

If you are at all familiar with Rage Against The Machine, then you know there’s no shortage of crushing riffs recorded by guitarist Tom Morello. And one of his finest can be heard on RATM’s cover of “Maggie’s Farm” by Bob Dylan.

But decades before Morello, vocalist Zack de la Rocha, bassist Tim Commerford, and drummer Brad Wilk began raging against a multitude of machines, Dylan assembled his own kind of revolution.

“Maggie’s Farm” arrived on an LP that was perhaps Dylan’s most controversial mutiny. A fitting tune for RATM to cover.

‘Renegades’

On Rage Against The Machine’s fourth and final studio album, Renegades, the Los Angeles comrades interpret the songs that make up their protest DNA.

“Maggie’s Farm” is the band’s reading of Dylan’s folk-rock touchstone. It also feels like a call to action for workers’ rights.

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more,
No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.
Well, I wake [up] in the morning,
Fold my hands and pray for rain.
I got a head full of ideas,
That are drivin’ me insane.
It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor,
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.

‘Bringing It All Back Home’

When Dylan released his fifth studio album, Bringing It All Back Home, in 1965, it divided listeners. It was his first release to include electric instrumentation, and folk diehards felt betrayed. The following year, they were calling him Judas.

However, the album opens with “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, a noisy banger that made one thing clear: The times are indeed changing.

And on Dylan’s raucous “Maggie’s Farm”, we get a preview of the punk rebellion that later birthed a band like Rage Against The Machine.

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more,
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more.
Well, she talks to all the servants,
About man and God and law.
Everybody says,
She’s the brains behind pa.
She’s sixty-eight, but she says she’s twenty-four,
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more.

Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns