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ANTHRAX and Pantera drummer Charlie Benante says he has long held the view recently espoused by Billy Corgan that rock as a genre was deliberately “dialed down” by corporate interests during the 1990s.
In an edition of his podcast The Magnificent Others posted on February 25, with culture critic Conrad Flynn the guest, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Corgan said: “I think that rock has been purposely dialed down in the culture.
“If you were at MTV or around MTV in 1997 or 1998, suddenly they decided rock was out when rock was still very, very high up in the thing. And it was replaced by rap… Their standards and practices immediately shifted, so now that things that weren’t allowed were suddenly allowed. People were waving guns. Some people assert that the CIA was involved in all that. Again, above my pay grade, but I saw it happen. I did witness it happen.
“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.”
Speaking to Hot Metal to promote Anthrax’s Australian tour which concluded at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre tonight, 63-year-old Benante said in response to Corgan’s comments: “That’s something Ive been saying for the longest time. He just said it in a more eloquent way but these fucking 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, 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.”
Changes in media ownership laws allowed Clear Channel to buy up many American radio stations in the 1990s.
KNAC switched to a Spanish format following its sale in 1995. Clear Channel was not involved.
Meanwhile, Benante offered a more light-hearted rumination on Australia’s pedestrian crossing sound signals for the blind on his Instagram account.
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