Damian Fanelli | Guitar World
EDM (electronic dance music) duo Snaked recently released a new track titled “Paul Stanley.”
The only “vocals” included on the EDM track are various bits of stage banter by Paul Stanley of Kiss. “Paul Stanley”—which was produced by New Jersey-based DJ Depressed Teenager—perfectly merges the age-old experience of a Kiss concert with the new sound of EDM, complete with some appropriately larger-than-life guitar leads from video game composer Hugh Myrone.
Robyn Beck – CBS News
KISS front-man Gene Simmons is looking to claim the “devil horns” hand gesture for his own.
Simmons filed an application Friday with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a trademark on the hand gesture he regularly uses during concerts and public appearances — thumb, index and pinky fingers extended, with the middle and ring fingers folded down.
According to Simmons, this hand gesture was first used in commerce — by him — on Nov. 14, 1974. He is claiming the hand gesture should be trademarked for “entertainment, namely live performances by a musical artist [and] personal appearances by a musical artist.”
While Simmons’ application didn’t define the meaning of the gesture, it is often referred to as “devil horns,” the “sign of the devil” or simply “rock on.” It is also the American Sing Language symbol for “I love you.”
Michael Brandvold
Jody Havenot
Michael Brandvold
Paul Davies | Express
Pantomime season started early, as metal gods Kiss made their grand entrance at the O2 London Arena.
Self-parody being a market that Kiss maximised and monetised a long time ago, the visuals are what most came to see.
Their stage production of hydraulics, zip wires and pyrotechnics would give Alton Towers a run for its money.
The band definitely lived up to their motto: ‘you wanted the best, you got the best!’
PA
Banks of multi-coloured lights, spelling the Kiss name, lit up the stage
Although his voice was noticeably croaky, the glittering charm of lead singer Paul Stanley always shines through.
Stanley likes to ask questions of a bawdy nature between songs.
None more so than, ‘how many girls like to be licked, how many boys like to be licked?’ – the boys cheered the loudest – before rocking out to a delirious Lick it Up. The audience shouting along to the chorus.
Kiss My Podcasts
Jody Havenot
Matt Porter
Jim Powers
Pretty much any band who plod on well into their fifth decade will have long ago passed the point of self-parody. This rule of thumb does not apply to Kiss, who splendidly sidestepped the problem by being a masterclass in self-parody from day one.
It’s been 44 years and more than 100m record sales since the face-painted, self-proclaimed “Hottest band in the world” formed in New York City. Yet new music plays little part in their strategy nowadays. They have released two new studio albums since the millennium, preferring to tip out endless greatest hits compilations and milk the world’s nostalgia arena-rock circuit.
That cynicism has blighted the band’s image, with their co-founder, bassist and leader, Gene Simmons, widely perceived as one of the most mercenary figures in rock. Kiss’s marketing philosophy can be best summarized as “If it moves, monetize it”: they may no longer be flogging band condoms or coffins, but you can still pick up a nifty Swarovski Kiss-logo coffee tumbler for a mere £335.
Jody Havenot | Podcast Rock City
Gene Simmons says that KISS has “a few more years” left before it calls it quits. He told Glasgow Live ahead of the band’s sold-out May 27 concert at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland (see video below): “We’re the hardest-working band in show business. I wear over forty pounds of studs and armor and all that stuff, seven-inch platform heels, spit fire and have to fly through the air and do all that stuff.
“If Bono or [Mick] Jagger, who we all love, had to dress up and do what I do, they couldn’t last an hour — they just couldn’t.”
He continued: “In hindsight, it would have been smarter to be a U2 or THE [ROLLING] STONES, to wear some sneakers and a t-shirt and you’re comfortable. No, we had to do it the hard way.
“So we’re not gonna be able to do it into our 70s, and I’m 67 now. We’ll do it for a few more years, and then when we think it’s time to go, we’ll go, and we’ll do it the right way, with a big party. I’d like to think that we would do something that rocks the planet — something big and worldwide and maybe free.”
KISS guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley has repeatedly said that the band could one day continue without him and Gene, explaining in an interview: “Once the original [KISS lineup] was no more, it just became clear to us that, in some ways, we’re much more a sports team. We don’t fall into the limitations of other bands, because we’re not other bands. So, yeah, at some point, I’d love to see somebody in the band in my place, and it’s because I love the band.”
Jason Herndon
Jody Havenot | Podcast Rock City
Michael Brandvold
Jody Havenot | Podcast Rock CIty
Kate Mossman | New Statesman
When Gene Simmons decided he wanted to be a rock star, he made a deal with his mother: be in a band but show me how you’re going to pay the rent. He had a variety of marketable skills at his disposal. At Newtown High School in Queens, Chaim Witz, only son of Flóra, who’d brought him to New York from Israel, took stenography and typing classes. By 13 he could out-type his teacher. By 18 he was a “tele-girl” (a temp) and found himself in demand with powerful female executives in Manhattan. With his feet, he worked a Dictaphone machine to take their letters – one pedal for go, one for stop and one for rewind. The then managing editor of Vogue, Kate Rand Lloyd, heard about the only male temp on the floor at Glamour. He became her Man Friday and fixed her hectograph, rexograph and mimeograph machines.
On 29 April 1974, he made his first television appearance on The Mike Douglas Show as Gene Simmons, “The Demon”, of the rock band Kiss. He picked his way across the studio floor on 30lb silver platforms, his abnormally long, seven-inch tongue thrashing about in his mouth like a skinned snake. In a whisper he declared himself “evil incarnate”. On the sofa next to him was the comedian Totie Fields. “Is your mother watching?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it be funny if under all the make-up he’s just a nice Jewish boy?” Eighteen months later, Simmons got a cheque from his record company for $1.5m. He showed it to his mother and she said, “Now what are you going to do?”
Up on the roof garden of the Park Hyatt hotel in Moscow sits Simmons today, his wiry hair, like black loft insulation, pulled into a ponytail. I’ve been taken to see him briefly, before an interview scheduled for two days later. Despite looking, in his own words, “at best like a baby dog at birth”, Simmons claims to have slept with 4,600 women, taking a record of each with a Polaroid camera. At 67, his latest conquest is Siri, whom he has programmed to call him “My Lord and Redeemer” on a cellphone with a special Kiss case.
Simmons stands when a woman arrives; he analyses the size of your bag, wondering how you fit your make-up in it. He thumbs through photos of Kiss products on his phone: Kiss guitars, Kiss car wraps – and a Kiss Kasket, a limited-edition coffin, part of his funeral range. The murdered Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell was buried in one: affection runs deep for the cartoonish glam-metal compound, now in its 44th year of music and merchandising. Among the expressions Simmons claims to have trademarked are “rich and famous” and the Chinese word xi, meaning “the West”.
According to The Pulse Of Radio, Paul Stanley has admitted that KISS shedding its makeup in the early 1980s was liberating for him. Stanley, who’s prepping his second memoir, is currently out on the road with KISS and performs on Saturday (May 20) in the Czech Republic. He chatted with Classic Rock magazine and revealed that KISS wiping off the grease paint helped him grow as a performer, recalling: “The years that we were without the makeup [1983 to 1996] were fine for me. I found them very satisfying because I got a chance to be out there without makeup, which I craved at that point. I think it was easier for me because my persona wasn’t really defined by the makeup — it was embellished. To me, the makeup was just reinforcing what you were seeing and who I was. But the day we put the makeup back on before the reunion tour was magical. To look in the mirror and see that face again was empowering.”
On his long-lasting — and sometimes rocky — relationship with KISS co-founder Gene Simmons, Stanley explained: “Gene‘s my brother. He lives right down the street. And we like each other so much that we stay out of each other’s way. As sickening as it might sound, we’re not beyond sending each other texts of appreciation. We both have the lives that perhaps we didn’t intend to in the beginning, but we both made it possible for us to reach the lives that made us happy. If you would have told him thirty, forty years ago where he’d wind up, he couldn’t comprehend it. But you have to keep moving forward. And you may find your destination is not where you intended.”
