Greta Van Fleet vocalist weighs in on Gene Simmons' 'rock is dead' claim

Greta Van Fleet frontman Josh Kiszka and bassist Sam Kiszka recently sat down for an interview with NME, where they spoke on a variety of things, including Gene Simmons’ sentiment that “rock is dead”.

Simmons recently revisited his 2014 sentiment that rock is dead, in an interview earlier this year in which he was launching his new line of guitars with Gibson.

And he still stands by the statement. 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.”

Simmons continued, “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?”

In the NME interview, the Greta Van Fleet members were asked on Simmons’ perception of rock. Kiszka said, “Maybe the world of rock he remembers is dead. I think rock ‘n’ roll is a very elastic genre, it’s a very eclectic genre. It seems like every once in a while, a generation reinterprets what that is… and I’ve heard a lot, throughout the years, I guess people blowing hot air.”

In Simmons’ interview earlier this year, he went onto point fingers at the invention of file sharing allowing music to become available to consume for free.

“The reason for that is not because there’s a lack of talent, but because young folks, 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.”