Kiss bassist Gene Simmons sat down with Rockast to add new words to his ‘rock is dead’ theory. During the interview, the rocker touched on the lack of iconic musicians in today’s music such as The Beatles. He said:
“The problem is you can download and fileshare and the artists get nothing. So before the internet and before downloading and filesharing from 1958 to 1988 is 30 years. You have Elvis, The Beatles, Rolling Stones Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and many things. In disco you had Madonna, in the heavy stuff you had Metallica, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, you had all the heavy [music.] In black music, you had Motown, a lot of exciting things.”
“From 1988 until today where are the new Beatles? Where’s Elvis? So once you don’t pay for something the new artists can’t quit their job. You have to stop working at a regular job so you can put in the time to become really good at what you do and that takes a lot of time. But if you can’t pay the bills, there’s not enough money when you put out new music on the internet, you make nothing.”
It started when Simmons claimed rock was dead back in 2014. In his chat with Esquire, he said:
“Once you had a record company on your side, they would fund you, and that also meant when you toured they would give you tour support. There are still record companies, and it does apply to pop, rap, and country to an extent. But for performers who are also songwriters — the creators — for rock music, for the soul, for the blues — it’s finally dead. The point is, yeah, rock is dead.”
He also added the same words he said during the recent interview. Since then, the bassist has been repeating those words in various interviews to make it clear that rock and roll is dead.