In the 10-minute audio clip above, KISS frontman Paul Stanley discusses the writing and narration of his memoir, “Face The Music: A Life Exposed”. This episode also includes an excerpt from the prologue.
“People say I was brave to write such a revealing book, but I wrote it because I needed to personally reflect on my own life,” Stanley said. “I know everyone will see themselves somewhere in this book, and where my story might take them is why I’m sharing it.”
Well known for his onstage persona, the “Starchild”, Paul Stanley has written a memoir with a gripping blend of personal revelations and gritty war stories about the highs and lows both inside and outside of KISS. Born with a condition called microtia (an ear deformity rendering him deaf on the right side), Stanley‘s traumatic childhood experiences produced an inner drive to succeed in the most unlikely of places: music. Taking readers through the series of events that led to the founding of KISS, the personal relationships that helped shape his life, and the turbulent dynamics among his bandmates over the past forty years, this book leaves no one unscathed — including Stanley himself.
With never-before-seen photos and images throughout, “Face The Music” is a colorful portrait of a man and the band he helped create, define, and sustain — made larger than life in artfully told stories that are shocking, funny, inspirational, and honest.
“Face The Music: A Life Exposed” will be released on April 8 via HarperOne The 432-page hardcover will feature rare photographs of the legendary rocker and detail his hard-partying lifestyle as one of the co-founders of the heavy rock band who has sold over eighty million albums and performed more than two thousand shows around the world.
Stanley explained to The Pulse Of Radio that if his book was going to follow the pattern of some of the other books he’s read, he would’ve passed on writing it all together. “I think I took a tact different than a lot of these books,” he said. “Y’know, rock n’ roll autobiographies tend to be a love letter — to the author. And they tend to be about how smart and creative and how this person was responsible for the creation of the world. And if that were the tact for the book, I never would’ve written the book.”
In “Face The Music”, Stanley talks frankly about his early struggles with hearing — he was born with Level 3 Microtia and is deaf in his right ear. Microtia is a congenital deformity of the cartilage of the outer ear that can affect normal hearing.
Stanley, who grew up half-deaf and scarred with a deformed right ear, explained to The Pulse Of Radio that by touching upon the more difficult episodes in his life, he’s not seeking sympathy from the reader, but simply highlighting the path into who he became. “Y’know, my book is about my life starting from the very beginning and certainly a certain amount of adversity and having a birth defect and being deaf on one side and the family that I came from,” he said. “Certainly people have had more adversity in their lives — and some less — but I, I would think some people would get a certain amount of inspiration and a sense that positivity and belief in yourself will ultimately lead you to a great place.”
Original KISS drummer Peter Criss‘ memoir, “Makeup To Breakup: My Life In And Out Of Kiss”, landed at position No. 7 on the New York Times “Hardcover Nonfiction” best-sellers list. The book arrived in October 2012 via the Simon & Schuster imprint Scribner.
Former KISS guitarist Ace Frehley‘s book, “No Regrets: A Rock ‘N’ Roll Memoir”, debuted on the New York Times “Hardcover Nonfiction” best sellers list at No. 10. The book, which was described as a look back at Ace‘s “life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” arrived on November 1, 2011 via Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.