Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has responded to Gene Simmons’ infamous claim that “rock is dead” by providing a different take.
In an interview with Heavy Consequence, Tony Iommi revealed that he “[doesn’t] think rock is going to die,” contrary to Simmon’s belief.
“That’s been said for years. I mean, how many times I’ve heard that statement over the past 50-odd years? It’s quite a lot, really,” Iommi said.
He continued: “I think good music is not going to go. There’s always going to be a market for it. There are going to be an amount of bands that fall by the wayside — as there always is, there always will be. But there are certain bands that are going to stick out and going to be there. You’ve got Metallica up there — they’re not going to go away. They’ve got a lot of fans and they’ve got a great fanbase. There are a lot of bands out there. No, the music is not going to go away.”
In case you (somehow) missed it, Gene Simmons has repeatedly stated that he believes rock is dead.
Speaking to Esquire magazine in 2014, Simmons provided such quotes as “rock is finally dead” and “The death of rock was not a natural death. rock did not die of old age. It was murdered.”
On top of that, he also told Heavy Consequence earlier this month that he blamed rock’s downfall on the downloading and sharing of music.
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“That kid living in his mom’s basement, decided one day that he didn’t want to pay for music. He wanted to download and file share. And that’s what killed the chances for the next generation of great bands. The fact that the music was for free. So nowadays new bands don’t have a chance,” he said.
“The point is, yeah, rock is dead because if we play the game from 1958 until 1988, which is 30 years, you had Elvis, The Beatles, The Stones, Pink Floyd, and on and on and on. And you can go to the heavy part of it, which is Metallica, Maiden, if you want to put KISS in there, that’s fine. AC/DC, on and on and on. Even U2, Prince, Bowie, Eagles. And then you get to disco stuff, and Madonna, and that stuff, and Motown, of course. And then from 1988 until today, who’s the new Beatles?” he added.
You can read more about this topic over at the Classic Rock Observer.
Check out ‘Paranoid’ by Black Sabbath:
