Patrick Comerford
The American musician Tim Commerford is best known as a founding member and the bassist and backing vocalist in the rock band Rage Against the Machine, and the supergroups Audioslave and Prophets of Rage. Tim has also been the lead singer and bassist in the bands Future User and Wakrat.
Many critics regard Tim Commerford as one of the world’s most influential bass players. From his genre-defining work with Tom Morello, Zack de la Rocha and Brad Wilk on Rage, to Audioslave, WAKRAT, and Prophets of Rage, his long-standing relationship with the Music Man StingRay bass has established him as one of the most signature bass sounds in modern music.
Tim Commerford was born on 26 February 1968, in Irvine, California, the youngest child of the late Gerry Commerford (1934-2012), an aerospace engineer who worked with NASA on the Space Shuttle. He is descended from a branch of the family who emigrated from Kilkenny to New York in the mid-19th century. Gerry Comerford’s two paternal grandparents, Timothy Commerford and Anna (Comerford) Commerford, were members of this family.
Tim Commerford’s father, Gerard (Gerry) Lawrence Commerford (1934-2012), was born in Greenport, Long Island, New York. He was an aerospace engineer and manager and spent much of his career working on the Space Shuttle programme. His leadership and technical capability played a key role in the successful Return-to-Flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery on 29 September 1988.
Tim Commerford’s mother, Bobbie Ruth (Smith), was a teacher and mathematician from Arkansas, the daughter of Joseph Elgin Smith (1906-1971) and Willie Mae (Murdaugh) Smith. Gerry and Bobbie were married on 23 November 1957 in Los Angeles, they were divorced on 1 October 1984, and she died in 1988. They were the parents of six children:
1, Sharon, married Tom Ragghianti.
2, Patricia, married Kris Kirk.
3, Joan, married Steve …
4, Dorothy, married Paul Ervin.
5, Larry Commerford married Carrie …
6, Timothy Commerford, born on 26 February 1968, in Irvine, California.
Tim Commerford grew up in Irvine, Orange County, California. His mother was diagnosed with cancer when he was a small child, and his parents were divorced at this time. Gerry Commerford then remarried, and Tim lived with his father. Gerry died in Irvine, California, on 3 July 2012 at the age of 78.
Growing up, Tim’s musical heroes or role models were Gene Simmons, Sid Vicious, Steve Harris and Geddy Lee. While he was at grade school in Irvine, Tim met Zach de la Rocha. Tim was 15, and Zach turned him on to playing bass, giving Tim found an outlet in music.
Tim Commerford soon won the respect of his peers and established himself as a tour de force, with his innovative cross-genre style placing him in a league of his own.
In 1991, following the break-up of the band Lock Up featuring the Harvard-educated guitar virtuoso Tom Morello, the band’s drummer, Jon Knox, encouraged Tim Commerford and Zack de la Rocha to jam with Tom Morello. Tim soon called drummer Brad Wilk, who had unsuccessfully auditioned for Lock Up. This line-up went on to form Rage Against the Machine.
With their ‘in-your-face’ politics and bombastic songs, Rage Against The Machine had a successful career. After frequenting the club circuit in Los Angeles, they signed a record deal with Epic Records in 1992. That same year, the band released their self-titled debut. They achieved mainstream success and released three more studio albums.
Tim Commerford’s appearances on the studio records of Rage Against the Machine have been marked with a running joke where his credits had humorous nicknames such as ‘Y Tim K’ or ‘Tim.com’.
Tim Commerford climbed onstage scaffolding during the MTV Music Video Awards on 7 September 2000 and disrupted the proceedings when Limp Bizkit won an award. He was arrested that evening, and a disgruntled Zack de la Rocha quit the band soon after. Rage Against the Machine performed the final concert of their original line-up at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles on 13 September 2000.
In all, the group released four studio albums – Rage Against The Machine, Evil Empire, The Battle of Los Angeles and Renegades – and received two Grammy awards before disbanding in 2000 when Zach left the band.
After Zack de la Rocha left, the music producer Rick Rubin suggested the three remaining members get together with the Soundgarden frontman and soloist Chris Cornell, and ‘see what happens’.
The result was so explosive that they decided to form a new band, Audioslave. They released their debut album in November 2002, and it attained triple platinum status. Audioslave attained a large amount of success, and released another two studio albums. Audioslave played a free concert in front of 65,000 Cuban fans on 5 May 2005, becoming the first American rock band to play a concert within Cuba.
The group disbanded when Chris Cornell left Audioslave on 15 February 2007.
Rage Against the Machine reunited at the Coachella Music Festival on 29 April 2007. The band played in front of an EZLN backdrop to the largest crowd of the festival. At first, the performance was thought to be a one-off. But they played seven more shows in the US in 2007, including their first non-festival concert in seven years at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin.
They played their first shows outside the US in January 2008 as part of the Big Day Out Festival in Australia and New Zealand, and then played at the T in the Park festival in Scotland and at the Reading and Leeds festivals in England in summer 2008.
The band continued to tour, headlining many large festivals in Europe and the US, including Lollapalooza in Chicago. In 2008, they also played shows in Denver, Colorado and St Paul, Minnesota, the venues for both the Democratic National Convention and Republican National Convention that year.
Tim Commerford was interviewed and appeared in the documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage in 2010. The band also performed at the Coliseum at Los Angeles in 2011.
Tim Commerford co-founded the provocative band Future User, together with Jordan Tarlow (keys), Jon Knox (drums) and producer Brendan O’Brien (guitars). He played bass and was the vocalist of the band. For several months, he hid under the SWIM persona on the first music videos, before unmasking himself in the ‘Mountain Lion’ video.
In the band’s first video, the tennis player John McEnroe subjected himself to waterboarding. The ‘Mountain Lion’ video featured the cyclist Lance Armstrong, a close friend of Tim Commerford, while a skate-boarding Tim Commerford appears to inject himself with a steroid.
Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk contributed to Maynard James Keenan’s side project Puscifer and his album ‘V’ Is for Vagina on the track ‘Momma Sed’. Both took part in the production of Dave Grohl’s Sound City soundtrack in 2013, with the track ‘Time Slowing Down’.
Tim Commerford formed a ‘punk and hardcore-influenced band’ Wakrat in 2015. The band also featured the drummer Mathias Wakrat and the guitarist Laurent Grangeon. Their first single, ‘Knucklehead’, was released in September 2015.
He reunited with Tom Morello and Brad Wilk in 2016 and was joined by Chuck D and B-Real to form the supergroup Prophets of Rage. They play covers from their material with Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy and Cypress Hill, as well as new material.
Tim Commerford launched a new project, 7D7D, in 2022 with Mathias Wakrat and Jonny Polonsky. The group released their first single, ‘Capitalism’, in November 2022.
Tim Commerford has been using various Music Man StingRay basses since 2016, a brand he likes since his beginnings with Rage Against The Machine. MusicMan released several custom Artist Series basses in 2021. He previously used Fender Jazz Basses with Fender Precision Bass necks and Lakland basses.
Tim Commerford married his long-time girlfriend, Aleece Dimas, an AIDS activist and medical professional, in 2001. They are the parents of two sons, Xavier Commerford and Quentin Commerford. The couple announced in November 2018 they were divorcing.
Tim Commerford is a self-described ‘conspiracy theorist’. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2015, he claimed that the Moon landing was faked and he confronted Buzz Aldrin about it at a John Cusack movie premiere. He revealed a year ago (December 2022) he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier that year, and that he had surgery before going on tour with Rage Against the Machine that summer.
