Alice Cooper recently responded to the controversial comments made by Gene Simmons on the rock genre. Simmons had reckoned that ‘rock is dead’ but Copper argued how rock not being the mainstream genre anymore could be a good thing. He went on to share a balanced take on Gene Simmons’ frequent claims that rock music is dead.
Alice Cooper argues with the claims of Gene Simmons
Alice Cooper has been the rock star of the business for over 50 years and he has seen it all. He is one of the favorite shock rocker. Likewise, when Alice brought up Gene Simmons’ notorious statement during a recent interview with LA Weekly, he doesn’t do so in order to unreservedly support it or outright dismiss it – after all, thinking that rock is in great a place as it ever was would be equally foolish – instead, he tries to give it a more balanced interpretation:
“Gene Simmons said rock is dead but I think he was talking financially. I think there are kids in garages right now learning Guns N’ Roses, learning Aerosmith, learning Alice, learning Ozzy… Young 16-year-old kids rocking, just rocking. That’s healthy. That’s really healthy. I don’t think rock is ever gonna die.
“When you talk about hard rock, like the Stones, The Who and all that, that’s the only music that’s lasted. Grunge [like Pearl Jam and Nirvana] was here for a while. And punk was here for a while. Emo was here and all this, but hard rock bands just kept going. So if you’re in a hard rock band, you can go as long as you want to go.”