Gene Simmons & The Last Gasp of an Old Order

The next time someone dares to resurrect the fatigued ‘rock is dead’ debate, watch who’s saying it. The same goes for those who moan that artists should stay out of politics. Funnily enough, Gene Simmons - an older, wealthier white man - belongs to both camps.

The guitarist from KISS has flip-flopped on his opinions on Trump and then accepted a Kennedy Center award from him, and now, he's trying to whitewash it all with apoliticism. "Basically, shut the [f-bomb] up. Do your art and shut up. Nobody is interested in your opinions, that includes me, who I vote for, and who I like. Who do you think you are?" he told TMZ.

“People in America work hard for a living, and they don’t want to be lectured to by people who live in mansions and drive Rolls-Royces. It’s time for everyone in the entertainment industry to shut their pie-hole and just do your art, nobody cares what you think - I don’t.”

If he thinks people don't want political music, then chances are, he’s probably never seen the lines outside the stadiums Bruce Springsteen packs out.

To call for a musical landscape devoid of politics is to sterilise it, dilute its relevance and deprive people of a mirror to see their own anger at the world in. It would deny people solace and community building, or the chance to access political ideas in a digestible way. (For example, I only know about the Armenian genocide through the music of System Of A Down. I like to imagine there’s teenagers out there learning about Palestine through hearing their favourite artists talk about it now).

Almost every time he speaks, Simmons reveals that he seems to inhabit a world that no longer exists. KISS and their peers were founded in a period where rock ‘n’ roll was synonymous with hedonism, excess, glamour, phallocentric sexuality and a sort of empty rebellion. They wanted to rock ‘n’ roll all night and party every day, of course. It was a world founded on machismo, of guitar solos played with masturbatory virtuosity (and drum solos - the bloated, self-indulgent drum solo I heard them play during their headline performance at Download 2022 made me lose the will to live). Women were pushed to the sidelines, to the barriers, and into bunks in tour buses.

The rock music of the 2020s is more conscientious and diverse, with greater varieties of stories and experiences, oftentimes burning with rage at the very real phenomena of existing under oppressive conditions favouring nobody but those with extreme wealth.

If rock is dead, Simmons and those who think like him are admitting they don’t know where to look and they likely haven’t tried.

The same goes for those like Noel Gallagher who claim there are “no bands anymore”. Well, of course, apart from nephew Gene's new band Villanelle, who opened for them on tour and claim to be "bringing back" a genre that never died to start with.

Incidentally, the version of reality Gallagher and brother Liam preserved in amber and brought back to life across last summer’s history-making stadium run is a faded, nostalgic one that couldn’t be replicated now.

Have you ever heard a woman claim rock is dead? Have you noticed the line of people wanting music and politics to remain in separate bubbles is full of white faces? The people espousing both ideologies aren’t quite as likely to have had their existences politicised by the forces of institutionalized racism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, et cetera. They are the people who benefit most from those systems (even if those systems also harm them along the way).