Kiss’s Gene Simmons Says That Entitled ’Freckle-Faced’ Kids Killed Rock Music

Kiss frontman Gene Simmons declared that “rock and roll is dead” because “freckle-faced” kids feel entitled to download music for free.

In an interview with conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly, the 75-year-old rocker, in addition to addressing the fate of the music industry, discussed his decision to record music for a recent Ronald Reagan bio-pic and agreed with O’Reilly that Donald Trump is a “rock star.”

Asked to highlight “one big change” he had observed in the music world over the years, Simmons made a bold assertion.

“Unfortunately, the business model is dead and new bands don’t have a chance, especially rock bands,” he said. “In a certain way, rock is finally dead, rock and roll is dead because the freckled-faced kid next door to you, who is a good kid with a good family and everything, has become entitled—feels entitled to be able to download and file share and get all of this music for free.”

It is a claim that Simmons has been making for at least 10 years—he offered a remarkably similar take to Esquire in 2014, denying that shifts in music taste were to blame for hard rock’s descent.

“Rock did not die of old age,” he said then. “It was murdered. And the real culprit is that kid’s 15-year-old next-door neighbor.”

In neither case did Simmons explain why he thinks rock and roll, in particular, is victimized by music piracy.

Notably, piracy has generally been on the decline since the 2010s (albeit with an uptick in the last year), which some have linked to the widespread adoption of licensed streaming platforms like Spotify.

Simmons became a household name in the 1970’s as the lead singer for the garish glam-rock outfit Kiss—known for their prodigious use of face paint, howling guitar riffs, and penchant for thrusting out their tongues.