Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian says Gene Simmons only believes rock is dead because he’s thinking in purely business terms.
Instead, he argues, the genre is alive and well – and always will be.
Simmons said last month that illegal downloading and a lack of industry support had killed rock music, but he faced an immediate backlash from a string of musicians including Dee Snider and Slash.
Now Ian has waded in on the debate, telling WHEB-FM: “I think the exact opposite. I don’t look at things from a strictly business standpoint like I think Gene does. Just because the media may not be paying attention like it used to, or record labels are only looking for the next 16-year-old pop star.
“For me, rock is never dead, as long as there’s bands that want to play this music. It has nothing to do with what the media is pushing down people’s throats. I’ve never looked at it that way, because we’ve never needed radio and we’ve never needed MTV to do what we do.
“All we do is we write the best songs we can and we’ve been the best live we can be for over 30 years. And that’s why rock will never die. It has nothing to do with the media, it has nothing to do with the business. It only has to do with bands playing music from their gut, and that’s all that matters to me.”
Anthrax released the live DVD, Chile On Hell, last month, a set which captured the band in concert in Santiago last year.
And this month Ian published his memoir, I’m The Man: The Story Of That Guy From Anthrax. It will be followed by his own live DVD, Swearing Words From Glasgow on November 13.
