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Rare & VintageMore details below ↓
Rage Against the Machine Bullet in the Head T-Shirt
In Stock
$78.00
first-order discount · join the list for the code
Measurements Pit-to-Pit: 21" Length: 28"
Condition Shows character consistent with age.
The Details
Eddie Adams' photograph from Saigon, February 1, 1968 fills the front of this shirt: South Vietnam's national police chief, Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, firing into the head of a bound Viet Cong prisoner, Nguyễn Văn Lém, at the moment the shutter fell. It won the 1969 Pulitzer, became one of the images that turned the American public against the war, and haunted the man who made it — "Two people died in that photograph," Adams wrote later. "The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera." The unofficial printers paired it with "Bullet in the Head," off Rage Against the Machine's 1992 debut — a song about propaganda, which is also what the photograph became for everyone who used it. The treatment is the heavy 90s bootleg style: Adams' frame sepia-washed across the chest under scattered typewriter type, more Vietnam wire photography collaged over the back. Rage bootlegs are their own browse category on Grailed now; the Vietnam-photo prints are the ones that still say what the band meant.
Black heavyweight short sleeve cotton tee with Rage Against the Machine graphic. Single stitch.
Rage Against the Machine, with Bullet in the Head on the front — the band at their most directly political, before the crossover.
Bullet in the Head across the chest.
Sourcing We source these shirts from thrift stores, estate sales, and directly from bootleg and overprint collectors.
$78.00