The Smashing Pumpkins vocalist/guitarist, etc. Billy Corgan recently floated an interesting conspiracy theory in which he posited that the influence of rock & metal in media and popular culture had been systematically silenced. Corgan shared his thoughts on the matter earlier this year in an episode of his ‘The Magnificent Others‘ podcast.
Corgan got pretty deep into the weeds about that theory, insisting that a shadowy industry-wide initiative sought to push rock music out of public interest in the 90s to make way for rap, pop and country music. Presumably the reasoning behind this purge was so executives could increase their profits by solely pushing artists with a wider appeal that were more easily manipulated and controlled, ala boy bands, pop groups and the like.
Corgan said at the time:
“I think, and I will say it overtly, I think that rock has been purposely dialed down in the culture. [It began in the] late ’90s. I think the first, and again this gets wizard behind the curtain, right? Somebody’s going to say, ‘Well, how do you know who was the wizard behind the curtain?’ All I know is I saw the gravity shift ,okay?
If you were at MTV, or around MTV in 1997-98, suddenly they decided rock was out, when rock was very, very high up in the thing. And it was replaced by rap. They immediately changed the way… their standards and practices immediately shifted. So now that things that weren’t allowed were suddenly allowed, people were waving guns. Okay, so some people assert that the CIA was involved in all that. Again, above my paygrade. But I saw it happen. I did witness it happen.
And of course great music came out of it. So it’s not like, it’s not a barren wasteland where something was pushed in that replaced something. Qualitative things and great artists came in, but there was this overt shift. I saw it happen. And then now as you pointed out rap seems to be waning in terms of its cultural influence. Pop is completely dominant.
Rock is probably the most dominant ticket-selling thing in the western world, and yet there’s almost no representation of rock in culture. So why do we have that schism? I think they purposely dialed down the ability of rock stars to have a voice in the culture. Or… those who exist within the ecosystem are basically… they know they’ll color between the lines so they don’t have to worry about that.”
Putting aside potential concerns about collective shifts in taste, Corgan‘s theory is seemingly validated in part at least by the pronounced decline of rock in music sales over the past two decades. Once the dominant genre, its market share on the charts has eroded substantially. Industry-tailored awards shows and mainstream publications have also long tended to consider harder rock at least to be somewhat of an afterthought, offering little substantial coverage and relegating acknowledgment of it to pre-shows.
As it turns out, Anthrax/Pantera drummer Charlie Benante was recently asked by Hot Metal on his thoughts about Corgan‘s theory, and is himself a believer. In fact, Benante even went so far as to point a finger at a potential suspect. He stated:
“That’s something I’ve been saying for the longest time. He just said it in a more eloquent way but these f*cking gatekeepers who still prevent our type of music from the masses (accessing it) … they just kind of chain us and they don’t give us the chances that we deserve that they give other music.
Country music, man? I mean, I’m not in it, I don’t dig it, I appreciate what they do. But that music is so … it’s saturated. You know, the whole pop … they open the gates for this type of stuff. I mean rock music still has a voice, there’s a movement, you know? People need to recognise it again, what it is.
There was a coup.
I think who did it … I want to say Clear Channel, all of a sudden they started buying up radio stations and replacing … I’ll give you a perfect example. In LA, there was this radio station called KNAC. That station was one of the greatest stations because it gave rock fans a place to go, a dial. Turn your dial, here’s KNAC.
When they removed KNAC [Libernman Broadcasting bought KNAC, not Clear Channel,] that market over there dropped so much. It changed and then it spread around the country. MTV too, remember? MTV one day said ‘we’re done playing this type of stuff’. It hurt the music business. Look what happened. Nobody came to rescue us.”
