Steve Newton | Straight.com
When Nick Tweed-Simmons comes to Metro Vancouver—as he will this Friday (June 1) for a concert at the River Rock Show Theatre with his little sister Sophie—things are quite different than they are in his Hollywood hometown. For one thing, as he explained to me in a phone call last week, people get a lot more excited about seeing the costar of Gene Simmons Family Jewels here than they do in Tinseltown.
“We can walk around at night and sneak by,” says the 23-year-old son of rock god Simmons and actress-model Shannon Tweed, “but sometimes we do get swamped, and I’m not quite used to it, actually. ‘Cause I didn’t think that would be the case. I mean, I don’t watch reality TV myself. I do this for a living because it was offered to me at a young age and I enjoy being financially independent, so that was my reason for doing it. But I didn’t think anyone would actually give a fuck about the show, because I do not care about my musical heroes’ family members, you know what I mean?
“Like if I saw Jimmy Page’s nephew, I don’t think I would care,” he adds, “but if I sawhim I would freak out, of course, because he’s the one who made the music that I connect to.”
When it comes to his dad’s music, Tweed-Simmons says he likes the early KISS albums the best, and that he’s particularly fond of the 1975 Dressed to Kill LP. But he doesn’t spend too much of his listening time getting lost in the ’70s.
“Anybody who knows me knows that I’m a huge Black Keys fan,” he explains. “I can’t say enough good things about those two. And I’ve always been a big White Stripes/Jack White fan. And there’s this band called Tame Impala that’s out, and the singer’s voice is the spitting image of John Lennon. It sounds a bit like if the Beatles were very much more steeped in the psychedelia phase they went through—but with a little bit of grunge guitar on there, too.”
For more from Tweed-Simmons—about shooting Family Jewels and his upcoming gig in Richmond—see the Pop Eye in this week’s issue of the Georgia Straight. Read it on paper for that old-school KISS vibe.