David Ellefson thinks rock is no longer cool as Gene Simmons believes.
“Rock is dead in America — it really is,” the bassist told Ernest Skinner of Canada’s Border City Rock Talk in an interview. “And I know people will lambaste me for saying that, but it is. When [KISS’s] Gene Simmons said it, everybody hated him for it, but he’s right.”
He continued, “Unless you’re an established band, unless you’re Linkin Park and Metallica and KISS and Slayer, whatever, to start a new rock band — kids aren’t into that sh*t. They’re into Facebook and Tesla. Yeah, their lives are on their phones. Being a rock star is not cool anymore like it was for us growing up. So, if you’ve got it established, you can keep it working.”
“So, for me, I enjoy South America, Latin America, [where] they love rock and roll. Asia, Australia. So you leave America and, man, rock and roll is very much alive and well. They champion the legacy stuff, they like new stuff,” Ellefson then shared.
A decade back, Simmons told Esquire magazine, “The death of rock was not a natural death. Rock did not die of old age. It was murdered. Some brilliance, somewhere, was going to be expressed, and now it won’t because it’s that much harder to earn a living playing and writing songs. No one will pay you to do it.”
Many rock and metal musicians have shared their thoughts on this issue in interviews over the years. Simmons said still believes his statement from 2014. In a recent interview, he explained why his opinion hasn’t changed. On The Zak Kuhn Show, the musician talked about examples of why he thinks rock is still dead today.
He explained why rock is still dead for him, “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,” Gene added.
The bassist concluded, “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?”
On the other hand, Alice Cooper recently told Riff X’s Metal XS that he believes classic rock from the ’70s still works because it builds on timeless influences like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Chuck Berry.
