Gene Simmons claimed in an interview that “rock is dead,” and Alice Cooper disagrees with the assessment.
During a wide-ranging interview, Kiss cofounder Gene Simmons bluntly declared that “rock is dead.” But Alice Cooper disagrees with the statement, as he’s made clear in an interview of his own.
Gene Simmons provided his less-than-sunny assessment of the contemporary rock landscape in a remote sit down with the Dubai-headquartered (and English-language) Gulf News newspaper. (He has, however, made similar comments over the years.) The Israel-born Kiss bassist and co-lead singer was promoting his band’s Dubai New Year’s Eve performance during the remote discussion, which also featured Paul Stanley.
After covering the pandemic’s impact upon Kiss and the scope of the NYE performance (“It’s our intention to break a lot of Guinness World Records with this show,” said Stanley), the Gulf News interviewer asked what Simmons and Stanley thought of “the state of rock ‘n roll today,” and specifically those who claim that rock is dead.
Stanley, responding first, struck something of an optimistic tone. But Gene Simmons, who unveiled a joint venture with Gibson in January to develop electric guitars and basses, expressed a decidedly bleaker opinion.
“Rock is dead. And that’s because new bands haven’t taken the time to create glamour, excitement and epic stuff. I mean, Foo Fighters is a terrific band, but that’s a 20-year-old band. So you can go back to 1958 until 1988. That’s 30 years. During that time, we had Elvis, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones, on and on,” began the 71-year-old.
“In disco, you had Madonna, and then you had your hard rock, you had AC/DC, maybe us, a few others. Motown, all that great music. From 1988, until today, that’s more than 30 years. Tell me who the new Beatles is. You can’t. There are popular bands. BTS is very popular. All kinds of bands are very popular. That doesn’t mean iconic and legacy and for all time. It’s different,” Simmons concluded his answer.
And Alice Cooper, for his part, responded to Simmons’s remarks in a recent interview with NME. After Cooper discussed the pandemic-driven concert pause, the late-February release of Detroit Stories (his 21st solo album), and more, the discussion shifted to the “rock is dead” remarks that Simmons had made.
“Gene Simmons, I would like him to do my taxes, you know. Because he’s a businessman. And business-wise, that’s valid. But I guarantee you right now, in London somewhere, in garages, they’re learning Aerosmith. They’re learning Guns N’ Roses. A bunch of 18-year-old kids are in there with guitars and drums, and they are learning hard rock.
“Same with the United States. There’s all these young bands that are, that want to resurge that whole area of hard rock. And outlaws. So in some ways, rock ‘n roll is where it should be right now. We’re not in the Grammys. We’re not in the mainstream.
“Rock ‘n roll is outside looking in now, and I think that gives us that ‘outlaw’ attitude. And I think that’s very good for rock ‘n roll because that’s how rock ‘n roll started. We were all outlaws at the time. And then we became mainstream,” finished Cooper.
Fuck Gene Simmons. That guy is the biggest douche. KISS has been pushing daisies for a long time, but tock is nowhere near dead.
Don’t you mean rock, not tock?
Yes, Rock, not tock. My typing is crap.
Whatever is lying on Gene Simmons has been dead so long, it’s got 5 coats of embalming lacquer on it.
The only rock I hear these days has the cookie monster vocal train for vocals, and that style is done.
Alice is so old he doesn’t realize most kids want to be rappers with autotune, not go to the trouble of playing instruments. Tosin Abasi is a great guitar player in a great band, but he’s just one outlier genius. Otherwise, I haven’t heard a good new rock song going back to System of a Down and KORN, at least a decade. I heard one great song that was so retro I thought it was 80s, but it was last four years. However, no one picked up from Nirvana, Soundgarden, Metallica, SOAD etc. People just stopped playing music that heavy overall and european death metal isn’t getting the job done.
You’re not really listening to new music these days it sounds like. Ever hear of: Dirty Honey, The Snuts, Wolfgang Van Halen, Fever 333, The Wrecks, Cleopatrick, The Chats, Inhaler or Spirit Box? Not to mention guys who are still rocking like Foo Fighters, Rolling Stones, Arcade Fire, Weezer and AC/DC (all have new albums to drop in 2021). It sounds like you haven’t been keeping your ear to the radio lately.
Talk to thousands of musicians, and you’ll get the answer.
Media should be more about issues of millions then the scandalous comments of these two.
The music revolution is in turn part of the larger art and media revolution going on now. Key to all these exciting changes is a fair media that goes beyond press release journalism.
” in some ways, rock ‘n roll is where it should be right now ”
Alice is awesome!
i love the gene simmons accountant comment however i doubt anyone is rocking out in a london garage because they’d be shut down by the UK Fascist health force.