'It will never die': Tony Iommi weighs in on rock is dead debate

Tony Iommi doesn't believe rock will ever die.

The Black Sabbath axe-slayer said the "rock is dead" debate has been thrown around for decades and he insisted there will always be an appetite for the genre.

The 73-year-old musician told Consequence of Sound: "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.

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"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."

The 'Paranoid' hitmaker having his say on the debate comes after KISS rocker Gene Simmons recently insisted there have been no true rock artists since 1988, whereas before then there were the likes of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Stones and Pink Floyd.

The 71-year-old 'Rock and Roll All Nite' hitmaker said: "The point is, yeah, rock is dead because if we play the game from 1958 until 1988, which is 30 years, you had Elvis, The Beatles, The Stones, Pink Floyd, and on and on and on. And you can go to the heavy part of it, which is Metallica, Maiden, if you want to put KISS in there, that’s fine. AC/DC, on and on and on. Even U2, Prince, Bowie, Eagles. And then you get to disco stuff, and Madonna, and that stuff, and Motown, of course. And then from 1988 until today, who’s the new Beatles?"