Andrew Barker | Variety

Last week, Kiss co-founder and frontman Paul Stanley was busy preparing for an upcoming co-headlining tour with Motley Crue, just after putting the final touches on the group’s studio record, “Monster,” which is due out this fall and will be inevitably followed by yet another tour.

By now, this is all old hat for the 60-year-old arena rock veteran. Yet as staunchly stratified as Kiss’ flashpot-and-greasepaint-aesthetic has become, the group seems set to enter its 40th anniversary year in 2013 amidst a music industry that has in many ways reformed into the band’s own image.

Though no longer attempting to stay abreast of every change in the musical weather, — as it did with disco and glam metal in its middle period — Kiss has managed to keep its name in the pop music conversation admirably well, slotting in on “American Idol” and launching a previous co-headlining tour with Aerosmith. Yet what’s perhaps most remarkable is the degree to which Kiss’ longtime operating procedure — aggressive multimedia licensing and an overall reliance on touring over record sales — has positioned the group for the industry upheavals of the last decade.

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Tom Netherland | Tri Cities

One concert by one band with a one-word name changed the life of Megadeth’s Dave Ellefson.

“For me, it was KISS,” said Ellefson. “My mom took me to see them in Minnesota on their ‘Rock and Roll Over’ tour.”

Six years later, Ellefson and Dave Mustaine formed Megadeth.

Twenty-nine years hence, Megadeth continues its route to heavy metal immortal status on May 8 at the Tennessee Theatre in worth-the-drive-away Knoxville, Tenn. On tour in support of the band’s Grammy-nominated album “TH1RT3EN,” Ellefson retains a firm grip on why he took up the bass to play music.

“When I saw KISS I said, ‘I want to do that,’” Ellefson said last week by phone from his home in Phoenix, Ariz. “I watched them and thought, ‘how does that work?’”

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