During a new episode of “The Magnificent Others” podcast, Billy Corgan (The Smashing Pumpkins) talked about the current state of rock music with Conrad Flynn. For his part, Corgan believes “rock has been purposely dialed down in the culture.”
Corgan said the following:
“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.”
[via The PRP]
Metal Anarchy 
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