Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante has said he agrees with a theory expressed by Billy Corgan on a February 2026 episode of Corgan’s podcast, The Magnificent Others. While discussing music culture with critic Conrad Flynn, Corgan said that rock specifically “has been purposely dialed down in the culture.”
Continuing, the Smashing Pumpkins leader said that around 1997, MTV decided that rock was suddenly “out,” even though it was still at the height of its popularity. This, he said, led to a “schism” where rock music is still one of the biggest ticket sellers in the Western world, but there’s “almost no representation of rock in culture.”
Speaking with Hot Metal in late March, Benante shared his own theories about rock’s alleged abandonment in popular culture.
“That’s something I’ve been saying for the longest time. He just said it in a more eloquent way,” Benante said, in reference to Corgan’s comments. “But these f—ing 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,” Benante continued. “But that music is so … it’s saturated. You know, the whole pop [genre] … they open the gates for this type of stuff.”
Anthrax Drummer Charlie Benante Shares His Own Theory on How the Music Industry Abandoned Rock
The drummer said he agrees with Corgan about how the music industry “purposely dialed down the ability of rock stars to have a voice in the culture,” as Corgan stated. But he also believes that rock is still thriving.
“I mean rock music still has a voice, there’s a movement, you know?” Benante said. “People need to recognize it again, what it is.”
He also built on another Corgan theory, which alleged that MTV pushed rock aside to make way for rap in the late ’90s. “Their standards and practices immediately shifted, so now things that weren’t allowed were suddenly allowed,” Corgan said. “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.”
Benante didn’t go so far as to involve the CIA. But he did call out Clear Channel Communications, now known as iHeartRadio.
“There was a coup,” he said. “I think who did it … I want to say Clear Channel, all of a sudden they started buying up radio stations and replacing [them] … I’ll give you a perfect example. In L.A., 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.”
Benante did have a point about the monopolization of radio stations, a trend that’s also rampant in just about every other entertainment sector. Although KNAC’s shift to Spanish-language programming had nothing to do with Clear Channel. Instead, Liberman Broadcasting purchased it in February 1995 and made the shift away from rock music barely a month later.
But Benante did agree with Corgan’s assertion that MTV had a hand in rock music’s abandonment. “MTV too, remember?” he said. “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.”
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