Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Gene Simmons

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Gene Simmons is the co-founder, bassist, and co-lead singer of KISS. Best known for his on-stage persona as “The Demon,” he became synonymous with the band’s theatrical performances and signature makeup. Offstage, Simmons built KISS into a global brand, with over 30 distinct tours spanning from the 1970s to their more recent “End of the Road World Tour.” He has been recognized for his contributions to music, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www.athleticnicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Do I want to pick anything up?

Of course. You can do anything you want. You're very free here. Did Cash ever play this? I don't know if Cash played it. Tom Petty definitely played that one. He gave me that one. Yeah, the neck is like, wow. Very thin and...

Nice to play. A good sounding instrument. Who would ever start a song like... And then you go into the song. The introduction is the bridge. And I will say the only words I know that you'll understand. As a matter of fact, you'll understand. The harmony to the melody. It's crazy.... It's the harmony to the melody. It's crazy, and that's the introduction to the song. Who does that?

Somebody really who knows what they're doing. Good Lord, unbelievable. Wherever that came from, four guys really from the middle of nowhere. Nowhere, and the name of the place was Liver Pool, like Kishka Village. It's got, it's like, when I first heard that, I was bereft.

I was like, why, I couldn't believe it was a place called Liver Pool, the most disgusting sounding, like, you know, like a vat made of innards. And there is something called a singularity because for instance, Harrison was supposed to be the guy whose writing wasn't on the level of Leonard McCartney. But if you put Harrison in any other band, any other band, and so what have you written lately?

Well, let me see, I got, while my guitar gently weeps, I wrote that by myself. I wrote something by myself. Here comes the sun. Oh my God. Which I think is the number one Beatle stream song, shockingly. I know he would be great,

but in the Beatles, he's just the third guy. Yeah, amazing. Tell me about New York, around the time that the band was starting, 70s New York. Band started in 73, 74, 73? 73, yeah. Tell me about 1973 in New York, what do you remember?

What was going on? I was like Jesus, lived at my mother's house because I didn't want to spend money and all that stuff. That's how we know he was Jewish by the way. like Jesus, lived at my mother's house, because I didn't want to spend money and all that stuff. That's how we know he was Jewish, by the way. Lived with his mother until he was 33 years old. How old were you, though, in 70? I was 56. No, I was, in 73, I was 22.

22, 23. So you're a kid. Yeah. And everybody in the band's about the same age? I was the oldest. Paul was 20. Stanley was 20 or 21. And the other two guys, Ace and Peter were,

no actually Peter Chris was older than I was, so he must have been 23 years older, so 23. So he must have been 25, 26. He had already been in another band called Chelsea, which had a record out that didn't do well. Paul and I were in a previous band called Wicked Lester. We had a record that was finished for Epic and was not released.

We bought the record back, gave Epic $44,000, which at that time was a lot of money, because in retrospect, I don't wanna be the Doobie Brothers or Three Dog Night, it was that kind of band. Nothing wrong with those bands. We wanted to be Anglophiles, you know, kind of. Inspired by the English stuff. Yeah, the way the instruments sounded and what they sang about was clearly not American

stuff. Yes, there were pop songs and so on, and we all love those, but when you started in Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, kind of who's Ruby Tuesday? The names of the bands were so ethereal, Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull and all this. I mean, it's clearly English, but it sounded like another, clearly culture, but reality or something. We were mesmerized by it, starting off with The Beatles.

So, well, first thing is both Paul and I, who share a common background. How'd you meet Paul? I had written songs delusionally by myself, taught myself a few chords, CFG, you know, those things, and wrote very poppy, terrible Beatles-inspired melodies. My uncle has a raft and he always keeps me floating. He is so good to me. He treats me tenderly. Melodies like that with the stupidest McCartney-esque kind of lyrics.

And went Eskimo son, Eskimo son, you shine at me, mother's love, far as the eyes can see, six months love is here. You know, these kinds of Beatles things. And went shopping, went knocking on doors, did a demo and thought of myself as a solo artist. Of course, in those days I was Gene Klein. That ain't rock. You know, dress British, think Yiddish.

Did he ever play shows as Gene Klein with acoustic guitar or otherwise? Yes in high school places like that. And at the same time I was studying to be a teacher. I did in fact teach sixth grade in Spanish Harlem for a short time. How was that experience? Teaching? Yeah.

Both my roommates in college were black and I wanted to do that on purpose. I wanted to confront, you know, it was one of those introspective times. It was post hippie movement and people were thinking about within, words like that, which the generation before never thought, what do you mean within?

And I grew up Jewish in a white world and knew a little bit of anti-Semitism, but not a lot. My mother, however, was a survivor at 14 years of age of the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. So my best friends during preschool, fifth grade, sixth grade and all that, were black kids because I loved black music. And the first music I heard was pre-Beatles, Chuck Berry. As I sit here saying Chuck Berry, what a strange world it is because I actually did the eulogy for Chuck's funeral,

unplanned or anything, and nobody else was there. No McCartney, no Keith Richards, I don't know why, but I happened to be in the same place and wound up just bawling like a child with his open casket. At any rate, the first music I heard was Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, fell in love with that stuff. Then of course when The Beatles came in,

my mind was blown. And sure enough, as I dug into The Beatles, they were doing cover versions, Motown, Chuck Berry, so did The Stones, they all did that. And I went, ah, that is cool, and that does translate to white boys and all that. So the beginning of the 70s was a very pivotal cultural time. Right out of the 60s gave teenagers a lot of power.

The vote, they had discretionary monies and all of a sudden, you know, young people shouldn't be hurt. You didn't care about teenagers in the 50s. Yeah, once the pill came in, women of age, and sometimes even underage, were having sex, not necessarily to get married, just they enjoyed it too. And the civil rights movement, while you're busy leading your also happy lives, were remnants of the slave world.

My grandfather was a slave, and it's a different world, a different culture, black culture, and in the southern states, you were acutely aware that they couldn't even go to school. Black folks. Vietnam War was winding down, and there was a lot of tumult, using big words like gymnasium, where there was an old generation that, you know, America would love it or leave it, and sort of the end of the hippie movement quickly got over the Dr. Timothy drop in,

drop out, all that stuff. I was thinking, okay, drop out, but out of what? What's the alternative? I never got the answer to that. I was just, don't be a part of it, just live off the land. Drop into what? Well, how do you pay the rent? How do you do that?

I rejected that whole lifestyle, although still kept my eye on British music. So what happened in New York that never happened before, during, or since is the glitter movement, the Bratz, the harlots of 42nd Street, clearly the New York Dolls. A lot of these bands that never made it, New York Dolls unfortunately never made it, started to dress up androgynous glitter.

You think it was inspired by David Bowie or did it come from somewhere else? Hardly, but clearly inspired by the English bands, their satanic majesty's request. You know, you'd see these albums in English dressing up, unlike the American bands, you know, that we had the Grateful Dead. They had the crazy world of Arthur Brown. Yeah. And so the New York scene were these skinny, small kids,

you know, people in their early 20s, dressing up, wearing, you know, plant is wearing women's tops and not afraid to do semi-feminine kind of physicality on stage, the androgyny of it, although clearly they were heterosexual. And so all those mores, not eels, were being toyed with and a lot of the New York bands including the Dolls and others were playing around with wearing lipstick and teasing their

hair and and wearing crop tops you know little girls outfits and stuff but singing harder, stone-sy kind of lyrics, talking about drugs and semi-punk before punk lyrics were going out. They feel like outsiders and that very much appealed to us. So Paul and I had formed this wicked Lester band that was very pop and we didn't like it because the thing that we liked was that English music, the Kinks and the Stones. The American bands just weren't writing that kind of music and the American bands didn't look that way.

The English bands had, I mean especially Page and Zeppelin and those bands, the guitar was worn way down on the crotch and they'd hit a chord and for no reason whatsoever the hand would swing up in the air and a lot of these guys would do the Jesus Christ pose like that. American bands didn't do that. It was more theatrical. Grand, it was glamorous.

And in those days you got your sense of what was going on in magazines. So new magazines came out, Circus and Raves, and it was in full color. And you really got a chance to see what these bands were. Needless to say, you were attracted to the English bands, not the Three Dog Night. And I knew some of the guys and stuff. One guy had like an Italian waiter's mustache and they just was not like,

yeah, let's be in a band and grow our mustaches. That's not what you wanted to do. You look at Paige and Plant, you go, I wanna do that. And it's funny, when I heard Zeppelin first, when I first went into college, I was convinced this was a white girl who was doing an impression of Janis Joplin. Be-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da And it's so funny, after all this time, I can sit here and remember that first time I heard Zeppelin, and then many years later, Jimmy Page becomes a friend.

Like, how does that work? Amazing. Life's incredible. So incredible. And I mean, your journey coming from Ron DMC, and then Beastie Boys, and you, I read up on you, Ruben, insisting you put guitars in with the rap

and do that and combining Run DMC with Aerosmith. I mean, great, great stuff that left to its own devices would have probably gone down familiar roads. It's the pushing against the walls that makes it like, what, what, what is that? Yeah. And Yoko still doesn't belong on any stage anywhere, not with Chuck Berry and John Lennon on the same stage.

You saw that footage, right? I don't think so. John Lennon and Yoko were co-hosting the Mike Douglas show, an afternoon variety show. Mm-hmm. That was our first TV show as well. And it was a big deal. Mike Douglas?

Yes. Amazing. Four o'clock in the afternoon, nationwide, when Mom was home. Yeah. And they had comedians and that kind of stuff. And they did rock and roll. And for one week, John Lennon and Yoko were co-hosting.

And Lennon, because he was such a aficionado of the Founding Fathers, brought Chuck Berry on. And he wanted to play with Chuck Berry, you know, like who didn't? And they did. Not rehearsing. And Yoko is right near John, bless her. I don't know how to describe it.

You know, just oral madness. It had nothing to do with melody, rhythm, thinking, ah, almost like Dr. Janos' scream therapy. You know, put somebody in, get your anger out, and just go, ah, like that. And you can see it on YouTube. There's a closeup of Chuck Berry's eyes just wide open like a deer in the headlights.

What the hell is that? And he's looking at Lenin. Lenin's just going along with it. I don't know why. At any rate, it was a magical time because the pill was around, girls were, let's say, friendlier. You could wake up with one or two young ladies

whose names you never bothered to learn. It was pre-AIDS, pre-what does it all mean? Where's this going? Do I have my mother's hips? It was the sexual revolution. Yeah, we just thought of it like, boy, are we having a lot of fun. On a guy's point of view. Girls may have a different point of view, but I can only speak for heterosexual male

point of view. And so we decided to put together the band, Paul and I, that we had never seen on stage. What you imagined you'd wanna see. Wanted, yeah. Because the bands we saw, we loved, loved Townsend smashing guitars. Wasn't about love the songs, but smashing a guitar, what's that about?

And you're seeing Keith Moon destroying his drums. The American bands simply did not do that. It was, and Hendrix came out of that school, Jimmy James and the Flames and all that, they couldn't make any headway. He goes to England and all of a sudden, this guy's on the floor, humping his guitar, singing it on fire, playing the guitar over his head

or with his teeth, insane. American bands, we love the Temptations, but I didn't want to be in a band like the Temptations. It was too cookie cutter, although great songs. Unequaled. And so on a very primitive level, all these New York bands, including Paul and myself, were self-taught, learned how to write, play, and somehow put bands together. Needless to say, none of them, including the Ramones, ever made it. Were you guys before the Ramones?

I don't know what year the Ramones started. About six months to a year. Because there are not so many bands from New York. No. It's you and the Ramones, basically. Strangely. Blue Oyster Cult. Yeah.

Blue Oyster Cult have more success than the Dolls or the Ramones. They had hit songs. They had Don't Feel the Reaper. And again, not necessarily hits, but Velvet Underground were an influential band from New York. That's right. Although if you went to Nebraska, they wouldn't know what you were talking about. Yeah, influential, there are the critics,

and then there's the real world. Yeah. And in the real world, Ramones have much more credibility than Chicago. But Chicago, which started off as the Chicago Transit Authority, had 22 multi-platinum albums in a row, where each one was a Roman numeral.

So is it of the people, for the people, by the people, or do a few elites who actually can read and write well for magazines, whose opinions counts more? And I never cared one way or the other, even though I had a degree and I started teaching sixth grade and I was the assistant to the director of the Puerto Rican Interagency Council, made a good living. I was the man Friday for Vogue Magazine.

I was the only guy on the floor. How'd that happen? I'm an only child to my mother, and I've always, for some reason, been fearless. I don't care about rejection because I'm delusional about myself. I know I'm not the best-looking guy in the world. I know I'm not the smartest-looking guy in the world.

I know that logically, but not in my... Do you think it's because your mother made you believe otherwise? Like to your mother, you were... The king. The king, yeah. Not only that, but before we had phones in bathrooms, I'd always worked.

By the time I was 20 something, I saved up $23,000 after tax, which in those days, you know, today would be hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when Paul and I first met after work, I'd go back to my mother's house because I didn't want to pay rent. And if you meet a chick, you go to a holiday inn.

So I, what's the problem? Save the money. And Paul would immediately know by about six o'clock, I'm back at my mother's house and the phone would ring in the kitchen. And so help me God, my hand to God. Paul is basically asking, can I talk to Gene? And my mother in her thick Hungarian accent,

she goes, no, no, no, no, he was working, he's no, no, no, no. He goes, well, is he home? Yes, he goes, well, can I talk to him? No, he goes, well, no, he goes. My mother would say, the king is on the throne. Literally. Yeah.

Yep. And she would always ask me, how is the orchestra? It's just the sweet innocence of, you know, just seeing. And my mother, bless her, never, she passed at 94, never understood, we started making money pretty fast and quite a bit of it, never understood what my working hours were or who was paying me and where did I work?

You know, because those jobs, you make money, somebody pays you money and stuff. This vague idea that somehow the money came from people was a bizarre idea. And I, and my work ethic and my moral compass and everything I am is my mother. I remember, even before 76, you know, we made millions right away. And in those days, taxes were lower and the cost of living was, so a million dollars was

a lot of money, maybe, I don't know, 10 or 15 million by today's standards. And I remember giving my mother, in those days, checks, or the way you transferred lots of money, before the rules about you can't carry more than $10,000. It was just, that's how you did it, either cash or checks. I remember giving my mother a large check with lots of zeros on it, and she didn't understand what that was. It was too much money for her to conceive of. Yes.

Wow. And you're still 22, 23, 24? 23. Yeah. And I basically told her, I'm gonna go with you to the bank, we're gonna set up accounts and everything, and you can buy any house you want, any price, everything else.

And she just couldn't fathom what that was because from surviving, not living through, surviving World War II, where Europe is devastated, where our family and half the world's Jewish population, two million Catholics, two million gay people, the Romani, the Gypsies, anybody who was unacceptable to the Nazis were incinerated in the concentration camps and my mother survived at 14.

So from her perspective, having things was not the important thing. To this day, I don't, I mean, I have lots of houses all over the place. It's more about surviving. Yes. I was always afraid of being poor. Yeah. poor and always wanted lots of money. I'm still motivated by money, success and raw power. But in parentheses, what it's really about is you don't wanna be vulnerable to poverty and everything else. And I mean, the byproduct of being a reasonably good guy

is I can support 1,400 kids in Zimbabwe, which I do and give to multiple charities. But at the core of it, that's only possible because you make a lot of money. And in real terms, a poor person never gave me a job. And I still live by the principle that, you know, that Jeff Bezos is a good guy, he gives away a lot of money,

and Buffett and everybody else. There actually are hundreds of billions of dollars, but they give away a lot of their money, including Elon. Elon gets a bad rap, he does amazing amounts. So let's say you, Rick Rubin, are worth a trillion dollars. And let's say you're not. Let's say you're a complete, arrogant, selfish asshole who only wants to spend money on himself.

So on the surface of it, we have this preconceived notion that, ah, what good are you on the planet? Actually, even if you never gave a penny to charity, But we have this preconceived notion that, ah, what good are you on the planet? Actually, even if you never gave a penny to charity, even if you never helped anybody or just were totally self-absorbed, the fact that you're building a 50,000 square foot home and have 10 houses and build yachts actually provides people with a chance to feed their families. All those people that work for your arrogant, selfish, self-absorbed ass, you're still making the planet a better place. Now, of course, the best part of that is to work hard,

make an awful lot of money, and create jobs and give to charity and all that stuff. But even if you were arrogant, never gave, you're better for this world, because without the rich, this is not an easy pill to swallow, because I came from nothing, and my mother made $37.50 a week, where we would save every slice of bread,

and we had four dishes, four. There was no such thing as breakfast, dinner, whatever was in the fridge, that's what you ate and you were happy to eat it. To this day, the bane of my waistline is if there's crusty old bread. I just had it this morning with a little cream cheese or peanut butter and jam.

I'm thrilled. My daughter went, Sophie, who's enormously successful, by the way, in sound scan and all that stuff, she's got hundreds of songs, wrote for Rick Rubin, producers, writes all this stuff. She went to Cordon Bleu, the cooking school in France, and tried to tell me what she was, you know, the frogs legs and all.

I'm going, what? He goes, yeah, well, there's a rabbit. You put it on the thing, you gut it open and you cook it because mother nature, I'm going, no, no. So there is such a thing as having the right thing at the right place and the right time. Making your own luck is an interesting idea, but it doesn't quite work because if the Beatles,

for example, with electric instruments existed during one of the great musical times, the Renaissance, people wouldn't understand what the electric instruments were or that kind of song structure. It was the right time and the right place. Yes. The culture has to be right behind you so that you can be slightly ahead of it. Because when I first heard the Beatles, it was a revelation. And yet they were still dealing with those eight notes and one, four, five chords and so on.

But the visual part of it, people hardly ever point to. But you were thinking about that from day one? Immediately. Because I loved the Love and Spoonful and Sly and the Family Stone, huge fan. But what is it that makes a rock star, which is the only musical form that's actually, the genre is actually a verb, rock on. You can't soul on or folk on or country and Western on. And if somebody in politics or architecture is really good, you say, that guy's a rock star. They can't say that guy's a hip hop star.

It means nothing. That hip hop stars call themselves rock stars. Yes. Yes. And that just happens naturally in culture, black culture, white culture, any culture. And so I want my sense of the rock star thing. I didn't come from the Dillon or Springsteen or any of that school, which is, you know, you have something inside of you.

You want to impart a message or something. I just want it to be rich and famous and get lots of chicks without any reservations, unapologetic, because what I saw when I saw the Beatles and the girls, especially were going insane in a primal way, I said, I have to have that thing. And I firmly believe that when Lenin and McCartney, especially were strumming and coming up with those songs, so many hundreds and hundreds of songs

and only seven years, I don't know how that happened. I don't think they were thinking about what's the secret of life or I want to change society or, it was just moon, June, spoon. That kind of sounds good. I hope we can pay the rent. That's it. Yeah.

It was really devotion to music. They just loved this thing. They loved this. And the thing was a multi-headed beast because they loved rockabilly. Yeah. They loved Buck Owens, and Motown, and blues, and all the English bands had this kind of understanding. American music. Strangely,

America invented clearly from black people. That music came, blues, hip hop, the white version, rock and roll, which means having sex. People don't know that. Let me rock and roll you all night long. You know, let me have sex with you all night, rolling around and people go, oh yeah, rock means sex. And we may have invented all those musical genres, but what the British did with it, forget about it.

And it's a very strange island. I know there are a few, there's Wales and Scotland and so on, but that small island of people created the biggest bands on the planet up until Taylor, who's a phenomenon all by herself. The Beatles and the Stones, and they just got hundreds and hundreds of these bands. And some of them were completely different.

If you listen to Yes, it has nothing to do sonically with Led Zeppelin, which has nothing to do with, I don't know, Cat Stevens, and they all coexisted at the same time. And I have to say that it was the most varied, under the umbrella of rock, it was the most varied creative period I was ever aware of. creative period I was ever aware of. LMNT. Element electrolytes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best?

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system so you can perform at your very best. Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt.com slash tetra and stay salty with Element Electrolyte, LMNT. Tell me about songwriting with Paul. When did it start?

When did you know it got good? Again, I've always been delusional. I am now. And I believe it's a healthy mindset. I mean, if you don't take yourself seriously, but if you're Mike Tyson and you were starting out and you're too short, not heavy enough and you don't take yourself seriously, but if you're Mike Tyson and you were starting out and you're too short, not heavy enough, and you don't have long arms, how could you possibly envision yourself as the most dangerous boxer who ever stepped in the ring? And if you take a look at photos of everybody Tyson fought, it looks like a joke.

They're all a foot taller and huge arms. And yet... The power of belief. That's right. You're so yet. The power of belief. That's right, you're so right. This kind of delusional notion. I don't mean that as a negative, just. Understood. Reached to the stars.

Because it's unrealistic, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Absolutely right, and that's why not everybody scales the heights. You have to have this before it's a reality. Hindsight's easy, you know, because you go, oh, that's how you do it. But before you do it, you've got to have vision

and a delusional belief in yourself. When I first met Paul, I hadn't met, I'd written a few hundred songs on my own, almost all of them terrible, a few survived. I met Paul because my sixth grade chum, Stephen Carnell, with whom I'd written two songs with, he came up with a riff and a melody and I did the rest myself. And both those songs we recorded as Kiss and you know they did well. He was the original guitar player in Wicked Lester but unfortunately didn't have the goods. But through him I met Paul Stanley and Paul Stanley when he first met me, I didn't mean it,

but didn't like me a lot, that's fair to say, because I couldn't imagine that anyone else wrote songs. I thought, again, delusionally, I figured something out that regular people didn't. I mean, there were Lennon McCartney and Jagger Ritch, those guys, but they weren't real people. They're up there. But walking down the street, I didn't know anyone

who could play guitar or come up with melodies that write your own songs. I was crazy. And Stephen Carnell introduced me to this guy who was not yet Paul Stanley. And I remember saying, let me hear what you got. And he sat down and he played a song called Sunday Driver. It goes,

let me be your Sunday driver, let me be your Monday man. Take you anywhere Just as fast as I can Doesn't matter what you wanna do It doesn't matter where you wanna go You just gotta decide girl And then you let me know

But let's get know you wanna know Like that I'm going, wow! Let me be your Sunday driver, let me be your Monday man. That's really good. And I'm going, oh, wow. And then he said, what do you got? I'm going, what have I got? This is fucking embarrassing. sing. He is so good to me. He treats me tenderly.

It doesn't matter who you are. My uncle is a raft. What the fuck is that? My uncle is a raft. And he was just looking at me like deadpan going, uh-huh. Because there was nobody around to say, no, put that away, that's not a good one. Because, you know, we all have to. But the Kings could do that song, my uncle is a rap.

That would work. Yes, yes, that's where it came. That's really good. I hear it, Ray Davies. That's what it is, it goes. Well he wakes up in the morning. That's in that spirit. And he goes to work at night.

Comes back home five-thirty. Gets a train and then we die. He's a well-respected man about dog. Doing the best thing so conservatively. That's where I got it from. Great work. But, That's where I got it from. Great, worked. But well-respected man, it was a cultural kind of pomp commentary on something.

The fuck is my uncle is a raft and he always keeps me floating. You were kidding. Yep, and I didn't know there was nobody, there was no Rick Rubin around to say, well, maybe not that one. So then right from that meeting of Paul, did you guys start?

No, Paul had joined Stephen Carnell and one other guy who was playing keyboards, Marty Cohen, and a drummer who I played with. And they didn't have a bass player. And Paul was a real Anglophile. He had a Gibson, but they didn't have a bass player. And Paul was a real Anglophile. He had a Gibson, but they didn't have amplifiers. And when I was in college, I had a side band and I saved all my money.

So I bought two Marshall stacks with 200 watt Marshall heads. Nobody had those. And then Stephen Carnell and I decided to put a band together. We didn't have a name. And we put an ad in Village Voice, which at that time was a free newspaper. And one of the ads was looking for a guitar player and blah, blah, blah. And we saw Paul called the phone number we had,

which was in the rehearsal hall. And I remember answering the phone, and what's your name? Stanley, you know, so-and-so. And I didn't recognize the name. And we were talking with each other. We're looking for, you know, lead guitar player. And Paul says on the other phone, well, I can play okay lead, but I'm more rhythm player. And Paul says on the other phone,

I can play okay lead, but I'm more rhythm player and I can think, I'm so sorry, looking for guitar. I didn't know I was talking to Paul. So there was another missed opportunity. And then it was Stephen Carnell, who was in this fledgling band with me, which would become wicked luscious. He says, why don't I call this guy Paul?

He sings great and he can play rhythm guitar and I'll play lead. So we had a second chance, like who gets a second chance? And when Paul and I got together, he, you know, slowly warmed up to the idea cause I did have other material that we started doing. And we started, you know, writing together. He would come in with a finished song like, Pictures only begun.

Got you under their thumb. And I said, where'd you get that? The Rolling Stones? Under my thumb. And I said, well, that's really good. And I put a beat behind it. I like the chords, the way they sound, but you know it's not memorable. So the bass lines that I wound up playing, because I wasn't trained bass, McCartney

was a big influence, I just played what was in my mind. So I started doing... Okay, the verse. It began with my bass riff and during the verses, ba da da, ba da da. And that became a thing we recognized, all of us, that what I was naturally playing, it was a bass line that I was doing for a song Paul had called Love Her All I Can.

But then I said, why don't you guys play my bass line? So while that's going and drums are going in back of it, it'll have an interesting syncopated thing and the chords get out of the way. So a lot of the songs, the early songs, either Paul and I would come in with our own things and the riffs Adding the harmony. And what sounds stupid on acoustic guitar, played loudly, kind of go, wow, it's kind of like cream and we had harmonies. Tell me about up until making the first album.

So gigs, did you guys do shows? We, Paul and I got a loft, Tenis 23rd Street. I had worked at that time as the assistant to the director of the Puerto Rican Interagency Council because I could type 90 words a minute. I could fix mimeograph, hexagraph, rexagraph. So I was a one-man office when you had to do copies of anything, take a note. In fact, before that, I was a dictaphone typist from 8 p.m. until 8 a.m. at Williamson & Williamson,

a law firm on Wall Street. So after work, I'd lock up the office. It was a government funded research and demonstration project. I'd take the subway to downtown, 15th Street, and I was the checkout guy at a Jewish deli. So you take people's money, ring it up, but I could eat as much as I want,

and I can take doggy bags with me. So make extra money. Food was taken care of. Free. I could eat whatever I wanted and boy did I punish those cheesecakes, the blueberry cheesecake. And then after my stint at the few hours and by 9 or 9.30, I take the subway or walk to 23rd Street, and we start rehearsing at night.

Would you be exhausted or no? Of course, but you're two years old, you just don't have that, you just go. Pick up food where you could and you just go, go, go. Would you say all of the work was to get you to the rehearsal or no? Everything was the same. It was all just work.

Money. You were driven by money. Still am. Yeah, and even the band from the beginning was only about money. You have to add chicks. Okay. Because you didn't, I and no one else in the band You have to add chicks. Because you didn't, I and no one else in the band

and no one else I ever met or admired in other bands ever talked about the ethereal or poetic nature of, I don't know, Bob Dylan, let's say. It was a higher life form. The Glitter Movement was amazing. Did you ever see any of those bands? Bob Dylan, let's say, it was a higher life form. Yeah. The Glitter Movement was amazing. Did you ever see any of those bands? Did you ever see the Dolls Play live?

We opened for them. We opened for them. Tell me about that. Three shows or so. Paul and I went to see them at the Hotel Diplomat in New York before. Their record had already come out. They came out before us, about six months.

Were you already in full makeup? Yes, right from the beginning. The very first show, we were fourth on the bill, 1973, New Year's Eve, it was Kiss, Teenage Lust, Iggy Pop, and Blue Oyster Cult. Wow. At the Academy of Music for 3,000 people. That became the palladium.

That sounds like a great show. Yes, in those days, there was no separation. I mean, I saw Albert King, the Chambers Brothers, and Poco on the same bill. We could see the Woody Herman Orchestra and Led Zeppelin on the same bill. We could see the Woody Herman. Just good music. Music, Woody Herman Orchestra and Led Zeppelin on the same bill. Wow. How did the first...

New Year's Eve show, by the third song, My Hair Caught Fire. This was New Year's Eve, Firehouse. Cause I, you know, we got ourselves a manager, a guy who directed a late night TV show called Flipside that was in the studio. They'd bring John Lennon or record label heads and it would be live music in a recording studio.

How did you find him or how did he find you? Oh, I found everybody. The mountain ain't coming to you, Mohammed. I had the offices at the Puerto Rican Interagency Council. After everybody left, I bought, I voraciously read Billboard, Record World, and Cashbox, every issue. You did too.

I did. And then they had the year-end issue, and they listed every single management company, every single, and when the band was put together before anything, we rented out the Diplomat Hotel on 43rd Street and got bigger bands, bigger local bands than us. Street punk, local band before the punk era, they were called street punk.

And they had a good song called Master of Flash, one good song. So locally they meant more than Kiss, Kiss was a new band, Untried. And Luger, a small band, and I wrote up the contract. You'll be there, there'll be amplifiers and a sound system, all of it rented. It will sell tickets and everything,

and you get a sum total of $125. I said that. And you show up at eight o'clock, that's when you play Luger, and you get 75 or 100, whatever it is. And what they didn't know, they assumed, and you know what happens when you assume, makes an ass out of you and

me, is that we all understood they were the headlines. Well, Kiss, this new band was going on at 9.30. So we invited, I put together the press kit myself up at the offices of Puerto Rican Interagency Council, bought medella envelopes, printed up the stuff there in the office and sent it to every person in the record industry, including by the way, the director, producer of Flipside because it was a music show. And we were looking for managers and everything. And a few people came down and it was said, heavy metal masters, before people used the

term the William Burroughs heavy metal masters before people used the term, the William Burroughs heavy metal. And we put on our own makeup and Paul and his friends actually went out and bought glue and glitter. In those days you could buy multicolored glitter and Paul and his friends outlined the Kiss logo on a t-shirt in glue, and then dropped the glitter on there and let it drop, and then handed out, just like Frank Sinatra,

the Bobby Soxers at the Paramount Theater, because we were all students of how do you create something that's not gonna come to you. And Colonel Tom Parker used to pay these teenage girls to be in the front going, ah! And we literally got everybody's girlfriends or any pretty girl that we could and here put this T-shirt on and be in the front row.

And when we come on, ah! So one of the industry people that came to see us was this producer, director, there were record companies there as well, Windfall Records and a few others. And Paul and I had already walked out of the Epic Records contract with Hukid Lester. We just didn't believe in it.

And Bill O'Coin, I remember right after we came off the stage, I went, people were still milling around because everybody, the guys are all trying to get laid and everything, and the girls are staying there if they didn't have boyfriends. You know, it was all, it was social. And I remember one of the photographers, a girl,

who was in the front taking photos of us while we were on stage, just like real bands. And it was a pretty good sounding hall, and we came off well. We did Firehouse and all those songs that would later become popular within a year. And I remember this guy coming in, and I was sitting by the mixing console in makeup with homemade glittery pants made out of, like what your grandmother would put on a glittery thing that she sews at home, but not well made. Yeah.

Black and black leather jacket and a black t-shirt and all that, and puffed up hair and makeup. And I'm sitting by the, and this guy Bill O'Coyne comes in and as soon as he's coming, I grabbed this girl Regina with a camera around her and she happened to be blessed in that special way. And so I put her on my lap and was, you know, moving my lap up and down so that you would see God's gifts bouncing. And I mean, Shakespeare said, the world is a stage and we're all just playing.

They were lifted and separated as I recall, and pointing in this general direction. And when he sat down, you know, a guy with the makeup and the thing who on stage was sticking his tongue out and the girls were screaming and stuff. And of course, Paul was the better looking guy and this girl on stage and photos and the room is full because they were coming to see the other bands, not us. Yeah. But we made all the money, made over $750, because I think the entrance was $50 or something like that.

So you pay the other bands, here's $100, here's $75, hotel rental, and the rest of it was ours. We actually made some money. And a coin's looking at this and goes, oh, there's something going on here that I haven't even. So he immediately called, we later found out, this guy Neil Bogart, who was a record company, and you know, semi-legend, even in the early days,

he had Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I got love in my tummy, the 1910 fruit gum company. But he also had the impressions, Percy Mayfield, you know, legitimate stuff, black music, bubble gum, it was a form of music, and the lemon pipers, listen while I play, my green tambourine, and he told him about it and this guy, Bogart was starting a new label. Casablanca. That's right. But originally, I have to say I'm guilty of it, he was going to call the label Emerald

City. I remember, by the way, once he was going to sign us, he asked me in the office, Bill Conn's office, which was called Rocksteady, he created that, before the Aretha song. What do you think of Emerald City? I said, I don't like it. I was completely unqualified. And I don't know if I said it or if he said it, but what about Casablanca? Oh yeah, they had that thing,

a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. Yeah, that's cool. And a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. Yeah, that's cool. And we were the very first band signed to Casablanca Records. I didn't know that. Yeah, before disco, before anything else. Wow, because we think of Casablanca mainly as a disco label, with the exception of Kiss.

That's right, after Kiss, I did find a group called Angel and convinced Bogart to sign them, and they were impressive and good looking and all that. They just never made it. But the real money for Bogart came from Donna Summer, which was massive. They had the Parliaments, a version of it, because they were on three different labels

and were sued by everybody. Parliament Funkadelic was on Westwind. The parliaments, I just want to testify what your love has done to me. Get up for the down stroke. Everybody get up. And parliaments, Donna Summer, the village people, I mean, they had huge, huge hits, not just for one record, lots of records, but we were the first. Wow. The only rock band, really?

Yeah. That's interesting. The only rock band out of New York that made any kind of noise ever. Yeah. That could play stadiums and do that. No other New York band. Yeah. And it's funny when you take a look at it, that could play stadiums and do that. No other New York band.

And it's funny when you take a look at it, the Beatles didn't come from London, they came from Liverpool. And U2 didn't come from, I don't know, wherever the capital city is. All these small pockets where, I don't know if it's the underclass, grunge didn't start in a major area. It was like in a rainy other area.

And when you think of Nashville, everybody's from Nashville. No, not really. They're up in the hills. They come to Nashville. They come there from the hills. The gestation period, this development thing is off somewhere else. I mean, Elvis didn't come from New York. The geniuses of managers and whatever

would never think of a white good-looking boy, so, okay, I'm gonna give you the DNA. Here's what you gotta do. Go to black churches, listen to gospel, and integrate that into do this and do that and then do that. No, it happened. The Beatles were real. All that DNA from different things, they made that mixture. And Elvis did that gospel music with white little country, little gospel. They invented themselves and that's what makes it authentic that it wasn't some grand scheme.

Now there's nothing wrong with the monkeys. I was a major monkey student. But that was created and it does not, the music does. The people do not stand the test of time because you know they were actors. They didn't write their own thing. Except Mike Nesmith did write two songs. Did you know?

The Stone Ponies, different drums. Here the sound. Oh, that's a great song. Mike Nesmith. I love that song. Mary Mary wrote that for Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Great song. Mary Mary.

Great song. You know where he made all his money? I am just a bucket full of trivia. His mother invented Whiteout. Pretty good. You know what whiteout is? Yes, I do. Kids today have no idea what that was. Yeah, you don't need it now because you can erase on the computer,

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athletic nicotine offers the lift you've been looking for. Learn more at athleticnicotine.com slash tetra and experience next level performance with athletic nicotine. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. I think we're going to listen to a song or two from each album, from the first album until the solo albums. So the very first album is just called Kiss. I will play a song from the first Kiss album. I know a thing or two about her.

I know she'll only make you cry She'll let you walk the street beside her But when she wants, she'll pass you by Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba- She wears her sad tits like a baby. She gets her way just like a child. You take her home and she says, baby, baby. She takes you down and drives you wild. Everybody says she's looking good, and the lady knows it's understood.

Strife. What do you remember about that? First of all, when we recorded the first record at Bell Sound, there were no 24-track machines. 1970s... Did we have 16 tracks? 16 tracks. 16 tracks. And just a few years...

Where's Bell Sound? I don't know that place. Down the same street as Studio 54. 54th Street. On one end of Studio 54, closer to 7th Avenue, is Bell Sound, no longer there. I remember at the same time, upstairs, the other floor, they were recording the soundtrack for Lords of Flatbush with Stallone. They also had the Warriors later there, they were all wearing makeup. And so that song started off as one of the songs I did

as a solo before I met Paul called Stanley the Parrot. I know, it sounds like stupid. Taken from kind of like Boris the Spider. Yeah. ["Stanley the Parrot"] Look who's climbing on my wall. Or it's the spider. Yeah, or it's the spider. I thought, you know, almost childlike.

And I started with these chords. Then it goes... Summer is the time for making them. Stanley doesn't think he can. He now regards himself as quite a man. And then it went into this other section. And Paul heard that song. When we first got together, we'd play a lot of tunes for each other. He says, that is a god-aw that song. When we first got together, we'd play a lot of tunes for each other. He says, that is a God awful song.

I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I like these chords. I do the same thing to his stuff. I like the chord, you know, because it's, you're taking. That's what makes a good songwriting partnership is you make each other better. I say the same thing about, we couldn't shine their shoes, but when Lenin and McCartney were together,

Absolutely. nobody touched them. Here's the thing that just pisses me off at how good, not even good, geniuses, guys come into a band, and say, hey, I got a new song, what is it called? It's called Yesterday, how does it go? Yesterday, oh, there's no introduction, no nothing. The title is the first word

and it's the first thing you hear without anything. I got another one. What is it called? Michelle. How does it go? Michelle. Oh my God. And then you go, I got another one.

What is it called? She Loves You. How does it go? She loves you, yeah. I'm going, how did they do that? What's the other one? Eleanor Rigby, Eleanor. Actually they did, it was Lennon who put the,

I look at all. That was Lennon's thing. And during the making of Help, because they had Hard Day's Night, the song. It's been a hard day's night. That's the name of the movie and it goes right into that. Richard Lester comes up to the band and says, look, we've got a movie called Help

because we like the title, we need a song called Help. And I read different things, this is what happened. During lunch, Lennon went off and he wrote Help in a half hour. And when you take a look at it, it was a song about a guy who had close to manic depressive tendencies. He had real personal problems.

Help, I need somebody help, not just anybody help. You know I need someone help. And it's his whole life. Help me if you can, I'm feeling down. But I do appreciate you being around. Help me if you can. It's just insane against this pop melody. It's amazing with them answering, when I was young, when I was young, it's just memorable.

He goes, honey, like this. It goes like this. Help! I need somebody. Help! My God! So what I call a perfect song, hardly ever done. Ironically, Charlie Chaplin was a co-writer of one of the other perfect songs. Doesn't depend on introductions, instrumentation, arrangement, or guitar solos, or piano solos. It's just the melody and the lyric and the

subject matter and the song he co-wrote was Smile. Smile Though Your Heart Is Aching. Right there, you're killing me with those two. Smile though your heart is aching, smile though your heart is aching. And by the your heart is break. And by the way, there's a great songs like that begin and end with the same song. When you just smile. You know, yesterday all my trouble. I believe in yesterday.

Mm, help. And you see, you know, hello. Simple, super simple. Simple, try to write one like that. And that ends. Impossibly simple. Oh my God. And it's not even a chorus the way you think of a chorus

because yesterday, for example, it's one word. Yesterday, pregnant pause, pregnant pause. All my trouble. And then the rest of the song begins. It's genius. Must have been the way Salieri in that movie, Amadeus, eventually goes mad. He was the king's musical director

and wrote symphonies and operas, well respected, and then he saw this little putz, you know, who would write three-minute piano concertos, Mozart, wrote it linear. He composed linear as he was playing it, was writing it down. And he did it in front of Salieri who went insane. And there's a pivotal moment in that movie that is supposedly taken from historical facts. Salieri is in prison, goes angry, and every day he would beat his head, which was written to a pulp. There's artwork of that, yes, cursing God. Why did you give this youngling the genius of music when I've been devoted to you all my life? What has he had? And he couldn't get over the genius of Mozart.

What do you remember about the cover shoot, first album? Joel Brodsky, I remember, I think was the photographer. We went to him because he did the photography for Strange Days, the Doors. We loved that cover, and the Doors were not even on the cover. It was like Circus, there was a strong man. The vibe of it. Yeah. There used to be that.

I think he did a lot of stuff for Electra. Yeah. Joel. Jack Holtzman and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a shame the art of it is gone. There's no more art considerations and stuff. I used to buy records just because of the album cover.

It was a good indication. And bands would torture themselves with artwork and everything. So we walk in, new label, Casablanca and everything, and he says, okay guys, what kind of ideas do you have? Well, you know, we wear makeup and everything. Okay, go off into that room. You've got yourself over there.

Let me see what you've got. And we came out, and I'll never forget this, and he goes, oh, I get it. You're clowns. What do you mean? And he sent his assistant, they went downstairs to kind of a Woolworth or something, and they brought up balloons.

And you see his assistant blowing up balloons and everything. And we said, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. No, this is serious. We're like kiss, like the kiss of death. And he goes, what do you mean? No, we just want to do the album cover like Meet the Beatles, looking straight ahead. And if you take a look at Meet the Beal that's what it is. Without musical instruments, just the faces. The record

company was furious. Why don't you put the guitars on the drums? How did the Kiss logo come to be? The Kiss logo, first of all I wanted to call the band, have seriously fuck, wanted to be edgy. And the first record would be called It, like It. The second would be called You, Fuck You. The third record would be called whatever it is, Us, and It All, and it's just on and on. Cool, who are you gonna go see?

We're gonna go see Fuck, yeah, fuck yeah. Pretty punk rock, pretty punk rock idea. I didn't know, it just sounded edgy. Fuck yeah, I go no, that's the live record, fuck yeah. And of course everybody thought no, no, you can't do that. And it was Paul Stanley who in his Mustang, Ace Fraley and I were in the back seat, Paul was in the front, Peter was already married so his wife would pick himaley and I were in the back seat. Paul was in the front.

Peter was already married, so his wife would pick him up. And Paul's driving, scared to death, thought you were gonna die because he was always a horrible driver. And he said, I don't know why, and he can't remember where it came from. He says, hey, how about kiss? Not semi-believing what he was saying.

And all of a sudden we were, wow. And we started talking, you know. Kiss, kiss of death, kiss of this, kiss of that. Wow, that's kind of, wow, it's kind of cool. Kind of like glitter and yeah. And then in those days, I was making the phone calls to clubs and taking care of the biz.

Sometimes paying whatever I had to do and whatever, but Paul would be driving the truck because I couldn't drive until I was 34. And we had this photo enlarged of us as Wicked Lester because it was a transition. We were Wicked Lester. Even as we, Paul and I got rid of the other guys in the band Wicked Lester and Peter as Paul and I got rid of the other guys in the band Wicked Luster

and Peter and Ace joined the band, we were still Wicked Luster, just as a kind of a thing. Like the yard birds, same thing happened before Led Zeppelin. The new yard birds and all that. Yeah. So there's a photo of us because they got us a gig at Popcorn, which became Coventry. We were the first band to play right in Woodside in Queens. And how many people would have been at that show? You could have fit two or 300.

And when we played, there might have been four. Jan Walsh, who was a girl I was seeing at the time, Jan Walsh, who was a girl I was seeing at the time, her girlfriend who was seeing her brother, Lydia Chris, who was Peter Chris' wife, and then one or two other people, that was it. But to us, we were playing Yankee Stadium. You were playing our songs, we're doing it our way. And on stage with lights on you.

There's a video. PA system, everything. PA system, makeup, everything. Big Marshall amps, and we have videos of it. Wow. Oh yes, before anybody was doing that. We wanted to see what that was. Nobody did that stuff.

How many shows would you say you did in that first year before going to record? Four. Total of four. The rest of the time was just rehearsing at the loft. I got a new song, Hundreds of Go, like that, and just every day playing those songs. I remember we did a version of Go Now. Yeah, great song.

That was by the Moody Blues. That was a cover. You should hear the original version. Anyway, we played at the Amityville, where Jaws was and so on, at this club called The Daisy. Couldn't have had more than 150 people or so, and there's video and music of that. Unbelievable.

Strangely. And a lot of those songs wound up on the first record and we played the Diplomat Hotel, Coventry, and maybe a charity event, that's it. That's it, and then recording. Well, yeah, the deal, as soon as Bill O'Coin, the flip side guy saw us. He called Neil Bogart. We played half hour set at La Tang's tap dancing studio,

halfway between Bell Sound and Studio 54. It was a very famous choreographer of 40s and 30s movies. And there were mirrors all over the place, which we loved, you know, because we were putting on the makeup and doing, and Neil Bogart came to see us, who was already very successful. Warner Brothers gave him his own label.

And he, you gotta give him credit. He saw something in us. We didn't have any hit singles. The first single we had was a song I wrote called Nothing to Lose. And I came up with this lick. ["Nothing To Lose"] Before I had a baby

I didn't know what to say I thought about the back door I didn't know, it I said before I had a baby I tried every way I thought about the back door I didn't know what to say But once I got a baby I tried every way She didn't want to do it But she did anyway Say baby please don't refuse You know you got nothing to lose, lose, lose. You got nothing to lose.

You got nothing to lose. You got, got. So that was the, he goes that I had a chorus of some kind, but nobody knew that it was about that back door. And I used- Was that the first single? Yes. On Casablanca. The very first song, yeah.

By Kiss. Yep, Nothing To Lose. Amazing. And the ad was me spinning fire, full page Rolling Stone ad and all that stuff because no other band ever was doing that. So they led with the guy who sticks his tongue out and all this kind of stuff.

And they went with the guy who sticks his tongue out and all this kind of stuff. And they went with nothing to lose. When I first heard Back Door Man, I didn't know what that meant. I had no idea. I thought he's gonna sneak in through the back door. I had no idea it was about the gateway to hell. I didn't know, see what I did there? And that record was done in two and a half weeks

in New York, and I remember being at my then-girlfriend's house in New Jersey, she had a little basement to herself, she was living at home as well, and her parents, wonderful people, in Hasbro Heights, and I would go visit her there, and she parents, wonderful people, in Hasbro Kites, and I would go visit her there and she'd lock the door and we were doing boyfriend-girlfriend kind of stuff there, and with music fairly loudly so you wouldn't hear the shenanigans, the sound.

And I was a Slade fan and I liked just English music. And when a song came on, Alison Steele was the night bird, W-N-E-W. And I heard. ["Alison Steele, Night Bird"] And, you know, my heat is broken, I'm so tired. And I thought it was slayed. I go, wait a minute, that's me singing. That's Ace's song, Cold Gin.

And all of a sudden I stopped paying attention, quotation marks attention, with my girlfriend at the time. I just stood up and I was, I don't know if there's another phrase for that sense of wonder, that ethereal thing when another dimension comes into your reality. Maybe they call it epiphany, a kind of a, like dreaming come true stuff because I never imagined my voice,

well I did delusional. But you hear yourself singing on the radio for the first time. On my favorite thing, with Alice and Steele saying, oh okay, here they are, see what's going on, you know, all this stuff. And Cole Jinn comes on and I thought it was Slade, I thought it was like an English band.

And she sits up and goes, what, what, what happened? That's our band. That's Kiss. She goes, Kiss? She barely knew about it. We barely, we were nobody. And that first record got us opening slots for Manfred Mann Savoy Brown. And we kept getting kicked off tours

because we would have a levitating drum set. It was hard to follow. They died. And our Kiss logo, nobody had logos that were hung upstage. Our logo lit up so it would blind you. And between the changes of the band, half hour, they didn't have enough time to bring it. So whoever came on, Argent and on stage, the Kiss logo was still on there because they didn't have enough time to take it down. Not only that, but after a song would be over by anybody, it would go to black.

But imprinted in your eyes, it would say kiss. Somehow on your retina, you know that thing. Yeah, because it's so bright. Yes. Even when the lights go off, it's still burned in. Yes, you couldn't create a more perfect thing. And in fact, New Year's Eve. You have the sign right from the beginning?

Right from the beginning. Yeah, the levitating drum set, which was just guys in the back. In fact, New Year's Eve... You had the sign right from the beginning? Right from the beginning, yeah. The levitating drum set, which was just guys in the back, you know, with the crank, spitting fire, throwing explosives above the heads of the crowds and just anything we could, spitting blood, all that stuff. In fact, New Year's Eve, a month and a half before the first record comes out, 1973, 74, we're fourth on the bill, and within three songs, my hair catches fire because stupidly I sprayed.

I didn't notice that on the spray can it says, Gene, you fucking idiot, don't spray your hair like that because this is flammable. It said, Gene, you fucking idiot, don't spray your hair like that, because this is flammable. It said, Gene, you fucking, it's right there on the can. That's the only time it ever happened? Oh no, six or seven times. No, really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. As I switched to lighter fluid, which caught like that, that didn't last long. But we had guys with fire extinguishers and wet towels and all that. I would never know. Any other technical difficulties that happened over the years you could think of?

Yeah, people just think, okay, you put something in your mouth and you spit it out, but in those days, everything was dangerous and fire marshals had no idea because they never heard of anybody doing that, and especially not bands. And so what happens is you have a flame source of sword or a torch or something. In my case, it was like a sword.

And on the hilt of it were these wrapped material that was soaked in kerosene or gasoline or anything that was flammable. A torch. Yeah, and you would light it. And my mouth was filled with kerosene. Nobody would see it. I'd walk out on stage with a mouthful of kerosene

and then spit the fire and bring the torch close to my mouth and spit it. And while I'm spitting, you have to move the torch away. And before I run out of steam, I've got to move the torch away from the line of my mouth because that fire is very quickly eating its way. Moving towards your mouth. Yes, and the actual fire source.

Like a fuse. Bigger, fireballs coming at you, five feet or more. Unbelievable. Yeah, and so in the early days, the fire source would go as much as 10 feet away, real flammable stuff. Later on, I started to use more safe,

but not as flammable stuff, odorless lamp oil, because I didn't know that the fumes of kerosene would actually give you cancer. I didn't know what you said. Really toxic. So we were major fans of Melody Maker and the other English things, and we'd go down to 8th Street,

right across the street from Electric Lady Studios to buy the first copies that would come in anywhere in North America. They would be right there on 8th Street and 6th Avenue. And a few days after we played the concert, and I caught fire and everything, one side was shorter than the other, there I was, my ugly face on the cover of Melody Maker. Wow. And then we somehow intrinsically knew it without being able to verbalize it. And the idea is actually,

it was true then and it's true now. And that is the rock stars, the stage personas that we all admire, actually have to impact the audio and the visual. Otherwise, it's great songs like, Torn between two lovers. Oh, that's a great song. Who wrote it?

I don't know who sang it or anything, but it's just a good song. So the song becomes the thing. But you can't sing Satisfaction or play it without knowing it's the stone, something about the imagery or the style or something. Yeah, and we intrinsically knew that because, I mean, certainly there was Alice who was around,

I don't know, two, three years before us, but we weren't trying to do that. It was not referring to us in the third person. We are that. In fact, which had never been done before, during or since, people were so fascinated by the makeup. And initially they only knew us in the makeup on the album covers and so

on. And I think it was Bill McCoyne who actually said, we're going to trademark your faces. And we didn't know what trademark meant with the Library of Congress. And we were one of the few people who were able to trademark our faces. Because they're like characters, they're cartoon characters essentially. Bigger because you could be Johnny Carson or Elvis Presley or whoever, and you could make Halloween masks of those faces.

You'd say, oh, that's Elvis Presley. He couldn't do a thing about it. But if you used our makeup on anything, on Scooby Doo and everything, and we did that too. We could sue you and take your first born. So immediately it started to have an impact on fans who, before we had makeup kits, because we've done everything from kiss condoms

to kiss caskets, we'll get you coming and we'll get you going. I told you that before. Thousands and thousands, before we knew that, it started to happen naturally. Right from the beginning you started doing merch? From the beginning. All different kinds.

Oh yeah, as soon as the kids, we call them the kids, but they came in all ages with so photos like it, I'm gonna go see this band. Well they'd wanna dress up like the thing and they'd make homemade t-shirts and all that because it's a chance for somebody, the rites of passage, your self-esteem isn't yet well-developed enough.

I could cover my face. And like Halloween, you can dress up and pretend and be outrageous and get more attention. You could do that, but with Argent, you like the song. Hold your head up. Ah, but you know, you have no idea who's in the band and didn't care. Was Kiss the first band to have personalized guitar picks?

Yes. Because now everyone has them. Of course. But that was a Kiss thing first. Yes, and we had, like the Mickey Mouse Club, we had… Fan club. Kiss Army. That's right.

That's correct. And we had, in the albums, we would have envelopes, full color and everything, where in those days you put $5 bills or checks or $10 bills, round numbers, and they were color 10 items on the inner flap or whatever that you could check what you wanted, and you would send away to, before people. T-shirts, hats.

Necklaces, everything. And we had four warehouses in the San Fernando Valley working 24 hours a day, millions of dollars. We were already playing. Atlanta Stadium and Anaheim Stadium and stuff. We didn't think twice about it, it was just like, oh. And by the way, at that time,

we were on $85 a week salary. Yeah, I didn't have a car, I didn't care. This happens how many albums in? Three, the first three records didn't sell at all. But the groundswell, the cultural groundswell, Circus Magazine, Roxane, Raves, all that stuff, we were always on the cover. Yeah.

So. And the concerts always did well. Sold out in, yeah, multiple days anywhere. Because we went to Yip Slanty, Michigan. And, do you ever go to Europe? The very first European shows with the Hammersmith Odeon, which sold out, we did a European tour in 1975.

When we went to Japan in 77 for the first time, we broke the Beatles record and played four or five days at the Budokan, which was and continues to be the large arena before bands played stadiums there. When we went to Australia the first time, we played two days per stadium down there. One in every 14 Australians bought tickets or albums. I know it was insane. We were trapped on the top floors of our, the Siebel townhouse, because they tried to take photos of us without our makeup. Nobody ever done that. We were always protected,

our sort of Clark Kent Superman thing. And that was an idea? From day one. We're gonna never be seen without the makeup. It was Bill O'Coyne who said, you've never seen Marilyn Monroe in a potato sack outfit without her makeup. That's why you have such a vivid,

it was never like, oh, this is me without makeup. Nope, it ruins the thing. And you didn't know that under Superman, it was this kind of ordinary Clark Kent kind of guy. So I'll never forget this. under Superman was this kind of ordinary Clark Kent kind of guy. So I'll never forget this. The first night we're playing two days at Sydney football stadium

and then two days at the Melbourne stadium, football stadium. Till that time, nobody did that. Not the Beatles, not there. And first night we're staying there, we have jet lag and everything. The shows are coming up in a day or two, and we have the curtains drawn,

and the sun is going down, and I hear a loud motor like a plane or a helicopter coming about to crash into the top floor, which we had. So I part the curtain a little bit and right outside my window is a helicopter with a TV crew trained on the windows trying to get photos of the band. Yeah, and the only way we could have some privacy

is we take out these huge boats into the harbor and fill it with food and chicks and all that stuff away from it. And of course, here in the middle of the harbor and fill it with food and chicks and all that stuff away from it and of course here in the middle of the harbor and smaller boats are circling the things. You basically experienced Beatlemania. That's what it was. I couldn't imagine you know when the Beatles played at Shea Stadium they were on for 20 minutes. Yeah. And the sound system couldn't hear them. All you could hear was just the screaming.

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Visit squarespace.com slash tetra and get started today. Let's hear a song from the second album. Rock and roll! Chuck Berry. That's it. Everybody knows your mother tells them, babe This is from that first show at the Hotel Diplat. Amazing. Let me go Cause baby's got the real and baby's got the soul And the lost is how I'm a band Rock and roll yeah yeah I know. Insane.

Far as I could see. Wow. Remember anything about this cover? Yes. Second album. Yes. I basically wrote, let me Go Rock and Roll by myself, but Paul, I think, threw in some stuff,

and we just looked back on Len and McCartney, said, okay, I'll stick both names on. So, second record, we were constantly on tour. In those years, we did two albums a year and write the songs and tour. How many shows would you do in a year typically? From the time of the... 200 plus.

200 plus, plus two albums. Travel, rehearse, do all that. Write everything. All the time. Would you be writing on the road all the time? All the time. Because you're on the road all the time. Doing demos, we had a day off,

you go in and you do a demo. There was no time and the records were done in two weeks. But the astonishing thing is it doesn't matter how unique and how well you do stuff, we're like ants next to the Beatles. Lenny and McCartney, I keep going back to that, I know I can't shine their shoes, they'd write two or three songs

and they'd come in the next day and teach the guys in the studio and record all two or three songs, finished, done, mixed in one day. And Led Zeppelin 1 was recorded in 18 hours from beginning to end. How do you do that? Unbelievable, unbelievable.

So second album cover, what do you remember? Oh, the cover is Norman Sief. Norman Sief was a brain surgeon out of South Africa. And he spoke, you know, that kind of Afrikaans accent and came to LA for, you know, all the good times and the stuff. And he had a movie film studio. And he would, in the early days of videos and things, he would just take photos all the time, very artistic guy. And that's totally his creation of,

he was a big fan of Japanese pop art culture. And he was the one that did that. In fact, put our names in Japanese on the covers so much so that that record immediately made us a big deal in Japan and in Asia because they thought we were Japanese. Wow. They thought we were Japanese and were shocked because they never saw us without makeup. Yeah. And that's in modern, you know, there are different versions of English. If you say V and Vow and all that, you think, oh, that's not real. No, it was like conversational Japanese. And during the photo sessions to get the back cover, I remember, and Paul is not a drinker, never has been.

The other two guys, not so much, they indulged. And that night during the photo session, we had like satiricon, you know, Fellini, everybody in costumes, horse heads, and girls with no tops, just crazy stuff. Do you know what I mean by Fellini and stuff? Yeah, of course. And Paul had too much to drink,

so much so that he was keeling over and we had to prop him up when we were taking the photos because we were trying to do that. And I remember we didn't have limos or anything, we had a station wagon and Bill O'Coyne and I picked up Paul like a sack of potatoes and took him into the station wagon, put the seats down in the back,

and put him in the back and locked the car so he wouldn't get in trouble. Amazing. Yeah, so, by the way, Ace Fraley started to indulge in his interest in things that went up his nose and other things, and this was the first time any of us had been in LA.

So Ace met the wrong people. Somehow he would attract or they would attract him. And he was a rebel in that sort. Whatever, there's a red light, he'd go through at full speed. It just seems to be in the DNA. And he would never, from all my time with him, never drink socially, just excess everything. Peter as well would take certain procollectivities.

At any rate, Ace, through his own stories and in one of his own books, said that he rented his first car because he never owned a car. We were on tour. We didn't know. This was like the end of 74. And you're also coming from New York, and in New York a lot of people don't own cars. It's not really a car culture. No, you just walk on the street or you hop a cab or go to subway. Exactly. And everything's half hour away. There's no traffic jams or anything. And Ace rented his first car and decided, I'm guessing he had something in his system,

to go up to Mulholland. And I don't know if it was Coldwater Canyon or Laurel Canyon, he decided in the middle of the night before we did the photo session tomorrow to go down and take those as fast as he could from his own admission and of course crashed into something and crashed his face, half of his face, into the wheel of the car. So he was all bloodied and black and blue and everything. Next day, the show must go on. We have to do it.

So what we did, and we have photos, he put on makeup only on half of his face. And then before Photoshop, they took a photo of the left side of his face and just duplicated it on the right side. Like a mirror. Like a mirror. It still looks a little strange because everybody's face is a little bit different on one side

than the other. Yeah, that was one of the things. And I remember at the end of the photo session for the back cover and front cover, it must have been one in the morning, we were staying at the Ramada Inn across the street from Casablanca Records. And I remember coming in, there was a swimming pool, and in full dragon boots and diving into the pool,

must have looked like some Ethereum monster or something because I had the bat wings and the black and all that, just swimming there. diving into the pool, must have looked like some sort of monster or something, because I had the bat wings and the black and all that, just swimming there. And we pretty much stayed awake that night. We had a second and third floor, and there was only a three-floor thing, and there were girls going from one room to the other.

The good times before AIDS, and when girls took birth control and had a different mindset before feminism became a tool and I fully support it. Everybody just loved life. It was just a much happier place, time. It was just a much happier place, time. I don't remember divisions. I mean, there was the hippie stuff in the 60s because of Vietnam War. But other than that, everybody was,

how do I put it, everybody was happy getting laid and not worrying about anything, just enjoying life. So the last song we listened to was. Let Me Go Rock and Roll. Let Me Go Rock and Roll? Let Me Go Rock and Roll from the second album, which is Hotter Than Hell. Both of those first two albums came out in 74. Within six months of each other. Amazing.

And then next is the third album, which is Dressed to Kill. And let's hear a song from that. You keep on dancing and the room gets hot. You drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy. You say you wanna go for a spin. The party's just begun, we'll let you in. You drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy. You keep on shouting, You keep on shoutin', you keep on shoutin'. I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day. I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day I wanna rock and roll all night

And party every day I wanna rock and roll all night And party every day You keep on saying you'll be mine for a while You're looking fancy and I like your style You drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy You show us everything you've got Baby, baby, that's quite a lot

And you drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy You keep on shoutin', you keep on shoutin' I wanna rock and roll all night And party every day I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day So I had a song, conceptually like

Stephen King's Christine, which was a song about a car, and it was called You Drive Me Wild, and I'll Drive You Crazy. He goes... guitar plays drive me wild and I'll drive you crazy goes you drive me wild and I'll drive you crazy Yeah, whatever it was, it might have been over by.

You know, just straight ahead, kind of Chuck Berry-esque kind of thing. And this is even pre-dating Kiss, this song? That part of it? No, that was once Kiss started. I was constantly writing. So was Paul. Always writing. We'd bring, yeah. And Paul I was constantly writing. So was Paul. Always writing. We'd bring, yeah.

And Paul likewise had, was always writing. And it came, when you didn't think about it, it came easy. Would you have a guitar in the hotel rooms all the time? Always. On the bus, and you'd bring a little tape recorder. And you'd, you know, just ideas. And then Neil Bogartart the head of the label said I'm gonna produce your third album. We didn't have a title then we did the

photo session right on I think 14th Street and 5th Avenue with Bob Gruen who became a land and photographer and all that. And we were walking, somebody came up with the idea, let's put on suits and ties. And be on the streets and see how people react, make it kind of like strange days. Well, it's New York and they've seen it, been there, done that, nobody looked twice at us. They just walked right by us.

Just kind of like, oh, I gotta get, I feel like taking a ship. Just walking around. In fact, I didn't have a suit and tie and all that. So I wore a bill of coins. In those days, I was pretty thin. So I wore bill of coins suit and tie, which barely fit me. I was much taller than him and so you see the pants

that halfway up the leg and clogs, cause I didn't have regular shoes and clogs I think belonged to Ace Fraley. So there I am with socks, clogs and short pants like they shrank in water. And then when we saw the photo, somebody came up with, oh right, the name of the record is Just A Kill. So Neil Bogart, who was a record man

and knew a hit when he heard it, was pretty tone deaf. Didn't play an instrument, couldn't tell you what was it, but he was experienced enough to see that when he would go to Kiss concerts, they were out of their minds. They looked like us. It was almost like an African or Indian tribal gathering because their faces would like war paint kind of thing

and they would all be bobbing like a cult, mouthing all the words and moving together. When we'd move on stage that way, the whole audience would be doing that, you know, really nuts, unlike other bands, of course. You have the Swifties and the Dead audience and a lot of bands have their own thing. But our thing was very cult-like,

a gathering of the tribes. And he said, worse to the effect of, you guys may not understand it, but I've been in the audiences, and they're nuts for you. And you have everything going for yourself. We don't have hit songs or anything. You need to write, I remember like it was

yesterday, you need to write an anthem. And both Paul and I looked at each other and said, like, what's an anthem? You sort of know the word. What do you mean? He goes, well, a song that says something about who and what you are, what you believe in. And when you take a look at how that applies to certain bands, especially Queen, we will rock you, we are the champions. Something about being aware of the fans and you like a football thing. Yeah, like a football thing. That's an anthem. And we didn't know anything. So Paul and I are trying to figure out how to do that. So I played him, you drive me wild, I'll drive you crazy, that kind of a thing.

I kind of like that. And then he went off and came back with. ["Dreams of a New World"] I have that. And he said, well, maybe put in a transitional thing. I'll figure out the words later. And then lift it with... And he came up with... I wanna run and run all night and party every day. Now if you write songs and you're aware of bars, only musicians know about this, you go,

1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, So the last chord is a 5 bar instead of a 4 bar because the words go too long. Rock and roll all night and party every day. Aye, that comes in, if you know about bars, comes in wrong, but if you tap your foot, you're not aware of it. So it's a four bar chorus, except for the last chord, which is five.

And something about that seems to make it even catchier for some reason. Yeah, there's a little tension at the end. I don't know why that is, but it definitely gives you the feeling of it's more memorable. And party every day. Ah, there's a pause. And in retrospect, it was always about the fans. And then when you meet Mike McCready and the Metallica guys or Lenny Kravitz

who was kicked out of school because he came in looking like me one day, Trent Reznor. I mean, it just goes down like Lawrence Fishburne, all kinds of people to whom the band meant more than songs. And therein lies the crux of a lot of people to whom the band meant more than songs. And therein lies the crux of a lot of the appeal and why we were able to do thousands and thousands of licensed products with our faces

where I'm madly in love with Aerosmith and all kinds of amazing bands. What you get is Stephen and the music. What you get with us is Disneyland with a back beat. I can remember listening to I Want to Rock and Roll All Night and Party Every Day. I can remember I was in the gymnasium of my junior high school, and I remember listening to it over and over again.

I wanna say trying to understand it. I don't mean understand the words, and I don't mean understand the music, but understand what was happening. Why do I wanna listen to this over and over again? What's happening? This is really interesting to me to this over and over again? What's happening? This is really interesting to me, keep going, keep going. What's happening here?

And I remember that experience of listening to it over and over, and it didn't relate to my life in any way, but something about the combination of the music and the sentiment of the words moved me at, I don't know, 13 or 14 years old, however old I was at the time. But I remember listening to it over and over and over again

and just feeling like it made me wanna know more. It is a very strange thing, this music that encompasses blues, rock, country, you know, all this stuff by people who maybe taught themselves their instruments and weren't classically trained and can't read or write music. But it really is kind of modern folk music, like reflecting the times, the culture, the feelings, and all that stuff with lyrics. Lyrics, even if it's something about a wop-bop-a-loo-a-wop-bam-boom, something about the lyrics and the sound of the words is cultural. Zappa, who I wrote a song with, may have said it best, talking about music is like dancing to architecture. It's just a feeling. It just comes over you

and it either gets you. When I hear Baby Workout by Jackie Wilson, I'm in it. I feel it. And when I hear classical music, I listen in it. I feel it. And when I hear classical music, I listen to it. When was the first live album, Kiss Alive? The New Year's Eve, 1975, 1976. Two albums a year. We were on tour. We didn't have enough time to go in a studio and do another one. This is after what we just listened to

was the third album. So, Alive came out after the third album? Within six months. Wow. And it was a double album. And we were- With a band who only has three albums. And in those days, if you put out a live album,

it's like if you played Las Vegas, your career was over. Had Wayne Newton and people like that. Only when your career was over, the Skyliners and the Flamingos, you put out a live record because you didn't have new material. It was unheard of for a band starting out to put out a live record. So we decided, again, delusionally not having any resume or experience, we decided to put out a double album with a souvenir. Like you went to Disneyland, you got photos, not a lot of words, but a lot of photos of what the live experience was like and write personal notes to the fans from each of us.

And in the records, we kept doing that, putting in like in Cracker Jack's box you'd get the peanuts and the popcorn and a surprise I bought the Cracker Jack's boxes for the surprise thing not for the peanuts and the popcorn and wash off tattoos and love gun would be a bang bang you know thing that you can go like that it would make a bang bang noise. And of course, a thing you filled out, where do you live, what magazines do you buy, all this stuff which sounds like marketing, of course it is, but it told the fans,

we got closer to the fans, who are you, where do you live? It's like- We wanna know about you too. Yeah, you know, who are you kind of stuff. And that connected the Kiss Army and stuff. And the Kiss Army started in Terre Haute, Indiana, where a guy named Sharkey calls a local radio station and says WKRX, it might be WKRX, could be wrong.

Why don't you play Kiss? And the guy goes, I don't know, we don't play it. We play Carpenters and John Denver. What is this Kiss? Oh, you gotta check him out, it's the best thing to do. He goes, no, I'm afraid we can't do that. And he hangs up and the kid calls back again. Well, listen, if you don't play Kiss by five o'clock today,

I'm gonna have the Kiss Army surround your, there was a broadcasting station, a little one shack outside of town so they could have their broadcast wires outside of town. We're gonna have the Kiss Army surround you until you surrender and all that. And the disc jockey, it was one man operation, calls the newspaper and the newspaper says,

yeah, whatever. Sure enough, after five o'clock he didn't play it and God knows how many people surrounded this little shack and it was on the cover of the Terraholt newspaper, Kiss Army Invades WKR, you know, whatever. And that's where the Kiss Army, and by the way, after that, they played Kiss. Yeah, and that's where the name came from.

It was not a marketing thing. It was created by the fans. If it's a Kiss Army, it's a voluntary army. And it got so crazy that we went to Flint, Michigan, because we kept getting letters from the football coach, and there's gonna be a movie about this. I think Dave Grohl's gonna be the director so far. That's what I hear.

Great, I hope so. And it's called Cadillac High. Cadillac, Michigan, outside of Detroit, small town where all the grown men, whatever, had gone to Detroit to work in the auto industry. So there were very few sort of grown people there. The teenagers were aimless and stuff. And the football team in high school lost every single game they played.

And this school teacher with a family, English teacher, comes into town looking for a job. And I'm an English teacher and you know, can I get a job kind of thing? I gotta support my family. The principal says, you know, I think about football. And of course the guy goes, yo, yeah, I know a lot about football. He goes, okay, you wanna be the coach of the football?

We have an opening. That's fine. He didn't know anything about football. That's just a job. And he goes out in the field, we have an opening. That's fine. He didn't know anything about football. That's just a job. And he goes out in the field, meets the guys, and they're aimless and stuff. They start throwing the ball around, and immediately they go, let's do deuce.

Then he hears, okay, black diamond. He goes, hey, guys, guys, what are you talking about? What is all this? Oh no, they're plays, you know, where one guy goes to the left and I throw it to him and we know, it's like secret language. It's by our favorite group, Kiss. He goes, Kiss, what's that?

And he started to see the photos of the things, like he didn't understand, he didn't know anything about football, didn't know about Kiss. And he said to the guys, okay, that's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna put on a blast kiss, and our secret code between ourselves

are gonna be their song titles. And this is a matter of history. And so it's a real story. Real story, and ESPN did a two hour special, which you can still go. They went undefeated to the state and national championship from day one. And we started hearing about this,

and the state senator and the governor and the local officials, oh, that's, you gotta come to Cadillac, Michigan, which we never heard of. And we were playing Flint, Michigan, on the way to Solonza, and we had a day off, and we went, okay, we'll put makeup on, and we'll pass them, and, I gotta show you two seconds of this.

We come into town, and the whole town is in kiss makeup, mothers, daughters, the streets were kiss boulevard. I don't know how to describe it to you, it was like you landed on a Twilight Zone episode and it looks like earth, but not so much. In the small town of Cadillac, Michigan, population 10,000. Cadillac High School's Friday night homecoming game in early October has long been a cherished tradition, as well as the homecoming parade hours earlier. But it's the parade for the Vikings

that went through town in 1975 that has never been forgotten by anyone here, because it looked like this. music Unbelievable. music Jim Neff is the man who brought the rock band Kiss to Cadillac some three decades ago. Back in 1974, he was an assistant coach with a problem.

The Cadillac defense was finding itself back on its heels on the field because they were way too tight in the locker room before games. Back then it was game face on, everybody was stern and no one cracked a smile. It was pretty somber and the kids were, they were really down and they weren't having any fun. I said well let's play some rock and roll in the locker room. I have the perfect band because their name is Kiss and Kiss stands in football for Keep It Simple Stupid. It's incredible. Insane. It's incredible. Now when you open the middle of a live one,

are two fans holding a Kiss homemade thing? Uh-huh. Famous picture, I remember it. We didn't even have a gold record yet. And we met them, I don't know, 10 or 15 years later, and I'm proud to say one was a successful real estate agent and the other one's a doctor. Amazing. And we later found out that night, after we came,

they had the single largest amount of pregnancies in their history. So you're spreading goodwill, you're saying. Somebody was spreading something, the largest amount of pregnancies in their history. In their history. So you're spreading goodwill, you're saying. Somebody was spreading something, but it wasn't me. And so we wrote Rock and Roll all night, and when that hit, by the way, it was not a hit on radio, it went so and so, we realized that Kiss never spent

enough time in the studio. The quality wasn't good. The producers weren't good. It wasn't until Bob Ezran came in later on that we started to do better Sonic. Is that Destroyer, the fourth one? Yes, where the arrangements got better. Ezran who also secretly worked really deeply in the wall,

which he barely got credit for. who also secretly worked really deeply in The Wall, which he barely got credit for. So we decided to do a live album as a souvenir as close as you can get to the live event. So throughout the record, the audience was screaming their heads off. That became Kiss Alive. Kiss Alive became the second, within a half hour, platinum record of all time.

The very first platinum record was New Year's Eve, 1976, 75, 76, and it was Hotel California. Ours was a half hour later, a double album, multi-million. And a live album. It was a half hour later, a double album, multi-million. And a live album. It was a live record too. Now the platinum record historically speaking was invented as a promotion by Capitol Records

for Grand Funk Railroad. They were outselling the Stones and everybody else, there were Times Square billboards, you know for about two years they played Shea Stadium. Opening was Humble Pock, they were you know, for about two years they played Shea Stadium. Opening was Humble Pot, they were a big band for about two years. And Capitol Records, they gave away not gold records, but platinum records, which was just a promotional, because records, if you sold a million dollars worth of records at $3.39 per record,

that would be a million dollars. So about 300,000 albums. But more and more records were selling 500,000. So gold became 500,000 LPs, long players. But then bands started to sell millions of records, so the RIAA took on platinum records, and the first two were Hotel California single record and Alive One, a double album. And that Alive One begat Rock and Roll All Night Live version,

which came out and was top four, top five. So the hit version was not the studio version but the live version. Yes. That's really interesting. The Frampton song was also one that was the live version. That's exactly right and don't kid yourself. Kiss engineered by Eddie Kramer. Yeah. Frampton comes alive. Alive became the synonymous with, this is a double album, it's not the end of our career, but new,

and using the alive thing. And Eddie Kramer did that record too. And sure enough, they hit songs, the live record became like, and then everybody, Cheap Trick did live records and everybody, and they didn't wait until the end of their career to do a live album. And I gotta tell you this, because strange things happened,

certainly to us and to many bands. We're in the middle of recording one of the shows at the Forum, and during the middle of the show, all of a sudden you see a prosthetic leg. It was a full leg with a sock on it and one sneaker. And it was being held in the front of the stage above. So we stopped the show and we looked at each other like, what are we supposed to do?

And somebody gave us what was then called a magic marker before Sharpies. And we signed the prosthetic leg in on the pink area. And we kind of held it in the front and somebody took it. You passed it back. I guess somebody took it, you see hands and took it. And I'm assuming the gentleman who sent it up on stage was leaning on somebody

because he didn't have the use of two legs. On another occasion, they were passing up a very young, close to being baby, with headsets on, like earphones. What are you gonna do with that, sign it or what? Barbecue it, I don't know what. You were passing a baby to the states. Yes, we did not, we refused it and just said, you know, kind of no.

But clearly. Do you think they were donating the baby to you guys? I hope... No, I don't think so. I think it was just, please sign my baby, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Next we have the fourth album. I'll play a song first, Destroy Her. I might skip the intro, because it's really long.

And it's not music. I feel all tight on a Saturday night. Nine o'clock, the radio's the only light. I hear my song and it pulls me through Cause the throne tells me what I got to do I got to get up Everybody's gonna move their feet Get down Everybody's gonna leave their seat You gotta lose your mind Detroit, rock city

Get up Everybody's gonna move their feet Get down Everybody's gonna move their feet. Get down. Everybody's gonna live their feet. Get in lane. I just can't wait. Get up. And I know I gotta hit the road.

First night drink, then I smoke. Start the car. And I try to make the midnight show. Get up. I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan

I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan I'm gonna get up and get my moan Can you hear the car? Yeah. Great song. Paul wrote that one about a live experience, about a fan who wants to see Kiss in Detroit, Rock City, and dies before he gets there.

Moving fast to a nine to five. Like that, yeah. Now, right after that section, there is a solo. Do you mind playing the solo very quickly? Fast down, nine to five. Doing fast, nine to five. Can't stop me, but I'm still moving much too slow. I feel so good, I'm so alive. I feel so good, I'm so alive.

I feel so good, I'm so alive. Here's my song. Here's my song. Everybody's gonna move their feet. Everybody's gonna leave their seat. Now there's no band just by itself. 12 o'clock I got a rock. 12 o'clock I got a rock. There's a truck ahead, not staring at my eyes. Truck ahead, but staring at my eyes.

12 o'clock I got no time to turn. I got no time, but I know I'm gonna die. Why? Get up, everybody's gonna leave this place Get up, everybody's gonna leave this place And it goes on to King of the Night-Time World and other anthems. It's a great, great song. That solo, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Bob Ezra comes in and says, okay, the song's like that, the song's like that.

Okay, here's the solo. And melody and drums and then it's gonna be in harmony, which bands didn't do that. You know, later on, the boys are back in town, you'd hear that harmony thing. It's just no harmonies and solos. What the hell is that? It also sounds almost like classical music. Yeah, it's not blues. Spanish classical music.

That's right, that's right. And that's all Ezra. I never think of the, ba da da da, it's not blues. No. Ba da da da, ba ba ba ba ba ba da.

That's blues flat third and all that. That's all him. Also the bass part, ba da da, da da da da, Yeah. Which reminded me of, I can't play that bass part, that's Freddy's Dead, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum,

ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, Is it my generation? Yes, it is. In the middle he does...

It has a da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, and that's a real producer. Yeah. And by the way, originally, Paul had Detroit Rock City and that was his ideas. Oh my God, no time to burn. Without the fifth. Ain't got no, no one gonna die. So it was all like, and it was Ezra who said like, Oh, do it on five, do it on nine to five.

Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. Oh my God. It was that, you know, he gave it room. Yeah, it became, I don't know, bigger, almost more symphonic. And then he, Bob Edsron, said, the song's about a fan who dies at the end, so let's put in a car. He's starting up the car in the beginning,

and at the end it crashes and goes right into... Ba-ba-ba, King of the Nightjumpers. Let's listen. The real one-two punch. One guitar. I'm the king of the night-time world What a song Come, live your secret dream It's so fine, loving with ease Far from the house, and the family finds It's so fine, being with you

Being with me, makes everything alright I'm the king of the night-time world In your mind and that dream, I'm the king of the nighttime world. Amazing. What a song. But all the songs had a... about the culture of the band and the fans. The first song's about a fan on the way to Detroit to see his favorite band, his music, his favorite songs playing, and he dies.

Second one is about the feeling of it. I feel like the king, and you're my headlight queen. And then we released Detroit Rock City as the first single. In those days, there were B-sides. You'd get the single, the A-side, which you wanted radio to play, and you'd give the fans another song on the B side. Well, the B side was a song we never imagined anybody would hear

because it didn't sound like Kiss. But it's not a wimpy ballad. Beth, I hear you calling, but I can't come home right now. You know why? Because me and the boys are playing all night. What's more important, your band or me? Actually, the band is more important. Yeah, because they'll pay my rent.

You're just gonna soak up the, yeah. And it was a very unromantic thing, which made it rock. But the sound was like a ballad. So one of the very few times, didn't happen often, where radio turned the song over and started playing. And Beth became a hit. Massive. It won the People's Choice Awards and all this stuff.

Let's hear a little bit of Beth. ["Beth I hear you come"] I hear you calling, but I can't come home right now. Me and the boys are playing, and we just can't find the sound Just a few more hours And I'll be right home to you I think I hear them calling Oh Beth, what can I do? Beth, what can I do? You say you feel so empty

That our house just ain't a home That I'm always somewhere else And you're always there alone Just a few more hours And I'll be right home to you. I think I hear them calling, oh Beth what can I do? Beth what can I do? Ezra heard the song. This middle section Ezra heard the song. This middle section is Mozart. It's in public domain.

It's Mozart. And he integrated that in the middle. And that's an outside musician, Dick Wagner playing guitar on a few songs because Ace by that time had given in to his weaknesses and wouldn't show up in the studio. And I love Ace and I love Peter and I was just so sad that it happened to them. The fans hated me for, it's like your mom telling the kids that your fathers are drunk and a loser. Kids don't wanna hear that, but it's the truth.

And all these decisions are just hurting himself, nobody else. Everybody thinks you can't get along without me. Actually Spirit tires are just as good as the real tires and the car moves along just fine. How was the Destroyer album received? It stopped at 890,000 albums and then when Beth kicked in, nothing anybody expected, it became multi-platinum and sold by the millions,

like right away. And that's the first album cover that's actually cartoon, is that correct? Yes, it was, I'm afraid it's my idea, said, you know, we're- I'm not against it. I'm just saying to people who are musos, what they call it, is we are the guitar and the drums?

And they're like, no, no, we're bigger than our instruments. We're like Marvel superheroes. That's what it looks like. Yeah. That's what it looks like. And so all the poses are directly from Jack Kirby, who created Fantastic Four and the Hulk. It looks like the Fantastic Four,

except Justice Kiss. Yes. And the idea being is, how do you separate yourself from people that define themselves by their instruments? It bears noting that perhaps the most musical out of all of them, the Beatles, were never on their covers with their instruments ever. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow,

it's just a suitcase and they're around it because they're bigger than the instruments they play. Yeah. The next album was, if we're counting, there have been four studio albums. Three studio, one live, and then fun. And now we're up to the fifth studio.

In the morning I raise my head and I'm thinking of days gone by. And the thing I want out of life is. I want you, I want you. is. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. You can run, you can hide, but you never get away.

You can lie and deny, but you know you're gonna pay. Never loved, never thought you could. Great Beatles-esque harmonies. I want you. I want you. I want you. You can walk in a haze. You can travel till you die. You can live in a dream. Now your life will pass you by. Every day that you hit the tape. You never change. There's a handsome face. You can fly but the nights are small. But you can do.

I want you. I want you. Baby, baby, baby, I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you.

I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you no thing you can do I want you I want you Baby, baby, baby, I want you I want you

Great song and maybe my favorite Kiss album cover. Yeah, that became iconic. That's Paul on lead guitar. Paul could also play, you know, in his range. Just want to say something that we started to discover not just who and what we are, but what we meant to the fans. So the word, the demon, the star child, the spaceman, the cat man, those were created by the fans. They started to refer to us as that. So they never had names before that.

Now we were just Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley and so on. And the fans took it, we start to have Kiss comic books, Marvel comics, the biggest selling Marvel comics of all time at a buck 50 instead of 25 cents. And it was my idea to make them bigger size so that we'd be racked next to Time Magazine because the smaller comic books were in a different rack and not everybody read comic books.

At any rate, we started writing songs about ourselves. We started making fun of each other. I said, Paul, you always write silly love girl songs like Christine 16. I made it up on the spot. He goes, oh, that's a good title, Christine 16. That's a good title. So as soon as he heard that,

he was gonna go and write a song. So I, oh, I better go and write one. So I wrote Christine 16 fast and had the Van Halen brothers come in and do the demo. And then Paul said to me, yeah, well, you ever write a monster song? I'm the God of Thunder and all this kind of,

oh, what did you say? That's cool. God of Thunder. I'm the God of Thunder, I'm gonna go right, no, but he finished it first. Paul wrote God of Thunder, a modern day man of steel, and I command you to kneel kind of thing. And it was Bob Ezra and- But you to kneel kind of thing and it was Bob Ezra.

And he wrote it making fun of your character. Making fun, I wrote Christine 16 making fun of Paul. Yeah. Amazing. And I mean, you could say there's anything about Lenny McCartney, Lenny was like, oh, you have a writer love songs like silly and McCartney later on said, what's wrong with silly love songs?

So when we were doing Destroyer, and Ace didn't always show up unfortunately, and it was time to record God of Thunder, it was Bob Ezra who turned to Paul and said, Gene's gonna sing this one, not you, because you're not the God of Thunder. Gene is. It really hurt Paul.

But then when we heard the track back, that became an iconic kind of a thing, because it was a song about the band, me. Just like the Boys Are Back in Town by Thin Lizzy, it's kind of like the feeling of, hey, we're back in town, we're gonna raise some hell. And We Are the Champions feels like, hey, we're back in town, we're gonna raise some hell. And we are the champions, feels like hey, we're singing about like a football, it's about us.

And we will, we will rock you, it's a very anthemic. And so I started writing more songs like that, like they call me Dr. Love and I like that. And I remember going back to Crazy World of Arthur Brown when I first heard that song, I went, oh, and it starts off with, I am the God of Hellfire and I bring you, and the name of the song is Fire. Yeah, no, by the way, you could have had Fire,

Ben Newton, you know, and all that song. But he, at the beginning, says, I am the God of Hellfire and I bring you fire. As a teenager, I went, what the hell? Because people didn't sing about themselves. Let's listen to Calling Dr. Love, same album. I remember writing Calling Dr. Love at the Indianapolis Holiday Inn.

Middle of the night, I saw a Three Stooges cartoon. It was a Three Stooges as idiot doctors, and they're running back and forth from different rooms, and the view is down the hallway, calling Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, calling Dr.... And they're going from one room to another, and I'm going, calling Dr. Love, calling Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, calling Dr. And they're going from one room to another. And I'm going, calling Dr. Love, calling Dr. Love.

And then it just rhymed, because I've got the cure you're thinking of. And the song wrote itself like that, inspired by the three stooges. ["You Need My Love Saber"] You need my love, baby, oh so bad You're not the only one I've ever had. And if I say I want to set you free, don't you know you're being misery.

They call me Dr. Love. They call me Dr. Love. They call me Dr. Love. I call me Dr. Love. Call me Dr. Love. I've got the cure you're thinking of. Call me Dr. Love. And even though I'm full of sin, in the end you let me in You let me through, there's nothing you can do

You need my loving, don't you know it's true So answer please, get on your knees There are no bills there are Kind of a silly song with a pop chorus They think it's girls and Paul and I falsetto. Not sonically recorded well at all. Dr. Love! It's like the Supremes.

And I knew one of them well. How did you meet Diana Ross? How did I meet Diana? I was, we were at a party in LA when the band decided to do four individual solo records and release all four solo records on the same day, which nobody had ever done before, during, or since. Kind of stupid, but they all turned platinum. But, so I had this idea of filling up the solo record. Like I remember the rock and roll circus thing,

the Beatles or All You Need Is Love. They had everybody there, Chester O'Toole and the Rolling Stones. And I loved that idea, that community of stuff. So I wanted to fill my solo record with all kinds of people you'd never think of. So as I would meet Helen Reddy, who at the time was the face of feminism,

I am woman, treat me. Every girl was like singing that song. And Janice Ian, who I loved like crazy. There was a song called At Seventeen. Mm-hmm, beautiful song. Ugly Ducklings Like Me, and oh, what a song. And I remember seeing her when she was 14. Jamie's down, can't get off the ground. Before she was signed. So I wanted her and all kinds of people showed up on that

record. I reached out to Lennon McCartney, they were busy. Jerry Lee Lewis flew in, but too late to be on the record. Gracie Slick and Donna Summer and Rick Nielsen, everybody was on it. And I went to a government dinner, this guy, Jerry Brown was running to be governor of California and he was there shaking hands and he wanted to meet celebrities. And Cher was there, I had never met her and was a big fan, you know, beat goes on especially. Carol K did that baseline, beat goes on especially. Carole Kay did that bass line.

That became the hook. Carole Kay sat me down, it's on YouTube, and showed me how if he got the right bass part, it is the song. You know, hit the road jackas, bum, bum, bum, bum, that's what you remember. So, from her side, Chastity, her daughter at the time, said, oh my God, you're going to that party,

Gene Simmons is gonna be there. Cher had never heard of me. She thought it was the actress, Gene Simmons. The old actress, 1940s I think. Yeah, she was married to Stuart Granger from Bo Brummel and all that. And she walks up to me and she said, are you Gene Simmons?

And I go, yeah, nice to meet you and everything. And she sat down. We started talking. And she said, let me tell you a funny story. And I said, you know, I'm a really big fan. Those songs meant a lot to me because I Got You, Babe is a teenage survival story. They say we're young, but we don't know that I got you,

you got me, it was like this kind of surviving teenage love story and I loved the lyric and the whole thing and Sonny, as it turned out, wrote a lot of songs with Phil Spector. And so I told her all that stuff. I knew about the wrecking crew and we talked all night. I asked her, do you want to be on my solo record? I'm doing a solo.

She said, yeah. And after the party, Cher asked me if I wanted to go with her. I didn't know where or anything because my history is tainted, you know. So I hop in her limo and Marsha Strassman, who used to be on Mr. Cotter, reality show, was Cher's best friend, Warren Cher. You don't want to go with this guy. I know all about him. Despite that fact, Cher and I went and I remember staying up all night at Sharon's house

and we were just talked about, you're from Israel, what the hell is that? And they don't drink or smoke or get high because she was surrounded by that culture, it's Hollywood. So we very quickly started, she was on the record, she appeared and we started living together for a few years, and then Christmas time came up, and I told her, look, I'm going to New York,

I gotta record a tour, and what do I get you for Christmas? I don't know what to get you. She said, call my best friend, Diana Ross, she'll take you shopping, and whatever she buys, she'll know what I like. This is my best friend. I got to New York, I called Anna, and you know where this is going, and I'd never met her before.

Of course, I was in awe, the Supremes and Diana Ross and Motown and all that. And I went up to her place and told her about it. She said, oh no, she called me and, And I went up to her place and told her about it. She said, oh no, she called me and, I'm gonna take you shopping and, do you wanna eat anything? I, not so much, food is okay, but I love cake.

You like cake? I go, oh yeah, I worship cake. Well, I've got some chocolate cake, you want some chocolate cake? I love it. She gave me a slice and then she gave me a second slice. Literally. And then we became a thing.

We lived together or had a relationship on and off and needless to say, Sharon, Diana, you know, for a while, I think they're okay now, for a while didn't speak with each other. Tell me about the personality of Cher and the personality of Diana Ross. The DNA, it seems to me, is similar. Both women didn't suffer fools easily. Alpha females, a lot

of women, and I've known a lot in the capital And fair enough, you use what tools you have. And both Cher and Diana, it seems to me, unlike almost any other females, did not define themselves by their men, either in marriage or relationships or anything. They did what they wanted to do, which explains how they were able to climb so fast and stay for so many decades.

And I don't care, you know, I will say whatever I want to say. I don't care about being canceled or who likes me or who not. I honestly cannot say a bad thing about Cher or Diana. They're wonderful, wonderful, exciting, mentally stimulating, and just great. What was the gift that you got for Cher? Not a fucking clue, I don't remember.

I don't shop well, it just means nothing to me. It's not that I don't appreciate it. Hey, every time there's a holiday or birthday or Christmas, my kids and Shannon, who I've been with for 41 years, I always beg them, please don't buy me anything. It goes in the closet or I give it away. I'm not a thing guy. I mean, I wear some loud clothes every now and then,

but I never buy them. What do you remember about the album cover? I think it was Paul that had the title Rock and Roll Over because he liked the rollover kind of a thing. And it was Dennis Wulick, the art director and our business manager's, guy named Howard Marks Office who had this idea that there's no up or down, that you could turn the record sideways or upside down

and it would also work. So he created that with an artist whose name I forgot and it's become iconic know iconic beyond I've seen many many groups do that. It's so cool. And by the way the I'm proud to say that on the Kiss Tribute album we had everybody from Lenny Kravitz and Garth Brooks and everybody else and I put together that record so I'd be calling Neil Young you know talk to say, I want Neil to sing a song. You want Neil to be on a Kiss tribute album?

How about you be on a Neil tribute album? I said, okay, Neil first, and then we'll do a song for that called Madonna's Off. I wanted her to do I Was Made For Loving You. That would be so cool. Great. Yeah. I had Wide Zombie, and just everybody you can think of. And of course, Jimmy Iovine called and said,

what are you doing talking to my acts directly? They're assigned to me. I'm going, hey, rappers do it. Bees do it. Why can't we do it? So we were lucky to get the artists we got. And one of the tracks was calling Dr. Love. Singing lead is Maynard, you know,

from Tool and Perfect Circle, and on guitar's Tom Morello, and there were a lot of, so many cool people doing that. And it meant the world to me, because they did it from the point of view of the music being a soundtrack of their lives, because they grew up with it. I understand.

The next album is the last album before the solo albums, and I will play you a song from that. I remember the day that we met I needed someone, you needed someone to love Ooh, yeah Sometimes taking all you forget Killing yourself for something else Ooh I got my heart, I got my head I got the letter, I think of the things you said Cause I stole your love Stole your love So that's an example of a song where the riff is the hook. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

And there were quite enough of those, a lot of the songs are based around a riff, either like... That's got a thunder. Everybody's playing that riff. Everybody would play the riff, whether you mask it with stuff. But yeah, riffs had a lot to do with it. And you know, I'm reminded my favorite band of all time, sometimes you hear That's the bass line, but play it with guitar it sounds like horn lines and the way I played bass I

Tried to follow in the way behind in the in the shadow and the footsteps of McCartney, who played bass more in the way a string quartet works, which is that unlike ACDC, which is like if there's a song in A, the bass would go. Boom, boom, tap, boom, tap, ah! You know, and go. I'm making it up, and go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go.

And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go.

And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go.

And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. And you go. The bass, you know, you know, Melodic bass lines. Yes, like a string quartet, the cello had its own melody.

Even if the drums was doing a beat and some of those McCartney, you know, Lady Madonna. ["Lady Madonna"] The bass line. Mm-hmm. Whatever. You know that thing. The whole song is a riff. And by the way, so is this.

The bass doesn't do that though. The bass does. against this. It's a very strange thing. It's actually wrong because they wind up on the A against the G, which is a passing dissonant. So this is the Love Gun album and what, how would you say the band had changed from the beginning to Love Gun? We were selling out everywhere in stadiums and arenas and stuff. We had come back from Japan and Europe and we had yet to play South America. When we went to South America, the first time in 1981

or so we played Barakana, the largest stadium in the world, anywhere from 175 to 200,000 people. And that was at the low point in the band. There was a local opening band and that was it. And by that time, Ace low point in the band. There was a local opening band and that was it. And by that time, Ace was out of the band. We had at least 10 different lineups. Is that the first album, Love Done, the first album where it's not the original members?

No, the original members were hanging in there, although we were having more and more problems with Ace and Peter, demands and were having more and more problems with Ace and Peter, demands and showing up late and not doing that. No, the band, we were riding high. The Gallup Pole, which used to mean a lot, we were the number one band in the world per the Gallup Pole for three years in a row, 77, 78, 79. Number two, I think, was Beatles,

and then there was Led Zeppelin and Bee Gees and other bands. Unlike the other bands, some bands were selling more records. A few bands actually sold more tickets, but nobody touched us in licensing and merchandising. And we were making millions. So we went out and did another greatest hits collection called Double Platinum. When was Alive Two though?

Alive Two was right after Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over, and Love Gun. Then Alive Two. Okay. Another three records, another Alive, also Multi Platum creating new. I think that was at the time my favorite of your albums was Just Alive 2.

There were some good songs, Rockin' in the USA, All American Man, a few others. Ace Fraley did not show up for quite a few of those songs. So we got Bob Kulick, Rick Derringer, a few other people. And by that time, you know, Krax, not all was well in Paradise. Bob Kulick, Rick Derringer, a few other people. And by that time, you know, cracks. Not all was well in Paradise. And after Alive 2, we couldn't really get our act together.

Peter Criss started to make problems. So in the meantime, right after that, we released Double Platinum, which was another greatest hits collection. You remember our fans kept getting younger and younger. New fans, because of the toys and the games, were discovering the band. So they didn't know about the...

The early records. No, they just like, oh, double album. And it was a really cool cover, it was silver, yes? Yeah. Like mirror-like. With the imprint, mirrored. By the way, copied from Your Eye Heap, they had an album that was called Mirror Images

or something where the faces were imprinted. You know, everybody gets inspired or everything. And we did a disco version of Strutters. It was Strutter 79 or something. It's the same song, just, chup-chup-pah, you know, ss-ss-s-s, and just same song, just, chuk chuk, bop, you know, ss, ss, ss, that kind of thing, which didn't work at all on the double platinum.

So, but on Alive, too, millions flew out the door, but there was trouble in Paradise, both Ace and Peter. And during that time, we did a movie that was in theaters, drive-in theaters, we caught it in Australia, when we went back, outdoors, packed with cars everywhere. We replaced Peter first, whose drumming went down. We used to call him Mr. Misery, or the Ayatollah Criscola.

That was his original name. I was Gene the Nazarene. Oh, I want to grow up to be just like you. You're so important, you know, that thing. And Paul was the hee shee. Screw it on. Sometimes he's a hee shee. There was a thing in the media they thought Paul pitched for the other side

or was secretly a woman, you know, whatever, all that stuff, nonsense. And Ace was high octane and other such names. But clearly Ace and Peter were having problems. And I always feel the pain that fans must feel. feel the pain that fans must feel. I mean, my heart was broken when I heard Lenin going on about, you never wrote anything except my God, oh my God, you were childhood friends. Heartbreaking. When they turned on each other, you go, what? Don't, mom and dad, you know, when they turn on each other. So I'm aware of it.

So we had to get rid of Peter and Eric Carr, who cleans stoves in Westchester, was Eric Caravello, we changed to Carr. So it didn't sound like Mr. Bunch Galoop selling fruit on the street corner. Hey, get your fruit over here. It's just not a rock sounding name. Jews change their name.

Nobody was born Bob Dylan. Okay? On the other hand, nobody was born The Edge. I think I'm going to call my baby The Edge. And new members came and went. Eric was great, a real team player, and sadly passed. He got a rare form of cancer and he passed quickly, very, very fast. And then Ace, during the filming of the Kiss Meets the Phantom film, he wouldn't show up. Also Peter wouldn't show up on Sundays.

We had to get stuntmen. There was an African-American stuntman who dressed up in his thing so he could do the stunts and everything. And Ace was nowhere to be found. God knows where he went. And this film was big. And we started doing an album called Creatures of the Night. Before then we had another greatest hits album called Killers with four new songs and they all kept selling. And then we hit rock bottom with

Creatures of the Night in America. And I co-wrote a song called War Machine with a new guy who had a hit record, but they sped up and they thought it was a girl, Brian Adams. I had the riff and he and Jim DeVallance finished the song. And then I wrote I Love It Loud, you know, kind of like, this is what we're about, kind of like an anthem thing, which is still one of the songs which has been sampled

by rap groups and all that. And the record came out and it was a bomb, 250,000 albums, something like that, where we were multiple millions. And at the same time we went to South America and played the largest shows we'd ever played. If you can imagine Anaheim Stadium four times the size. So much so that the spotlights that were out in the audience were airplane landing lights

because regular spotlights didn't reach the stage. Unbelievable. They would dissipate. And we were trapped in our hotel rooms. It was mania and the army was our, so we went to armored personnel carriers with tank treads and we're inside looking through peep holes to see outside, somebody was run over, nobody stopped. They just, it was insane.

We played three outdoor shows, and then when we left, the promoter, God bless him, absconded, took our equipment, and it took a court case. Hey, it's South America. Took your equipment? Yeah, because he thought we should have paid less or we paid too much or whatever that is. But, you know, we went to court and got everything back.

But it's, you know, it's the Wild West, it's South America. And again, at the same time, we came back after having played the biggest shows we'd ever played. So in certain parts of the world, and it's the same with any band that lasts long enough, you can't get on a plane without getting turbulence. Of course you get more turbulence in the back than you do in the front. And we had new members, Mark St. John came and left

and Bruce Kulick came. And it was Paul who came to me and said, you know, we're doing good stuff. Creatures of the Night was a decent record. It had some good tunes on it. Maybe it's time to take the makeup off. Wow, interesting. I thought I'd be lost without it because that became so ingrained. I knew who and what I was. You know, it's like what's Dr. Jekyll without Mr. Hyde? It was just a doctor. And we had a guy named Waring Abbott, a photographer. We had a confidential

wearing Abbott, a photographer, we had a confidential photo shoot where nobody would get copies. And we stood around without our makeup. And we were writing songs pretty good with new members. The Lick It Up record came out and we hit again. I went right back up without makeup. Less is more. Was there an Unmasked album? Is it called Unmasked? Before Unmasked came after

I Was Made For Loving You and Dynasty. And Peter Criss, that was his last record. He got credit for it, he didn't play a single hit. I Was Made For Loving You is a really good song. Anton Figg from The Letterman Show, who was in another band called Spider that a coin managed as well and he was a good solid drummer. He played secretly.

Did a coin manage you guys the whole time? Yes. And shortly after that by 83 we stopped being managed by him and later on he got sick. He passed away unfortunately from AIDS. He just wouldn't go to the doctor, just awful, awful. And then our business manager took over business management but no manage, we were managing ourselves. A period of time though with Doc McGee or no?

Doc McGee is after we decided to put the makeup back on again in 94, 95, after all kinds of records sold out tours. We even played stadiums without the makeup. It was surprising. We didn't expect it. But still the kiss, it's like kiss without makeup with effects and pyro and stagecraft. Yeah. And it worked fine.

New generations ate it up. It was great. And then we did the Kiss Conventions and I hired a guy named Tommy Thayer who was in a band called Black and Blue. They asked me to produce their last two albums, which I did, and I recognized a talented guitar player and a professional who shows up on time to mix lists,

checks it twice and all that stuff. It's so important in a band. And hired him to do whatever had to be done. So he became a road manager. We put together history books at my guest house, sold it direct to be done. So he became a road manager. We put together Kiss Street Books at my guest house, sold it direct to the fans, no retail. They sent cash, we made, really, you know, all the publishers went,

why didn't I came to you? You didn't believe in it. So we had two, volume one, volume two, and they were enormously successful. And then right after that, we did the Kiss Conventions. I think it was my idea. The idea being that fans can never get close enough. And in those days, a $100 ticket was crazy.

So we would take over the ballrooms of hotels, which often they'd give us for free because they wanted the traffic, the food, fans staying over. And we called local Kiss Tribute bands who would play there and we would take plexiglass collectibles and just showcase it. And on stage, say, what do you want to hear?

Here's a song acoustically. So there's no big stage show. Question and answer, like a real fan thing. They were very successful and... And you did that all over, not just in one place? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

And MTV got wind of it and said, we'd like to do one in New York and record it. And we did. That became the unplugged, kiss unplugged thing with Ace and Peter and Eric Singer, who was in the band, and Bruce Kulick, and it was like six guys, two original guys and that stuff. And it was very successful, big record and all that stuff.

And the audience was packed with a wide zombie, an anthrax guy, this guy, because they grew up with the stuff. And Paul and I looked at each other saying, Ace and Peter aren't in too bad of a shape. They look like they're clean. And so we looked at each other and said, do you wanna try a reunion?

We talked to them. There was still some vestiges of demands. I want this, I want that. And they agreed to it. And at that point, I was booking some stuff and doing, you know, we didn't have a manager. And we looked in the, in essence, the phone book and interviewed a few managers. Don is manager, this guy's manager, and Bon Jovi and Motley Crue who happened to have this

guy Doc McGee and we took both of those bands out on their first tours. And we liked McGee, what he had to say, and also it was a very hard negotiation. I think I was the asshole, said you can't take from the gross, you can only take from the net after all costs. You gotta have some skin in the game. And he agreed, and we put the thing together, and in short order, the reunion tour became the number one tour,

Gallipoli Stadiums, the whole thing. The very first show was Tiger Stadium, which went clean in 45 minutes. And more and more, Ace and Peter started to fall back. Some people can kick the stuff and I'm not qualified, but some people can't. Either self-esteem issues or life isn't going their way, or even if it is going their way, you're rich and famous, what's the problem?

No, I think I've gotta numb myself and become dependent. I never understood it, I don't understand the appeal. And I'm told if you drink too much, your schmeckle won't work, and why the fuck would you want that? Think about it. You will throw up on your girlfriend's shoes, which she just bought.

Next morning, you have a headache, and your schmeckle won't work. What is that? Tell me about the last Kiss Show. We kept talking about the end because we were acutely aware, basically Paul and I, as fans of this thing, this culture, this thing,

because say what you will about classical music, I don't see a culture, a 10 commandments of what it all means. Renaissance was a freeing of creativity, but country is a culture. It's how you dress, how you talk, what you believe in, church, your truck, your beard, all these kind of things. Hip hop for sure.

So we were aware of boxers and bands staying in the ring too long. Yeah. Because you just can't. And you've done it 50 years, just to be clear. But you're still, look at me. I know. Come on Ruben.

I know, and the people show up. And they show up. They show up happy. I know I'd be popular in jail, I got it. There are a lot of people my age. Yes. I'm 75, who would, you know, walking around with their walkers.

It bears noting that Mick Jagger, I think, is a little older than Joe Biden. And he's doing two hour shows running around on stage. I mean, I don't wanna say- Not age. Part of it is DNA, your genes. And part of it is kind of like the joy of life. I've met, you know, I've met 60 year olds

who act like they're 100. Yeah. It is, it mindset. When I wake up in the morning, it's just like, wow, look at this stuff. So Paul and I were talking about Peter, Chris and Ace, they came back in the band. And by 2000, we did Dodger Stadium and this and that,

all kinds of cool stuff. New Year's Eve, Dick Clark and all that and sold more records and a lot more licensing and merchandising. And we're talking about cartoons and movies and all that. And both Peter and Ace back in the band was just torture. Sadly, they were both in and out of the band three different times. How many times does life give you a chance to earn millions and millions and play music?

And play music and have the time of your life and not worry about stuff. Just live the life of Riley as they say. And we thought the very last show of that tour, we gotta get rid of the guys, and we thought New Year's Eve, let's just end it because you can't, you can drive with some flat tires, but it's not convincing.

And, yeah, Cartney's still out there, that's great. Very few people his age should be on that stage. There's he, and bless B.B. King, he went out on stage, sitting down. But rock is a certain thing. You gotta be on two legs. You gotta do something. If you're not running around, at least something.

So we decided, you know, go out while you're on top. Go out when the story's good. And we were gonna end 2000, once Ace and Peter left for the third time. And we took some time off and everything. And then the fans kept asking, Once Ace and Peter left for the third time. And we took some time off and everything. And then the fans kept asking, why'd you stop? Well, Ace and Peter, well, you got on without them with different members.

We took the makeup off and everything. We came to see you and you sold out everywhere and your records were good. And we started to look at each other like, yeah, what about that? And you know, the fire in the belly was relit. Do we dare hope against hope that we can, I mean, how many years do you think you can last here

with new generations, hair metal bands and grunge and new romance and Adam and the Ants, you know all the new kinds of things. How can you stay relevant and maybe or just popular? Forget about relevance. And we got new guys. Tommy Thayer, who was in Black and Blue was also in in a kiss tribute band called Cold Gin. And they did so well that they actually toured Japan

as a kiss tribute band and get, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 thousand bucks per night. Made a good living being a kiss tribute band. And he knew all the songs and physically looked like ace. Have you ever seen a kiss tribute band? Many. What's that like? Bizarre.

And you can also see little people Kiss tribute bands. There's Mini Kiss and oh yeah, there's all-female Kiss called Priss and a few other variations. It's really quite amazing. There's Jeans Addiction, which is a Seattle band made up of Green River and some of the Seattle bands, you'd note, and all of them are dressed like me. And when one of them spits fire,

all five guys dressed like me spit fire at the same time, including the drummer. I'm not making it up. I wore the Jeans Addiction, get it? Jeans Addiction t-shirt for the longest time. And then when Maynard and Morello did the track on Kiss My Ass, they called it Shandy's Addiction. Shandy was a pop song Paul wrote on one of the records,

which was a hit in Australia. pop song Paul wrote on one of the records, which was a hit in Australia. So we took a look at this idea of we were born in New York City, 10 East 23rd Street, 10 blocks down, 10 from 33rd Street, Madison Square Garden. So we decided let's finish off Christmas or Kissmas 50 years after the birth of the band, 10 blocks down. Let's do it at New York and only do one show and film it and all that stuff and invite our friends. You know, it'll be like a celebration. And then the film crew and everybody and McGee

convinced us to do two shows. We could have been there for a week or 10 days. Better for the film to shoot more than one. Well, also, you don't know if a microphone's not gonna work or you get a flat tire or whatever. So we did December one, December two in New York. But by the way, like all things Kiss, the Empire State Building lit up with our faces on it.

There were 800 New York City cabs wrapped around with Kiss imagery. If you went into the subway and you got a subway ticket, you had our faces on the subways. You went to get a pizza. The outside of the pizza boxes, we were our faces in your face. They were kiss pop-up shops.

Basically, if you started a new religion and called it Christianity, that's what was going on. It was like a total takeover. What year was this? This last December. Wow. Amazing. Yeah, we just couldn't believe it.

Amazing. Anywhere we went, I mean, there were people walking around the streets of New York during the daytime because fans flew in from around the world, Japanese fans and all that stuff, during the daytime in full makeup. You know, we'd be going and going to the Empire State Building because we went up to the top where King Kong fell off

and all that stuff. Because in 76, we were on top taking photos when there were no guard rails hanging off the sides. So one of those photos that became a thing. And on the way there, we were seeing kiss people on the streets, you know, dressing early to go to the show. Feel any different on stage knowing it was the last one?

Very emotional. Yeah. Pride, but also a little sad because people who've been married, I'm guessing, a few times, but remember when it was real love

and that magic of the thing. If it doesn't last, there's a sadness there. Sometimes it's drugs and alcohol, sometimes they just go apart. But when it was great, it's sad because not everybody survives life. Yes. And I'm still sad about Ace and Peter who,

even today can't enjoy the fruits of their labor. They were equally as important as Paul and myself in the formation of the band and those first few years, there was no question about it. It was a four-wheel drive vehicle. And then the air started coming out of two of the wheels to the point where, as a matter of fact, when it was time for Peter to go, Ace voted, no, he's gotta go, he can't play the drums anymore.

And then Ace, using his words, walked out of Kiss, even though he said, you can stay in Kiss, have a solo career, we don't want a penny of it, have your cake and eat it too. And he said to my face, no, I can't stay in the band. He said it in print, if I do another tour, I'm gonna kill myself. That's verbatim.

And I didn't understand what that meant. I didn't want to get into it. And then he said, you watch, I'm going to sell 10 million records. I can't respond to that. I don't know what that meant, especially with, you know, logically, stay in the band, have your cake, eat it too. Of course. So, what an amazing journey,

and strangely and magically, and both shows were terrific, and people were crying. You have people of all ages. Of course. We had the lump, you know, on the throat. You'd look around, and my poor mother didn't make it. We had the lump on the throat. You'd look around and my poor mother didn't make it.

She lived to be 94 years old, but every time we played in New York with her thick Hungarian accent, she'd elbow whoever was next to her. That's my sonny boy. Oh my God, don't get me started. And she'd be doing my hand signal along with everybody else in broken English, rock and roll, rock and roll,

you know, all that stuff. And singing, I want to rock and roll all night. You know, wow. What an amazing mom I had. She's with me every day. And the very end of both of those shows, we had made a deal with a company called Pophouse who bought ABBA rights and put on this Avatar ABBA show in London, which has got millions of people going.

It's incredible. I've seen it. Incredible. And whatever technology you saw there is now primitive. They are investing untold amounts. I don't want to say anything more than, you know what virtual reality is when you put those glasses on, and you would swear your life that the ground just opened up and you have a chasm and you're falling and freefall and you have this sense that what you're seeing is real.

And by the way, all around you, right? No matter where you look, up, down, and self, your sense of reality. Now imagine that without glasses. Amazing. And I've without glasses. Amazing. And I've seen it. And when will that be? By 2027. It's just so much exciting stuff.

So in a lot of ways, entertainment itself and life itself is changing dramatically with AI and technology and all this stuff. There will still be room for live bands playing live with the blues and all that. There's no substitute for that. But in other areas, the sky's the limit, no limit. Can I play you a song from your solo album?

Which one? I got two. This one. Yeah. solo album. Which one? I got two. This one. With the American Symphony Orchestra all wearing No. When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are Anything your heart desires Will come to you If your heart is in your dreams Nothing else is too extreme A star has dreamers to know. Ages kind, she brings to those who love. Love must be fulfilled and all,

Yes, we will love. Like a boat out of the rest of the guys were smart. Peter not so much. Peter was doing R&B covers, which were not convincing and stuff. But Ace especially just went to his roots and did what he knew. Back in New York groove, it was a good one. Which was a cover.

I didn't know that. The Arrows, I think it was. I didn't know that. Yes, it was Eddie Kramer who said, why don't we do that song? And it still played in Yankee baseball games and everything. It was a big hit. Paul likewise did a rock record with guitars and everything.

I wanted, because I'd written so many songs, so many different styles, so there are ballads on there. There are symphony orchestras, there's things, and when I was 12 years old, I went to see Pinocchio. And I told you I was delusional. I didn't have brothers or sisters. I had a lot of time on my own. Read comic books and all about fantasy and science fiction.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, all this stuff that I just loved. And when I saw the big Disney animated movie and Little Jiminy Cricket steps up, that's another one of those perfect songs called When You Wish Upon a Star. Here's how it starts. When you wish upon a, right at the top,

I'm going, oh my God. And at 12, I didn't know anything about anything. When Jiminy Cricket, this animated little cricket, steps up and looks into the camera and starts singing, larger than life, I thought he was singing only to me, like a magic friend. Your dreams come true. I went out of that movie theater

like I was touched by Jesus. I don't worship the guy, I think he's a good guy, but I went, it was a religious experience. I remember that feeling of being inspired that you could be anybody and your dreams can come true. That's an amazing thing, because other songs didn't have that. When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.

And when I finally did my solo record, I rented the Concord share and the kids and the nannies flew with me, we recorded at Oxford Studios down the street from George Harrison and Eric Clapton and all the big bands were there. And I flew over all the best musicians, you know, I played guitar on the record, not bass, because I wanted to and I could have whatever I want.

And I had all kinds of stars on the record, singing backgrounds and Donna Summer, singing with me on Burning Up with Fever, which she was gonna cover, and Giorgio Morota said, no, you're not gonna do a Gene Simmons song. But all kinds of crazy stuff, which goes against the quote rules.

If you're in a rock band, you don't wanna have Helen Reddy on the up. I didn't care. I always wanted to- You wanted to do what you wanted to do. That's what it's supposed to be about. I wanted to have Lassie Barking. I wanted to have the New York City Rockettes tap dancing

on Living in Sin at the Holiday Inn, which I wrote. Boom, ba-da-da-da, did you get all that? And I was wanting to record on stage at Radio City Music Club, Symphony Orchestra, to record on stage at Radio City Musical Symphony Orchestra to do these big symphonic things. They also played on Man of a Thousand Faces. I wrote Before Kiss as an homage to my hero Lon Chaney Sr. who invented makeup and hunchback

of notion down fat and he invented and created the flared nostrils plastics, which nobody had done before. And I was so fascinated by the guy whose mother and father were deaf and dumb. They have to communicate with sign language. And that's why he was such a great actor in silent films where you couldn't do anything except physically express that thing.

In fact, the image of me on stage with that thing is all Lon Chaney Sr. from London after midnight. Photos of him because there's not a print remaining of that original film about a vampire at night, including the bat wings, it's all Lon Chaney Sr. about a vampire at night, including the Batwings, which all Lon Chaney Sr. And so I had to do When You Wish Upon a Star. I couldn't sing it.

The guy that sang it was Ned Washington, I'm pretty sure, who may have written it. Such a heartwarming song when you hear the original, when you wish, I'm going, oh my God, I don't have that kind of voice. And I remember being in the sound booth in England and in America at Cherokee Studios because we had to do overdubs and stuff

and I had to plug in everything, crying my heart out because it took me back to the 12-year-old kid watching Pinocchio on 83rd Street and Northern Boulevard in Queens going to the movie theater alone. I saved up, I don't remember, 59 cents, whatever it cost. Nobody goes anywhere alone, but I didn't have brothers or sisters, and I was 12, I didn't have dates or anything. My mother was always working, and my father was not around. He ran out on us. And alone in that movie theater, I had a semi-religious experience. The music and the visuals, but the message.

Your dreams can come true. And they have. It makes no difference who you are. It says that in the lyric. Me? Because how dare, how dare hear nobody speaking, hello, you speak with an accent, you come from nowhere. No, that doesn't matter.

Your dreams can come true is an astonishing message. I had to do it. Athenaeum is a new podcast on the Tetragrammaton Network. Do you know about the connection between Charlie Manson and MKUltra, the US government's mind control operation? What if everything you thought you knew about the Manson murders was wrong? Join Ayesha Akambi for a once in a lifetime in-depth conversation with Tom O'Neill,

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