Gene Simmons has declared the death of rock.

According to ultimateclassicrock.com, Gene made this declaration in a recent interview:

“The death of rock was not a natural death,” he argued. “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.”

Of course, Gene is referring to file sharing and illegal downloading, which he says no one is really taking seriously.

"The problem is that nobody will pay you for the 10,000 hours you put in to create what you created. I can only imagine the frustration of all that work, and having no one value it enough to pay you for it.”

It might sound pretty dramatic, but you have to admit, the guy has a point.

He says many artists have to work behind the scenes to write music for pop artists in order to actually make money in their career.

He feels that younger artists can't get the support they need to reach a mainstream audience, or the creative guidance necessary to achieve a high level of compositional skill.

He says there’s a massive generational void in artists whose music has true lasting value.

“There was a 10- to 15-year period in the ’60s and ’70s that gave birth to almost every artist we now call ‘iconic’ or ‘classic,’

If you know anything about what makes longevity, about what makes something an everlasting icon, it’s hard to find after that.

What is the next ‘Dark Side of the Moon’? Now that the record industry barely exists, they wouldn’t have a chance to make something like that."

He says there's good reason that some of the biggest touring bands are "half old people, like me."

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