If Gene Simmons’ new autobiography and Kiss box set reveal anything, it’s that the fire-breathing, blood-spitting Demon bassist remains unwilling to bite his considerable 8-inch tongue. Rarely humble, always blunt and consumed with a greed-is-good dedication rivaling Gordon Gekko, Simmons, 52, pounces when asked to define his band’s loyal audience. “I would say our fan base is America because it seems to defy the logic and the odds,” he begins. “When you really think about it, rock & roll bands are designed to be obsolete. You know, who wants your older brother’s rock band? You’d rather have your own. Kiss seems to defy the odds. We are who we are, people seem to like us and it doesn’t seem to matter how young or old they are. That brings the kids and everybody has a ball, which is ultimately what it’s all about.”
The band, shorthand for heavy metal bombast and Spinal Tap-style stage antics, began their quest for, uh, world domination in 1972. Despite shoddy musicianship and perhaps a handful of compelling songs, Kiss keeps on rock and rolling all night and profiteering every day. As they approach 30 years together, Simmons (bass and lead vocals) and original members Paul Stanley (rhythm guitar, lead vocals), Ace Frehley (lead guitar) and Peter Criss (drums) still have plenty of miles to go on a farewell tour that is cruising into, yes, its third year. Ever-mindful of the holiday shopping season, Simmons has a slew of merchandising and Kiss-related releases in the offing. First up was the aptly titled Kiss: The Box Set, a 6-hour, 94-track monstrosity selling for $70 (regular version) or in a deluxe Kiss guitar case ($180). The box set features 30 unreleased songs, including several selections from Simmons and Stanley’s first band, Wicked Lester, offerings insipid enough to demonstrate significant musical growth for later Kiss inspirations like “Love Gun,” “Lick It Up” and “Calling Dr. Love.”
Soon after the box set, Simmons’ autobiography, Kiss and Make-Up (Crown, 288 pp., $25.95), arrived at a Barnes & Noble near you. The tale of an Israeli immigrant (Simmons’ birth name: Chaim Witz) and his devoted mother, it reveals a clear-headed, nerdy boy smitten with American TV, comic books and horror movies. Simmons and his mother (Gene’s father disappeared soon after his son’s birth) came to New York in 1958. Six years later, Gene, now in his teens, watched The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. And it was all over.
If literary and musical Kiss can’t fill the stocking, Sterling Marlin’s die-cast NASCAR ride featuring the band’s image on the hood is on sale in replica version for a reasonable $64.95. Over on Court TV, Simmons hosts The Secret History of Rock ‘n’ Roll, cataloging some of the musical world’s many crimes and misdemeanors (the amount of money he’s made, sadly, isn’t among them).
Also in the works: a Kiss Broadway musical written by Steven Trask (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and directed by Rob Roth (Beauty and the Beast). “We’re on our way,” Simmons says. “This is serious stuff. Anything we do, we do seriously.”
He goes on to mention a long-planned computer-animated Kiss cartoon series, a comic book line, an oft-delayed concert album, Alive IV, and enough bric-a-brac to embarrass a Star Trek convention. In fact, the loyal legions of aging Kiss fans and conventioneers (really) resemble Trekkies in their ardor for anything stamped with their heroes’ visages and a logo. Thus far, the self-proclaimed Kiss Army has snapped up 80 million albums and trinkets produced by 2,500 Kiss licensees.
Simmons admits to being a mama’s boy. His mother, who escaped a concentration camp, showered love and affection on her only child.
In his book, Simmons credits her with instilling “delusional self-confidence” and acknowledges an inflated self-worth: “I am one of those few guys who can look in a mirror and believe I am better looking than I actually am.”
His father’s absence affected him profoundly. Simmons, shall we say, has commitment issues. A voracious consumer of groupies, he admits girls and money — in that order — served as his only musical motivations. He’s slept with 4,600 women and has the pictures to prove it. For the past 18 years, he’s cohabited with former Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed. They have two children. Simmons, now a proud papa, considers parenting serious business, hoping to atone where his own father could not.
At heart, Simmons remains as square as they come. He carries an immigrant’s relentless patriotism (“Everybody should be kissing the ground they live on, which is America”). He promised his mother he would never drink, smoke or do drugs. Save an amusing mistaken episode with pot-laced brownies, he’s kept his word. Despite rock-star dreams as a teen, Simmons carried through on a pledge — mom again — to attend college.
Even college during the riotous 1960s failed to dent Simmons’ old world perspective. He played in bands, went to school, slept with whoever would have him — and paid little heed to Vietnam, Civil Rights and the nation’s social unrest.
“Every once in a while, the school would be closed, and people would be marching up and down the street,” he recalls. “I never marched with them. I always wanted to go to school, because I had taken out a bank loan.”
After college, Simmons returned to New York. He worked with various bands and supported his music habit as a sixth-grade teacher, typist and magazine assistant. Around the same time, he met a fellow Jewish New Yorker named Stanley Eisen. The two hit it off, and, soon, Stanley Eisen became Paul Stanley, Gene Klein (Witz’s first American name) became Gene Simmons, and two flaky-but-determined recruits, Paul “Ace” Frehley and Peter Criss, rounded out the group.
Within a year, the group, christened Kiss by Stanley, had raided S&M shops for its stage gear and added Kabuki makeup, 7-inch platform heels and a fireworks cache.
Signed by TV producer Bill Aucoin, who took 25 percent of the band’s future touring, recording and merchandising earnings, the band learned choreography, circus tricks (thus Simmons’ trademark fire-breathing) and began dying its hair the same shade of black. By the mid-1970s, Kiss became the hottest band in the land. Through tours, constant recording (an average of two albums a year) and merchandise (Halloween costumes, trading cards, remote-control cars, lunch boxes), Kiss raked in $120 million a year by 1978.
The typical problems accompanied success. Criss left in 1979, followed by Frehley three years later. Both fell victim to drug and alcohol addictions.
At one point, Criss crashed a sports car in his garage, reduced to having the local fire department come in with the jaws of life to rescue him.
No doubt, it gives new meaning to the band’s anthem, “Firehouse.”
Simmons remains unforgiving. “I love Ace and Peter straight,” he says. “And I hate Ace and Peter high. And I’m allowed to say that because I’m in the same family. You, likewise, would feel the same way about any family member who, you know, you can’t even have a conversation with them because the chemicals just get in the way.” Is it still a problem? “Yes.”
The cofounders, Simmons and Stanley, remain close, principally because they watched their creation dwindle to almost nothing over a 15-year period beginning with Criss’ firing.
Simmons and Stanley trudged through the Eighties without their original bandmates. They famously unmasked in 1983, shedding their makeup in a desperate reach for relevance. Aided by Stanley’s MTV-friendly footwork and penchant for power ballads, Kiss became a middle-of-the-pack touring entity, a pale imitation of their 1970s incarnation.
“Instead of being leaders, we basically decided to follow,” Simmons says.
The songs got worse and worse, the band lurched from one hard rock cliche to another (Def Leppard imitators on one song, Bon Jovi on another) and lost lead guitarists at an alarming rate. Between 1982 and 1985, Kiss went through four guitarists. Criss’ replacement, the lovable Eric Carr, died of cancer in 1991.
By the mid-1990s, Stanley and Simmons were reduced to staging Kiss collector conventions at hotel ballrooms. These acoustic performances, combined with ample merchandise sales and autograph sessions, were, naturally, billed as a thank-you to the fans. At the time, Kiss couldn’t have filled a large roadside steakhouse with paying customers. The hardest part, Simmons writes, was finding venues where expenses would be low and the band wouldn’t have to worry about liability issues.
As with groupies, hotels provided the solution.
A combination of nostalgia and grunge rock’s last gasps rescued Kiss from obscurity. A backer of MTV’s Unplugged acoustic series, who grew up a Kiss fan, convinced the network a one-off performance might be a pop culture curiosity. Stanley, Simmons and then-members Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer agreed and, midway through the performance, brought on Frehley and Criss. The studio audience roared.
By 1996, a full reunion tour, replete with makeup and enough explosives to fill all the fireworks stands in South Carolina, roared to life. The take totaled $43.6 million in ticket sales alone.
The rules changed with the reunion. Simmons and Stanley put their former mates on straight salary, punishment for their earlier sins. A band assistant had to re-teach Frehley his guitar lines from the band’s catalog. Personal trainers whipped everyone into shape and a rigorous rehearsal schedule ensued.
Simmons and Stanley, by the way, split the merchandise sales two ways rather than four.
Riding the renaissance, the souvenirs multiplied at a staggering rate. Kiss Visa cards. The Kiss Kasket, born so Kiss Army members can die with their favorite band. Coffee-table books priced at $150 each. Plus the requisite caps, patches, T-shirts and 3-D photo cards. Last year, Kiss launched its proclaimed farewell tour (two stops in Charlotte thus far). They sold $62.7 million worth of tickets. Merchandise sales equal half that, according to industry estimates. In yet another homage to dumb rock-star antics, Kiss booted Criss last fall, replacing him with — follow this, now — former replacement Eric Singer, this time forced to dye his hair and don Criss’ signature Cat Man costume.
This version of the band toured Japan and Australia last spring. Simmons anticipates Criss’ return sometime before the final farewell date is played. At the rate the tour is moving, the band has plenty of time to mend fences.
Simmons promises more dates in South America, Europe and, later, a final series of American dates. Kiss is on hiatus for the moment, taking an extended break while, as Simmons puts it, “waiting for the world to become sane” after the terrorist attacks.
With retirement riches in place, Simmons offers no apologies. “I think everybody lies,” he says. “It’s clear to me, number one, everybody loves money. I know no one — no band, certainly — that does it for free. Everybody else does it, they just don’t do it as well. Our fans vote with money. When Radiohead and really great bands, R.E.M., when they say, ‘Aw, we’d never do what Kiss does,’ well, who asked you? Who the hell wants it? I don’t want to read a Radiohead comic book.”
Despite the ups and downs, Kiss always lands on its platform heels. To date, the band ranks only behind The Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the number of gold records awarded. They revel in lording it over music critics who have, again and again, erroneously predicted the band’s demise.
It seems assured Kiss won’t be ignored in the history of rock & roll and popular culture.
This notion might be the perfect opportunity for Simmons, a chance to put things in perspective.
“At the end of the day, what does it all mean?” Simmons muses. “Probably nothing. But so what? What does a Fourth of July fireworks show mean? Nothing, but I still go ‘wow’ every time I see one. Meaning, you see, is highly overrated.”
This article appears in Dec 19-25, 2001.
