Richard Horgan | Fishbowlla Music

If you’re not familiar with the radio.com interview series “Not Fade Away,” be sure to check it out. At critical anniversary junctures, the column revisits enduring music albums. This week, on the occasion of KISS’s 1974 debut album turning 40, reporter Brian Ives spoke with Gene Simmons.

All sorts of things are happening these days at the KISS end. AMC-TV is planning a reality series about the LA Kiss, an Anaheim arena football team co-owned by Simmons and Paul Stanley; at Barclays Center in April, the band will finally be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; and their allure had a certain Washington Post columnist recently delighted to have been mistaken for Simmons on Twitter.

Simmons also continues to actively stick out his tongue. Here’s what he had to say about the music critics who failed to get the KISS message:

“We completely ignored critics, they meant nothing to us. I buried them in my backyard, they’re fertilizer for my greenery! They’re the guys who never got laid in school who have pus-filled pimples who still live in their mother’s basement. They’re not even journalists! It’s a completely unnecessary life form. If critics cease to be, nothing changes.”

Simmons has definitely earned the right to gloat. For the most extensive explanation of why that is, turn to Nothing to Lose, the fall 2013 book written by Simmons, Stanley and music journalist Ken Sharp.