Tony Iommi has become the latest rock icon to weigh in on Gene Simmons’ infamous hot take/claim that “Rock is Dead.”
Iommi said in a new interview with Heavy Consequence, “I don’t think rock is going to die. That’s been said for years. I mean, how many times I’ve heard that statement over the past 50-odd years? It’s quite a lot, really.”
Iommi added, “I think good music is not going to go. There’s always going to be a market for it. There are going to be an amount of bands that fall by the wayside — as there always is, there always will be. But there are certain bands that are going to stick out and going to be there. You’ve got Metallica up there — they’re not going to go away. They’ve got a lot of fans and they’ve got a great fanbase. There are a lot of bands out there. No, the music is not going to go away.”
Before Iommi, the most-recent musician to chime in on Simmons’ quote was KISS bandmate Paul Stanley. The Starchild said in response to the Demon, “I think that life, rock, whatever it is, is never a constant. Let’s say, for example, if you take somebody’s pulse and it’s weak, it doesn’t mean they’re dead. It means that the pulse is weak. And it doesn’t mean it won’t come back stronger.”
He added, “I don’t think that music can ever be dead. I don’t think that bands can be dead, rock can be dead. It just takes somebody to reignite it to the level that it has been at some time in the past.”