Kiss was never a good band, but they are a great band – and I’ll explain: even though most of us can’t name five of their songs, their impact on the perception of what rock and roll is and what a show is, is priceless. Last month, Kiss, one of the most influential rock bands of all time, celebrated 50 years since its first appearance, and although there was a real danger that it would become a passing trend or an esoteric cult phenomenon and nothing more, half a century after it first took the stage, it still fills stadiums all over the world, and with ease.
At the center of the band are still the two friends who founded it 50 years ago: 72-year-old Gene Simmons, known for his extra-long tongue (rumor has it that he insured it for a million dollars), and 70-year-old Paul Stanley.
A lot of make-up remover has flown in the last 50 years in the streams of rock and roll. During this time, Kiss released 20 studio albums, nine live albums, 14 compilation albums and 60 singles, and sold more than 100 million units of all of them worldwide.
The origins of Kiss can be found in a band called “Wicked Lester” (Wicked Lester), which included Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, who were two young Jewish New Yorkers at the time. Paul Stanley was born in New York as Stanley Burt Eisen to Jewish parents – his mother was of German descent and his father Polish. Gene Simmons was born Haim Weitz in Bat Galim in Haifa and spent his childhood in Haifa and Carmel Castle. He was the son of immigrants from Hungary and at the age of 8 he immigrated with his Holocaust survivor mother to New York and changed his last name from Weitz to Klein, his mother’s maiden name. He later changed his name again, this time to Gene Simmons, after rockabilly singer Jumpin’ Gene Simmons.
Simmons and Stanley played in all kinds of bands, until they met Wicked Lester, which was active in the early seventies. This band got a record deal and even recorded one album, but the album was never released (bootlegs are circulating for those interested). Simmons and Stanley concluded that Wicked Leicester failed because it lacked a clear direction and identity. So in 1973 they formed a new band called “Kiss”, and this time they had no intention of repeating the same mistake. Kiss’s vision was clear and sharp: they would play aggressive, heavy, simple and basic rock and roll. With makeup.
Gene Simmons was bassist, and Paul Stanley was rhythm guitarist. They added a lead guitarist and a drummer and wanted to start performing. But they weren’t a hot attraction – they weren’t handsome and they didn’t play who knows what – so they had no chance of breaking into a fashionable club in Manhattan. Instead, they gave their debut on January 30, 1973 at a club called the Popcorn Club (later renamed the Coventry) in Queens.
At this debut, less than ten people were present, and they had the honor of seeing the early Kiss without makeup. Not completely without makeup – they were made up of course – but at this point they were just wearing lipstick and eyeliner as was customary at the time. In the first performance, they have not yet donned the iconic characters we know.
Kiss were born during the glam era. Men with long hair, sequins, feather scarves, platform boots and a woman’s make-up, were the height of recognition. Already in the early 1970s, artists such as David Bowie, T-Rex, Lou Reed and the New York Dolls turned the concept of men with makeup into a hot trend. But, as a childhood friend of Simmons testified, he would look like a drag wrestler in makeup. My Kiss friends weren’t handsome enough to look good in a female block; They should have gone for something much more radical. And that’s exactly what they did.
Instead of just feminine makeup, they went for makeup inspired by Japanese Kabuki theater and covered their faces with black and white painted masks. Each member of the band was given a different identifiable comic character. And those who attended the band’s concerts in early March 1973 at the Daisy Club on Long Island already got the finished look. Paul Stanley (rhythm guitar) became a child star, Gene Simmons (bass) was the demon, Ace Farley (lead guitar) was the spaceman, and Peter Criss (drums) was the catman.
Today mainly Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley are known as the singers of Kiss, but originally almost everyone sang. Later on, the band experienced personal changes. Some of the members who joined and replaced members who left entered existing characters (the current spaceman and the cat are not the original ones from the band’s early days), and over time two more characters were also invented: the guitarist Vinnie Vincent, who was a member of the band for a short time in the 80s, was the Anah warrior, when on His face is a drawing of the Key of Life – the Egyptian hieroglyph that symbolizes “eternal life”. And drummer Eric Carr, who was a member of the band from 1980 until his death from cancer in the early 90s, was given the image of a fox. In total, in 50 years, there were six characters in the Kiss , and with them they conquered the world.
Kiss band (Photo: JUAN PABLO PINOGettyImages)Kiss’s army
It’s hard to describe how significant this makeup was to Keys’ career. The band members’ decision to turn themselves into comic book characters allowed every American child to relate to them. With these characters and this make-up, Kiss was so easy to identify and so instantly relatable that you didn’t even have to like heavy rock, or music in general, to like Kiss. As one fan wrote in response on YouTube: “I grew up with bands like Kiss, Motley Crue and Twisted Sister, and for me and for everyone I knew, they weren’t just bands. They were superheroes who saved us from a boring life.”
Kiss signed to Casablanca Records and in February 1974 released their self-titled debut album. They established their sound as a combination of heavy rock and glam rock. At the beginning of their career, the American rock press compared their music to that of the English Black Sabbath. They were, in their view, particularly influenced by the English band Slade, who combined heavy rock with glam rock and excelled in writing basic, loud and effective rock ‘n’ roll anthems, and Malice Cooper (who, like Kiss, used amusing shock tactics) and the New York Dolls, the pioneering New York glam-punk band .
The cover of Kiss’ debut album was black, with four make-up faces emerging from the darkness: a star child, a demon, a spaceman and a cat. And above all is written the mighty logo of the band in glittering letters. The first single from the album is called “Nothin’ to Lose”, which was written by Gene Simmons about the fact that he pressured his girlfriend to have anal sex with him (his main argument is that she has nothing to lose), and how in the end she enjoyed it. Simmons said that the song is based on A real case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXNNIXqsVHg
Kiss gained cult status, but their first three albums were considered commercial failures. Her status changed in 1975, once she released her first live album (her fourth album overall), “Alive!”, which became her breakthrough album. Kiss’ power in concert was far greater than her power in the studio, and the live album conveyed that power. The live performance version of “Rock and Roll All Nite” became a huge hit, Kiss became a sensation, and the song itself was to become a huge, cross-generational rock and roll anthem.
In the middle of the seventies, America was swept up in Kiss-mania, and their fan club The KISS ARMY exploded with many soldiers. Even today you can join the official Kiss army, by filling out a form on the band’s website. For an annual subscription fee of $50 (plus shipping and taxes) you can join the Kiss army, which will give you endless satisfaction as well as a free t-shirt and pin, and a 10% discount at the official Kiss merchandise store on the website. “There are no fans in the world more passionate and dedicated than Kiss fans,” Paul Stanley once said. “Kiss fans set the bar for all other fans. That’s why they’re called the Kiss Army.”
hairy-chested transformers
In the second half of the 1970s, Kiss was at its peak, and her tour of Japan in 1977 broke the ticket sales record held by the Beatles until that moment. Kisses belonged to the kings of “shock rock” – a genre that was characterized by visual provocations, scary Halloween-style costumes, and elements of horror movies.
In addition to the recognizable face makeup, they had huge hair, sparkly glam costumes that no doubt influenced the Power Rangers, and huge platform boots that gave them the look of hairy-chested Transformers. Their live shows were crazy, flamboyant and pyrotechnic-heavy spectacles, full of fireworks, floating drum sets and explosions. And on stage, Gene Simmons became a real monster that spits fire and spits blood from its mouth. A Kiss performance was a huge and bombastic amusement park of thrills, an attack on all the senses.
Despite the tremendous success of the shows and merchandising, no Kiss song has ever reached number one on the US charts. None of their songs even made it to the top 5. Their most successful song in America is the 1976 love ballad “Beth,” written and sung by the band’s original drummer Peter Criss. It reached number seven on the charts. But if you ask anyone today what Kiss’ most recognizable song is, the answer is likely to be “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” has a disco influence.
The song was released in 1979, the same year when thousands of rock fans in America destroyed disco records as part of the Disco Sucks movement. Many were puzzled by the decision of heavy rock band Kiss to release a disco song while many of their fans were against disco, but Kiss knew what they were doing. The song became one of their most popular songs, although Gene Simmons said it was his least favorite of their songs.
Keys knew that to continue the matter they had to surprise. And releasing a song influenced by disco is not enough. After a decade where no one saw their faces, the band members went to a pharmacy, bought a huge bottle of micellar water, and decided to enter a new era: the age without makeup.
In 1983, Kiss revealed their faces for the first time in a well-publicized interview on MTV, after which they started taking pictures and performing bare-faced and even dressed like any heavy rock band of the time – look for example on the cover of their 11th studio album, “Lick It Up”. The clip for the song The issue is the first in which they appeared in normal heavy metal band attire – tight pants, ripped tank tops, belts and boots.
Kiss continued the natural look for about a decade, but in the mid-nineties they returned to costumes – just in time. In the mid-1990s, a crazy retro wave began that washed over pop culture with Kiss nostalgia. The band’s t-shirts were once again a popular fashion item, and as part of the retro craze of the decade, everyone was chasing after the band’s vintage merchandise from the seventies. Kiss immediately recognized the trend and organized the first official international Kiss conference in Perth, Australia, in 1995. The event included a traveling Kiss museum, Kiss tribute bands, dealers and collectors who sold and bought merchandise and collectibles, and also a meeting with the band itself, which included an autograph session, questions and answers and an unplugged performance, including spontaneous requests from the audience.
Gene Simmons’ business sense was always razor sharp, and he never let a business opportunity slip through his fingers. Therefore, Kiss took advantage of the momentum and in response did the smartest thing they could have done: they went back to dressing up. In 1996, Kiss reunited in the original line-up, and the return to make-up was accompanied by a televised event no less publicized than the removal of make-up in the previous decade. This time the late rapper Tupac Shakur presented the original united and costumed line-up at the ’96 Grammy Awards. After that, Kiss went on a concert tour that set itself the goal of bringing to a new generation the theatrical and exaggerated Kiss experience that their parents experienced 20 years earlier.
The comeback tour included all the special effects from Kiss’ heyday, and the band members prepared for it with a regimen of fitness training and plastic surgery. As Paul Stanley said at the time: they didn’t want to be “a bunch of fat guys in tights” and disappoint the audience. This tour included 190 shows around the world, and even if the reviews weren’t always raves, the audience came in droves. In 1999, Kiss performed at the opening ceremony of the Super Bowl and received An official star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2002 they performed at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
They released their last studio album, “Monster”, in 2012. It was their 20th studio album, and they currently have no intention of releasing another studio album. Which did not prevent them from continuing to perform and release another series of live albums.
End of the Road
Around that time, Gene Simmons visited Israel, for the first time since he left it as a child. In 2011 he visited Israel with his partner, the star of erotic thrillers and retired Playboy bunny Shannon Tweed, and with their son Nick (they also have a daughter named Sophie). In a highly publicized visit, which was also filmed for the reality show about Simmons and his family, the star spoke Hebrew at a press conference, praised Benjamin Netanyahu, met for the first time his brother and three sisters from his father who remained in Israel, visited “Cafe Nitza” in Haifa where his mother worked in her youth, and traveled in Israel.
Jane Simmons in Israel (Photo: Max Yellinson)Simmons has expressed countless pro-Israeli sentiments, but even though he is an Israeli who lived in Israel until the age of 8, Kiss has never performed in Israel. And it looks like they won’t be performing here either, as they are currently on their farewell tour.
This world tour, which was titled “The End of the Road” and opened in early 2019 in Canada, is supposed to be the band’s last tour. Due to the corona virus, most of the 2020 shows have been postponed to 2021, and the tour will end later than planned. Currently, shows are scheduled until July this year and it is said that Will end sometime in 2024.
During the tour, Kiss received criticism from fans that they were lip-syncing and not really singing – accusations that they neither confirmed nor denied – but as long as the pyrotechnics are impressive, who cares? And count on Kiss, she is indeed impressive. As part of this round, they broke two Guinness records during a show in Dubai: their flame effect was the highest ever seen at a show, and they ignited the largest number of flames lit simultaneously at a show.
There is no doubt that even after Kiss stops performing, they will continue to make money. Among other things, from merchandising – the field in which they perhaps specialize the most. This is evidenced by the crazy merchandise store on the band’s official website, where you can order a variety of related products with the band’s image printed on them. From the website you can order countless samples of shirts, hats, cups, bags, bandanas, pens, guitar specs, corona masks, headphones, Zippo lighters, folding ping pong tables, cornhole game, phone covers, baby clothes, puzzles, pillows, carboys, more and more.
For a few thousand dollars you can also purchase a Kees branded coffin. Dimbug Darrell, guitarist for the metal band Pantera, for example, was buried in a Kiss closet donated by Gene Simmons after Darrell was murdered by a crazed fan during a concert in 2004.
Gene Simmons has never been shy about caring about money – on the contrary. “I would encourage all the bands that claim they only care about the music and don’t care about the money to send me every dollar they’re not interested in,” he once said. “I’d be happy to help them with that.”