Out of Touch Old Man Gene Simmons Still Insists That Rock is Dead
Is rock dead? Of course it fucking isn’t. The simple fact that I’m writing this on a website called MetalSucks that manages to make enough money to support itself is proof that there’s still an audience for rock music. Similarly, there’s sites out there dedicated to punk, metal, emo, indie, all sorts of shit. So the idea that rock is dead is, naturally, preposterous. But Gene Simmons, who has a record of saying preposterous bullshit, continues to insist it is.
In a recent interview with The Zak Kuhn Show (which was transcribed by Blabbermouth) Simmons was asked if rock is still dead and Simmons doubled down on something he’s been insisting on for years:
“It is. And people don’t understand how I can say that when we all have our favorite songs and we love our favorite bands — you and I and everybody else. But what I mean is that… Well, let’s play a game, and I’ve done this before. From 1958 until 1988, that’s 30 years. 30 years. So what came during that period? Well, we had Elvis [Presley], we had THE BEATLES, THE [ROLLING] STONES, Jimi Hendrix, all that, PINK FLOYD, the solo artists, David Bowie and just music that lasts forever, we’d like to think. In the disco world, you had Madonna, more heavy guitars, you had — Oh God — AC/DC and everybody else, AEROSMITH and on and on. And you had Motown at the same time. You had Prince. It was a very, very rich musical menu. It could go up and down. You had prog bands, you had YES, GENESIS, GENTLE GIANT, and you had the heavy bands, LED ZEPPELIN and so on. And from 1988 until today, it’s something like almost 40 years, certainly 35 years. Who are the new BEATLES?”
Zak Kuhn tried to counter this claim by bringing up Nirvana, which is a dumbass response considering Nirvana’s final studio album came out over 30 years ago, but Simmons did some mental gymnastics to disregard Nirvana as a relevant band:
“Stop. We are blinded. I’m a major fan. If you walked down the street and asked a 20-year-old, ‘Who’s the bass player in NIRVANA?’, they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. Or, ‘Can you sing a NIRVANA song?’ No, no. THE BEATLES and, to slightly lesser extent, THE STONES and Elvis, everybody knew THE BEATLES. If you hated rock music, you knew about them. By the way, I’m delusional enough to believe some market reports about how the KISS faces are the most recognized faces on the planet. And I’ve tried this before. You walk down the street, randomly ask people, ‘Who’s on Mount Rushmore?’ They’ll say, ‘Uh, Elvis.’ They won’t get it, but they know those four faces anywhere you go. They may hate the band, but you can’t deny that. So NIRVANA, one of my favorite bands. If you ask somebody who’s 20 or something, there’s a generation gap, ‘Name a song,’ they wouldn’t be able to tell you. ‘Who’s the bass player?’ No idea. And by the way, I know that because one of the other samples is my son, who’s no longer that age when he was a little bit over 20. He saw a cute girl — he’s telling me the story — he saw a cute girl, so he’s trying to open up the conversation, and she’s wearing a ROLLING STONES t-shirt that’s got the tongue on it, and on top of the t-shirt it actually says, ‘THE ROLLING STONES.’ And he walks up, and his first line is, ‘Oh, so you’re a fan, huh?’ And she says something like, ‘Yeah. Of what?’ And Nick, my son, says, ‘You know, THE STONES.’ She goes, ‘THE STONES?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, THE ROLLING STONES.’ She goes, ‘THE ROLLING STONES? What’s that? A band?’ Nick says, ‘Are you kidding? You’re wearing their t-shirt.’ And he was telling me she looked down — upside down, I guess, because it’s facing [him] — and she goes, ‘Oh, oh, I just like the shirt. I just like the t-shirt. And Nick said, ‘You must know THE ROLLING STONES. You know ‘Satisfaction’.’ [hums riff] ‘Nope. Never heard it.’ He went through a few other songs. Never heard those songs. And he said, ‘You’ve never heard of Mick Jagger?’ And she said, ‘Mick Jagger? Oh yeah, yeah. I heard…’ What I’m about to tell you, my hand to God, is true. No exaggeration. She goes, ‘Mick Jagger. Oh, yeah, the serial killer.’ Anything you think is commonplace that the masses know, they don’t. Very few things everybody knows.”
Okay, Gene, that’s just silly. Because people don’t know Nirvana today, that means that rock died before the release of Nirvana’s first album in 1989? People knew who Nirvana was in their heyday, which was the early 90s, so that pretty much disproves his claim that rock died in 1988 somehow. But he’s also using some logical fallacies here to prove his point, because he’s created a very narrow definition for what qualifies rock as being “alive,” a definition that virtually no modern band can meet.
Yes, rock music has been on the decline in popularity over the past few decades, although the decline started in the early 2000s and not the late 80s as Simmons insists. But there’s still bands that are out there creating great music and there’s still a lot of fans out there looking for their music. There’s a few rock bands that everyone knows the names of—Imagine Dragons and Twenty One Pilots come to mind—and while they may not be great bands, they’re rock bands. With Knocked Loose’s wild popularity on the rise, it seems like there’s room for harder music to wind up in the mainstream again in the future. So, even if rock may be dead in Simmons’ special Gene logic, it remains alive when you use actual logic.
