Kasabian's Serge Pizzorno says British rock needs a 'kick up the arse' ahead of Glastonbury

The guitarist and songwriter thinks new bands often lack imagination

Sergio Pizzorno of the band Kasabian performs on stage in Brisbane, Australia (Getty Images)

Kasabian’s Sergio Pizzorno has hit out at British rock‘n’roll and argued that it “needs a kick up the arse”.

The guitarist and songwriter is so disillusioned with the state of the UK music scene that he wrote a blog post for NME, putting his point across in no uncertain terms.

Back in the mid-Nineties when Kasabian was formed, there was a “constant stream of what was going to happen next” in rock music, Pizzorno said, that has since “almost come to a standstill”.

“There’s not a great deal going on, a bit of a lack of imagination” he wrote. “It needs igniting.”

One suggestion Pizzorno offered as to why the “stream” seems to have been cut short, is that musicians are creating songs at home and “don’t need to form bands as much”.

“People prefer to just do it on their computers as a two-piece rather than a band,” he said.

But while Pizzorno’s comments have a touch of “the good old days” grandad chat about them, he insists that rock‘n’roll will “never die”.

“That’s obvious,” he wrote. “I just think there’s so much more out there for it. There’s still some great things bubbling under, but as far as something that has come in new, that’s taken my head off? Rock‘n’roll needs to up its game.”

This Saturday, Kasabian will play a homecoming show in Leicester’s Victoria Park before heading to Glastonbury next weekend for a Friday night headline set.

Their fifth studio album, 48:13, hit number one last week and Pizzorno hopes it will prove an “awakening” for aspiring rock bands.

“It’s a glimpse of what rock music can be,” he said. “It doesn’t have to just be churning out the same ideas, same sounds and same riffs that you know. You can embrace other things and experiment and you can make something that sounds new.”