Mike Boehm | LA Times
Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of the rock band KISS have long cherished living in aggrieved opposition to critics who said they have failed to respect their heavy metal oeuvre, and the band’s impending induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame isn’t changing their tune.
Stanley recently complained to the Associated Press that KISS was being given short shrift by the rock hall because two members of the current four-man lineup, lead guitarist Eric Singer and drummer Tommy Thayer, aren’t going to be hall of famers, even though they “have been in the band for decades and played on multiplatinum albums and toured the world.”
Instead, original drummer Peter Criss and original lead guitarist Ace Frehley, who were part of KISS’ 1970s ascension to stardom but exited in the early 1980s, will be inducted along with perennial frontmen Simmons and Stanley.
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Stanley groused to the AP that “we have continuing issues with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, starting with the fact that they chose to induct the original lineup when that’s hardly the case with other bands.”
He cited as an example lyricist Robert Hunter’s inclusion when the Grateful Dead was inducted in 1994. To Stanley, Hunter is “a writer who never played an instrument.” Hunter, who wrote the lyrics for many of the Dead’s songs, especially those composed by Jerry Garcia, always was credited as a band member on the band’s album jackets.
The rock hall hasn’t been a model of consistency when it comes to non-original band members. In the case of the Grateful Dead, for example, its website lists four keyboard players among the inductees: original member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and his successors, Keith Godchaux, Brent Mydland and Vince Welnick (of whom only Welnick, who died in 2006, lived to see the induction).
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