Tom Morello replied to Elon Musk making fun of Rage Against The Machine on X.
“Funny cuz Elon was the kid on the cover of ‘Evil Empire,'” the guitarist wrote in his post, sharing the album cover of RATM’s second album, ‘Evil Empire.’
“Why are so many people raging FOR the machine?” Musk had asked on X with a laughing emoji.
The album cover shows a modified painting of the comic book hero Crimebuster by Mel Ramos. The ‘c’ on the boy’s costume was changed to a lowercase ‘e’, and the title was changed to the album’s name.
The boy is Ari Meisel, who was 11 at the time. He said the original painting was a birthday gift from Ramos. Barbara Kruger also made some of the album’s artwork, which can be seen in the ‘Bulls on Parade’ video.
“The image of the second record was a little more ironic, you know? Considering if you look very closely at the boy’s face, he symbolizes the power structure in the U.S.—and if you look at him, he’s smiling as if he’s in control—but if you look deeper into his face, you see that he’s afraid, because he knows what’s coming,” Zack de la Rocha previously said of the album cover.
The frontman added, “He knows that poor people in the U.S. are not going to suffer in the way that they are suffering without taking action.”
“Actually, I didn’t model nor meet the band,” Meisel discussed his appearance on the cover. “My father was and is an art dealer and he represented the painter, Mel Ramos. Mel painted the original painting of me, entitled CrimeBusters, as a birthday present for me when I turned 11. The group saw the painting in a book of Mel’s and liked it, then adapted it for their album cover.”
Meisel also said he was never a Rage Against The Machine fan. Many people made that connection when the album arrived, but he isn’t.
Funny cuz Elon was the kid on the cover of Evil Empire https://t.co/RaUhHANxxV pic.twitter.com/SNxUM3ZzGx
— Tom Morello (@tmorello) September 16, 2024
