PAUL STANLEY: 'My Relationship With GENE Is Family'

Writer/photographer John Harrell recently conducted an interview with KISS frontman Paul Stanley for a cover story in the Japanese magazine Burrn! A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Burrn!: How have you been? I know you've had hip replacement surgery, you got married and now have a child on the way; all kind of great things going on. Tell me about your hip; what happened there?

Paul: "Well, over the years I just literally wore out my left hip from doing roundhouse kicks; it really had nothing to do with the boots because my right hip is fine. But my left hip I use to pivot on all the time and turn on and if I was kicking I would stay on my left foot, left leg till the last moment and when the torque was as extreme as it could be is when you lift and rotate your body. So in any case I just wore out the socket and it's been giving me problems really since 1988 pretty much."

Burrn!: Jesus! Have you been in pain that entire time? Eighteen years of pain?

Paul: "Yeah, it got progressively worse and since the reunion tour I have been getting shots while I was on any tour. By the middle of the Rock The Nation Tour, I just found that even the adrenaline and the rush of being onstage didn't and couldn't any longer mask the pain or the problem and so I found myself limping when I was onstage and I also had to literally hop up the steps onto the stage. It reached a point where something had to happen so I went in and had a total hip replacement. Although statistically people would say that 95% of them go great, well somebody has to fall into the 5% and it was me. We always want to think that we're on the other side of the percentage and the risk but it didn't go well (the hip replacement surgery) and I found that pretty much after I started walking it would come out; not totally but I could feel it slipping (the hip bone out of the joint socket) so I went back in for a second surgery."

Burrn!: Gene describes you as the brother that he never had. So what is your relationship with this guy and how do you feel about him really?

Paul: "I'm the brother that he never will have (laughs)."

Burrn!: (laughs)

Paul: "You know, my relationship with Gene is family and there is a bond that comes with time that there is no substitute for. What time and experiences together create is a bond that has the tremendous depth because it's based on life together. It is family and yet the relationship also depends upon both us knowing what the boundaries are. If you don't have unrealistic expectations of someone then you won't be disappointed and people get lost sometimes, they lose that. We are family, we are like brothers but that doesn't mean that we spend our time together. We've been together since we literally lived in our parents' homes so it's been a long time and I think the great thing is that neither one of us is ever driven by having our way or by being right. Both of us are driven to do what's right for the band and very often that means one of us saying to the other, 'If you feel strongly, let's do it your way.' That's a great relationship."

Burrn!: It's a very trusting relationship.

Paul: "Yeah, because the concern for the band is pure, it's not tainted by selfish ulterior motives so it's great and what each of us does outside of the band is really neither one's business and my relationship revolves purely around what we do as part of KISS."

Burrn!: The interesting thing that I notice about KISS was the BEATLES comparison that Gene always seems to bring up or slip into conversation. He always says, we have more gold records in America than the BEATLES, this with the BEATLES and that with the BEATLES and what really clicked in my head was the fact that the BEATLES always used their first names, like John, Paul, George and Ringo and with KISS it's the same thing, Gene, Paul, Ace and Peter. But now it's Tommy and Eric but Tommy doesn't have the ring to it so it should be shortened to just "Tom" (laughs) so you all will sound more like apostles.

Paul: "I think that what has evolved to and I would only make the BEATLES comparison in the most superficial and obvious ways because to put ourselves in that company would be incredibly short-sided to the depth of what the BEATLES did and I certainly am not. I think the comparison stands in the sense that we've always wanted to establish the four individuals and what it really has evolved to is the four iconic images, the four characters more than the people. You know I've said before that you can go virtually anywhere in the world and people can identify KISS from a photograph. Most of them can't name all the members but they may be able to say the Cat, the Spaceman and what have you but I think what we realized when members started to have different agendas or what was important to them it became clear that what we built as those four characters should never be diluted by introducing the Giraffe Boy or Tiger Man so it really has become about those four icons. And at this point when you see KISS what's most important to me is that you see the embodiment of the legend and everything that we have created and believe in."

Read the entire interview at KissOnline.com.