Danny Ross | Forbes
You’re never quite sure which Gene Simmons you’re going to get. In any given moment he can excoriate you, charm you or pitch you on his latest merchandise. It makes for an exhausting — but hopefully worthwhile — conversation.
On this particular occasion, Simmons was wheeling out (literally) the Vault Experience, a collector’s set that he’ll hand-deliver to fans. Simmons has made the media rounds plenty of times over the decades, so I aimed to ask him unique questions about the indie artist experience. Here’s our conversation:
Danny Ross: You famously said, “Rock is dead.” Did you mean that artistic integrity is dead in the millennial generation?
Gene Simmons: No. There’s more talent than ever before. But there aren’t trains moving because the railroad tracks have been eaten away by the fans. Fans have decided not to pay for downloading and file sharing. If there’s a grocery store, and you grab milk and eggs without paying for them, how long will the farmer, the trucker and the grocer stay open?
Ross: But do you think file sharing is the only thing responsible for the downfall of the industry?
Simmons: Yes. Legislation is far behind. It’s like someone coming into your home and taking your stuff. Washington understands invention and patents, but copyright they’re oblivious to.
Ross: How does an emerging artist succeed in today’s music environment?
Simmons: My heart goes out to them because it’s almost impossible. There’s a handful of YouTube stars, but you don’t see the hundreds of thousands of carcasses that are littered, the failures. So you see one kid with 30 million followers, but you don’t see the other people who have never made it. Whereas when there was a record industry, you could have hundreds of bands with platinum records.