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News Archive July 2011

Click To Enlarge Is It Time To KISS And Make Up?
From: MontrealGazette.com
Posted: July 16, 2011

In the end, it's all about forgiveness.

There's a vignette of KISS bassist Gene Simmons from a few years back that neatly captures that sentiment. Simmons was in his native and beloved Israel, where he was born Chaim Witz, visiting the grave of the father who'd abandoned the family when Gene was a child. Simmons had little good to say of the man in any interview I'd read on the subject. But here he was, becoming "visibly shaky as he entered the cemetery, where he put a kippa on his head as he approached the grave. After breaking down in tears, he said, 'I am so stupid. Why didn't I go to see him before he died?' "

Indeed. Sometimes it's too late for those reappraisals - and sometimes it's not. There were signs recently of a similar rapprochement, an opening of détente, in the longest-running feud in rock 'n' roll: between KISS and the Kritics.

In this case, we'll focus the critical establishment in Rolling Stone magazine, which had long maintained a "hell freezes over" policy on the band, contending that for KISS, theatrics were not an accessory to music but a replacement for it. KISS - you can sell more albums than the Beatles times Elvis, play more sold-out tours than U2 and Bruce, you can cure cancer for all we care, but you will be mocked as "a bunch of Walt Disney rejects," receive no large-scale coverage, enjoy few reviews, and certainly never qualify for induction into our sacred Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Yet here they were in 2009, nominated. KISS did not get in, but they were on the ballot. Were we all starting to get along? Would there be a two-state solution?

It remains to be seen, but as the band prepares to headline one of two nights at next weekend's Heavy MTL blowout in Jean Drapeau Park, it prompts us to get serious about KISS. And let's face it, Gene Simmons always has been as serious as a Kasket about KISS.

Eleven years into their farewell tour - don't laugh; the Who did it, too - KISS remains a reliable headline draw. Many, many thousands will gather to suck on wineskins full of Cold Gin as the Love Gun pyro lights up the night. The KISS Army is still bigger than Canada's, and the band's staggering merchandising could pull the eurozone out of debt. Let us deconstruct the love/hate/laughter surrounding the first rock brand.

To be sure, the first real brand was Elvis, followed by the Beatles, but neither was consciously launched by the performers themselves. Despite the dark machinations behind Elvis, all the careerist positioning and bloodsucking by manager Col. Tom Parker, and despite the Beatles' Apple and that whole debacle, we were still light years from a full understanding and manipulation of a band's identity for commercial purposes by the players themselves. Or rather, a few years (and yes, I know a light year is a measurement of distance; it just suits the flow here). A few years before Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley.

That isn't news - even the unenlisted are probably aware of how KISST built the pre-eminent rock business model, selling a reported $30 million of march in 1996-97 alone, including more than $1 million at a Tokyo show. T-shirts, bottle openers, collectible dolls, even - yes - a lurid KISS Kasket that goes for $4,000 at KISSonline.com and as far as we know and pray is the only item of its kind. There are no career $ figures that I've seen, but it's got to be in the middle hundreds of millions.

There's an ugly genius in that, and in the band's sheer bloody-minded persistence. This is a band whose label was facing bankruptcy and about to drop them when they finally hit the big time in 1975, releasing their fourth album in 20 months (!), and a live album at that - all the while touring relentlessly. This is also a band that was dead in the water over 25 years ago before resurrecting itself for a two-decade "farewell tour" phase that has lasted almost twice as long as its "creative" one did.

So even for the unbeliever, there is something to admire in the whole twisted enterprise. And from my perspective, start here: You can conduct a lot of banal interviews as a rock writer, hear plenty of stoned boilerplate and tour's-going-greatlove-the-fans-in-Montreal drone. But never from Gene. A KISS interview scheduled for this week fell through, which is a shame, because Simmons is nothing if not quotable. Go ahead - ask "How are you?"

"Oh, can't complain. Seventeen years, 23 albums and 70 million records later, the world can go f---itself."

In two conversations about six years apart, Gene and I tangled over many issues, and Simmons remains one of the few figures in rock who would never play nice, never observe the political orthodoxy about any aspect of the business, who would seek out the sacred cows. U2, Bruce, Cobain - he'd crow in his baritone about their fraudulence. He'd dismiss the very notion of meaning in rock. "No. Certainly not. Tell me the meaning of a football game."

I had tried to, but he wasn't having it. U2 and Bruce were "about posturing. . When you're worth $50 million and you dress in wrinkled shirts to make believe you're poor, it's about as valid as Liberace with a lot of rhinestones."

He'd come close to mocking Cobain's suicide, and we'd argued about that, with Simmons unable to get beyond the perceived ingratitude of a blond, blue-eyed rock star who'd spitefully thrown it back in the Earthlings' faces. But Gene, he was . unwell. No - he wasn't having it. For an immigrant from Israel who'd fought his way to the top in a country of spoiled, lazy mooks, the notion of mental illness trumping wealth, stardom and chicks was inadmissible. That's an astonishing blind spot, but there was something perversely refreshing in that mulish refusal to get in line with the prevailing view.

Speaking of interviews, there was the hilarious travesty of the Tom Snyder interview in 1979, when a visibly annoyed Simmons kept trying to distract Snyder from a visibly lubricated and ceaselessly cackling Ace Frehley. YouTube it, and listen for Peter Criss telling Frehley to "put the teddy bear down."

They were good for laughs, with the proto-Spinal Tap hilarity of the "solo albums" gambit. Released simultaneously on Sept. 18, 1978, all four albums were shipped with an unprecedented marketing tidal wave to guarantee them platinum numbers - followed by the reverse tsunami when they came flooding back to the label stamped "no thanks." But they were also good for sound corporate citizenship. There's video of the band discussing the firing of guitarist Vinnie Vincent at some 1996 fan-con and doing so candidly, appealingly, justifying it on moral terms. (Vincent had allegedly scammed some fan, selling him a supposedly prized guitar he'd never played, and for more than its value.)

And sometimes, they were just flat-out right. There's the whole war with Rolling Stone, and what that meant in the formation of a band's psyche. Paul Stanley has winningly referred to his mansion as "the house bad reviews built," but they were also erecting another edifice - the identity of a band of outsiders, who supposedly didn't care about the decades of critical savaging. But, of course, they do care. They cared enough to complain in writing when Rolling Stone magazine failed to make any mention of drummer Eric Carr's death by cancer in 1991. I'll assume that was Gene-driven, and he was utterly justified in doing so.

"All the news that fits"? Hardly. RS couldn't have made the snub any plainer, either, given two rock stars had died on the same day, and they chose to report only on Freddie Mercury. That was vindictive and shameful. The legitimacy of the RS critical jihad against the band further founders when you consider some of the other supervillains they've featured on their cover. One had to nod "touché" at Simmons's closing point, remarking that Jann Wenner and Carr could never have met because "Eric never saw rock and roll as a stepping stone to cocktail parties and society functions." Zing!

Ideology against ideology - but I'd argue that the KISS ideology was formed as a reaction to the opprobrium ranked against them. Starting out, Simmons and Stanley wanted to write great songs and also out-Cooper Alice. Initially, at least, they wanted both Abbey Road and Broadway, but after selling their first million albums, achieving global fame in a rock band and being sneered at by the self-appointed rock ayatollahs - being told they still weren't cool - Gene led Paul in a chorus of "the world can go f---itself."

It all makes KISS more appealing. But, what, are we just supposed to forgive everybody?

No.

In the end, the KISS enterprise still doesn't pass muster. Much of it comes down to tone. Sure, everybody sells merch, but you're not meant to be so gleeful about it. You're not meant to ceaselessly trumpet crass populism over art. You're meant to understand your own marketing, and not say "No matter how big Mick Jagger or U2 is, there are no Rolling Stones or U2 comic books or Visa cards." Well, there are, in a way. Rock marketing has long since caught up with the KISS philosophy - in fact, it's entirely modelled on it: tours and merch are what matter, not album sales. But you're not meant to be so brand-centric that you put Ace Frehley on the cover of an album he didn't even play on because not doing so would kill sales.

And finally, you're not meant to have a show that is a fireworks display wrapped around - what, a half-dozen putative Klassics, from admittedly enjoyable camp anthems (Rock and Roll All Nite) to hooky kitsch (Dr. Love), that aren't far off from the Bay City Rollers' Saturday Night.

But KISS and Rolling Stone deserve one another. I mean, Crosby, Stills and Nash are in the Rock Hall, so the guardians of musical excellence have abandoned the control tower anyway. KISS is far too large to ignore, and belongs there - how about in a special subsection dedicated to the feud, the marketing and everything else listed above? Until then, the joke is on Rolling Stone - making KISS the 800-pound elephant in their glass house.

So there's forgiveness, but only so much. As for Journey - over my dead body.

KISS headlines the second day of Heavy MTL. The festival takes place July 23 and 24 at Jean Drapeau Park; KISS is scheduled to perform at 9 p.m. on July 24. Tickets cost $83 (single-day general admission) to $202.50 (weekend reservedseating pass); call 514-790-2525 or order at evenko.ca. For more information on Heavy MTL, visit www.heavymtl.com.

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