Kiss frontman Gene Simmons declared that “rock ’n’ roll is dead” because “freckle-faced” kids feel entitled to download music for free.
In an interview with conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly, the 75-year-old rocker, in addition to addressing the fate of the music industry, discussed his decision to record music for a recent Ronald Reagan bio-pic and agreed with O’Reilly that Donald Trump is a “rock star.”
Asked to highlight “one big change” he had observed in the music world over the years, Simmons made a bold assertion.
“Unfortunately, the business model is dead and new bands don’t have a chance, especially rock bands,” he said. “In a certain way, rock is finally dead, rock ’n’ roll is dead because the freckled-faced kid next door to you, who is a good kid with a good family and everything, has become entitled—feels entitled to be able to download and file share and get all of this music for free.”
It is a claim that Simmons has been making for at least 10 years—he offered a remarkably similar take to Esquire in 2014, denying that shifts in music taste were to blame for hard rock’s descent.
“Rock did not die of old age,” he said then. “It was murdered. And the real culprit is that kid’s 15-year-old next-door neighbor.”
