Would KISS Have Had The Same Impact Without The Makeup? GENE SIMMONS Weighs In

In a new interview with Michael Franzese, Gene Simmons was asked how he got the "KISS phenomenon" started more than five decades ago. He responded in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Scientists talk about this kind of a thing. And there is such a thing as singularity. Things just happen, and that means that it doesn't happen often, just every once in a while, that could be a millennia, or something just happens when the planets align; you have the right thing at the right place at the right time.

"The first right thing at the right place at the right time was when I met [KISS frontman] Paul Stanley, my partner, who knew stuff I didn't know, and hopefully, at least he told me, I knew stuff he didn't know. And then one plus one equals three. And then we decided to put together the band we never saw on stage. And it's worth noting, we looked at it visually. We wanted to get the songs and everything, but we noticed that the bands we liked, THE WHO and Jimi Hendrix and THE BEATLES, had unique visuals so that if you closed your eyes, you saw it. And there were lots of hits on the radio where if you closed your eyes, you couldn't tell… FOREIGNER was a very good band that had a lot of hits. You close your eyes, you have no idea who's in the band and you don't care. And predominantly that's the thing. And so we wanted the visuals to be part of it. And we didn't know that it would become a multi-billion dollar industry. I mean, KISS continues to be — everything from KISS caskets and KISS condoms; we'll get you cumming and we'll get you going.

"So, once we got Ace [Frehley, KISS guitarist] and Peter [Criss, KISS drummer], the two original guys, and it's worth noting Paul and I went to see Peter play in a gentleman's club, very small, but where they went, and they played in a trio and the drummer wore — Peter Criss — had scarves on and he was singing Wilson Pickett, you know, R&B songs And he had the right voice and the vibe. The rest of the guys on stage could have been the guys that would wait for you outside to pick up a few bucks. They didn't look like musicians, but this guy had the voice and the attitude. So the band started, but not everybody has the genes, not everybody can run a marathon. There are some people whose genes, whose DNA, are more akin to running a short race, which is why very few bands last a long time. THE BEATLES lasted seven years — shockingly. We've been around 52 years, with different members and all that, because not everybody lasts. And one day, and I've talked about this before, and every time I talk about it, I get the imagery again. We're sitting around in our rat-infested loft, 10 East 23rd Street [in Manhattan], and we'd been rehearsing. It's a rat trap and a fire trap. No windows, nothing. And after the rehearsal, one of us — I don't know who — said, 'Hey, let's go down to Woolworth's,' which was a local store. You could buy anything. Before there were malls, you'd stick everything into Woolworth's — aspirin, anything, clothing. And there were also gimmicky things… And so we somehow veered towards the Halloween area, and there was clown makeup. Stein's clown white, a jar, and Stein's black lipstick. For some reason, Paul Stanley went to the red lipstick thing — I don't know why — and we just bought the stuff and we bought two mirrors that were four and a half feet tall, about this wide, 15 bucks all in, and brought it up to the loft. And nobody said, 'I have an idea. Let's sit down. We'll do this.' Like, if you'd look at it, you'd say, 'Okay, who's telling you what to do?' No, it's just happening. We're looking in the mirror, putting on makeup and looking at each other and stuff like that, and just talking. Well, it's kind of weird, it's kind of sticky talking about the feeling of it. And then we started drawing designs around the eyes and looking at each other and stuff and getting off on it, kind of, as it was happening. And Peter Criss liked cats, so he was doing that. I was always fascinated by horror movies and sci-fi, that imagery. And Ace always talked about that he's from another planet and stuff. His equilibrium was not all that good, so he would often fall or whatever. So he thought of himself as a spaceman. And Paul Stanley, originally the makeup was a round circle, or black, around his eye. And we looked around, and we go, 'What the hell is that?' And he says, 'It's like Pete, the dog from 'The Little Rascals'.' There was a dog in an old black-and-white half-hour thing that went back to Mack Sennett comedies. The beginning of movies, they'd have these short about kids in poor areas. And by the way, it was not segregated. They had black kids and white kids hanging out together like friends. Yeah, but in regular civilization, well, no, black and white is supposed to be separate. Not with our gang; they were just black and white friends. Buckwheat and Stymie, yeah. Great names. And the dog was part of it, and he'd have a black circle. And we went, 'No, nobody's gonna know that. If they're younger, they're not gonna…' So he decided to do, and I think it might have been Ace who said, 'You always wanted to be a rock and roll star, instead of a pudgy Jewish kid. Why don't you put stars over your eyes?' So he did. So he did two stars over his eyes, but they didn't align. It's difficult to do that freehand. So he decided just to use one. And that's where his makeup came from. Just one star over the eye, and that was it. And between that first application of the makeup to about three weeks later, I called up a local — I was acting like a manager, I always do — called up a local club, the Coventry, and convinced them to book us sight unseen or anything else for 35 bucks. 35 bucks! Wow. And I remember there may have been 10 or 15 people there. My girlfriend at the time, a girl named Jan, her brother's girlfriend, Lydia, the drummer's wife, and a few others. And that was it. But we were on stage in makeup, like, getting off. There was something going on. And within a year and a half of the band forming, end of 1973, we were headlining Anaheim Stadium before MTV, before digital. We didn't even have hit records. Something happened. It just pervaded culture. All of a sudden, young kids started talking about this. And in those days you could make a career from magazines because that's how things spread before."

Simmons continued: "We had no manager. Paul and I had a record contract from before with Epic for a band called WICKED LESTER. And we finished the album, we got 40, 50 grand, whatever. And for us, that was a lot of money. And for some strange reason, we didn't believe it. It sounded like THREE DOG NIGHT and DOOBIE BROTHERS. It was okay, but nothing special. And hindsight's 20/20. We must have been out of our minds to look a gift horse in the mouth. 'This is not it, is it? No, it's really not.' And we literally fired the other three guys and went back to square one and decided to get new guys and write different kinds of songs, more English, more HUMBLE PIE, [THE ROLLING] STONES, that kind of thing, instead of American pop. And right away it clicked.

"In a very strange way, KISS became a very big band without hit songs," Gene added. "It was about the live shows. And if people are curious, if you go to YouTube, we would literally blow away any act that dared put us on stage. We'd just blow them off the stage. Some of it was smart. We had a KISS logo that was about six or seven feet tall — these bright lights that spelled out KISS. And nobody hung their name, the band's name above them like a Las Vegas show. That was not considered cool, but we thought it was cool. So that when the next band came on after we were off, a half hour later, if you closed your eyes, you could still see KISS in your eyelids, if you know what I mean. They didn't have enough time to clear the stage. So while they were on, the KISS logo was still on stage. And those kinds of tricks. And very quickly, we ran out of bands to open up for."

Asked if he thinks KISS would have had the same impact musically and iconically if not for the makeup, Gene said: "Maybe not, but there is such a thing… I keep going back to the right thing at the right place at the right time. If you take any one of those away, your chances diminish. In the quote[-unquote] golden age of rock and roll... In that, if you put KISS or Jimi Hendrix or somebody like that then, it wouldn't work because the ears of the masses weren't tuned to that. Likewise, if you take the great bands of that era and stick 'em today… What are you doing? So, there's that thing. But certainly, I think, it's a big puzzle, and it helps, certainly helps, not diminishes, if you have most of those pieces on the puzzle, so that the picture is clearer. It helps. Visuals help. Little Richard sticking his legs up on the piano and playing piano like a wild man, which has nothing to do with the songs, but does it help stagecraft? Yeah. Chuck Berry doing the duck walk. What does that have to do with the song? Nothing. But when you see him live, it really helps."

KISS completed its "End Of The Road" farewell tour in December 2023.

The band's most recent lineup consisted of original members Simmons and Stanley, alongside later band additions, guitarist Tommy Thayer (since 2002) and drummer Eric Singer (on and off since 1991).

Formed in 1973 by Stanley, Simmons, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, KISS staged its first "farewell" tour in 2000, the last to feature the group's original lineup.

KISS recently sold its entire music catalog, likeness and brand name to Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment, which is behind "ABBA Voyage". While terms of the deal were not officially announced, Bloomberg and Associated Press said it was worth upwards of $300 million.

Pophouse is now working on a KISS avatar show, which will allow the band to stay "on the road" in retirement.

The KISS avatars were created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and were financed and produced by Pophouse.

Using cutting-edge technology, Pophouse Entertainment Group, which was founded by ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus, will create digital versions of KISS. The project was previewed at the final KISS concert in New York in December 2023.