Gene Simmons has once again made the bold claim that rock is dead, and this time he’s blaming “young fans”.
After first declaring that “rock is finally dead” way back in 2014, Simmons has doubled down on his comments in a new radio interview.
Speaking on New York’s Q104.3 radio station (via Blabbermouth), Simmons was asked whether he meant his original comment in terms of radio airplay or streaming numbers.
In response, he said: “In all ways. And the culprits are the young fans. You killed the thing that you love. Because as soon as streaming came in, you took away a chance for the new great bands who are there in the shadows, who can’t quit their day job ’cause you can’t make a dime putting your music out there, because when you download stuff, it’s one-hundredth or one-thousandth of one penny. And so you’ve gotta have millions to millions, and even billions of downloads before you can make a few grand. And the fans have killed that thing.”
He continued: “So the business is dead. And that means that the next Beatles or the next whoever is never gonna get the chance that we did. We had record companies that gave us millions of dollars so we can make records and tour, and not worry about a nine-to-five [job]. Because when you’re worried about nine-to-five, you don’t have the time to sit there and devote to your art, whatever that is.”
Simmons went on to imply that the death of rock began in the late 1980s when illegal downloading “started to [happen].”
“We’re gonna play a game. 1958 until 1988 — that’s 30 years. During that time, you got Elvis Presley, The Beatles, [Jimi] Hendrix, The [Rolling] Stones, just thousands of bands. You had [David] Bowie, you had Prince, U2, maybe us [Kiss] in the ’70s, AC/DC, METALLICA, and on and on and on. And disco, you had Madonna and Motown — great black music — forever. From 1988 until today, who’s the new Beatles? That’s more than 30 years. That’s around the time when Napster and all that [illegal downloading] stuff started to [happen],” he said.
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“The fox goes in and steals that first egg from the chicken coop, and when the fox isn’t killed, all the other foxes say, ‘Hey, we can get eggs for free.’ Before you know it, the farmer’s out of business, and there are no more eggs in the grocery stores. The grocery store goes out of business, the trucks that deliver the chickens and the eggs go out of business, just ’cause you didn’t kill that first fox that came in to steal the eggs,” he concluded.
Check out Gene Simmons discussing “young fans” being to blame for the death of rock:
