The band Gene Simmons called an important “American statement”
Gene Simmons recently made headlines after weighing in on what it might mean to make an American statement, when earlier this year, the former Kiss star urged musicians, actors and artists in creative fields to “shut up” about politics.
As a statement about statements, it’s embroiled in its own stupidity; using his own platform to make a political comment denouncing platformed political statements is an inherent subversion of Simmons’ own supposed values. It goes without saying that all art is political, that it either lands in favour of, or submission to, an overwhelming status quo.
When that status quo falls into the hands of a fascist, the art becomes more political, the statements even more necessary, something the musician failed to recognise, so when Simmons made the claim that one band in particular were great at making an “American statement”, we can hedge our bets that it wasn’t of the political kind.
We hear American statement and we might suppose the band was taking on the inherited imperialist mindset from the colonial era, or perhaps posing some takedown of the proliferation of neo-liberal capitalist ideals within the society of the spectacle, overtaking the general desire for authentic connection outside of consumption, but nope. In Simmons’ case, this is far from what he means.
Although he might be ill-informed about the sphere of politics, you can’t take away the fact that he knows the music industry in and out; any artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame must have lived and breathed the music world for plenty of years to attain that level of recognition, after all. As such, speaking with The Quietus, Simmons landed on the 1973 debut album from Montrose, featuring vocalist Sammy Hagar, as a “breath of fresh air” in the scene.
The self-titled debut album only peaked at 133 on the US Billboard Top 200, but is considered a formative, fundamental and foundational American heavy metal album, even if the first track is titled ‘Rock the Nation’.
In the early 1970s, the genre was stock full of roaring, successful English rock bands, where if you pluck out the biggest names today, you would’ve found them on the circuit at the same time that Montrose was released, like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Queen, and The Rolling Stones; it was almost impossible to compete with them.
This is exactly what Simmons was referring to when he made the brazen statement: “Montrose was one of the really important American statements made at a time when the only rock that was credible was English,” he posited, “They had Led Zeppelin and Humble Pie, just anything that was credible was all English and, out of nowhere, this Montrose record comes out that just kills!” The band would eventually stop at five studio albums, though it was their first consistently lauded as their best.
He wasn’t just saying this to shit on Led Zeppelin; quite the opposite, actually, as Simmons has always been vocal about his love for the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ rockers, but Hagar’s first foray into the world Simmons found himself in was a revitalising addition to a genre mastered by the British. If only he had this kind of nuanced approach to his political belief system.
