Joe Polo

Chris Salce | Nuke the Fridge

Chris Salce | Nuke the Fridge

Thursday was my first day at Comic-Con in San Diego and it was a big one. One of the interviews I had that day were with none other than Kiss, for their new animated film Scooby-Doo! And Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery. Yes, you heard right. Kiss teams up with Scooby-Doo to solve a mystery! In this roundtable interview with the Demon Gene Simmons and the Catman Eric Singer, we discuss how the project came about and the secret to being successful. So here you go, you wanted the best, you got the best…

Q: Kiss and Scooby-Doo, how did this come about?

Gene Simmons: We appeared on Scooby in the seventies and now that Warners has stepped up and proudly made the most expensive Scooby movie of all time, Kiss meets Scooby-Doo really breaks the mold and because what you’ve got is rock n’ roll, Scooby stuff, there’s a mystery, as soon as you think you’ve got it figured out within the first half hour, all of a sudden, rules aside, everything changes. They’re often space monsters, sci-fi, witches, all the cool stuff fanboys love. End of story.

Q: If you could craft a unique song for a Marvel or DC comics character, who would it be?

Simmons: Dr. Doom because the character is so defined and when you understand, here’s the important part, the pathos of it, in other words, what makes this bad guy not just a one-dimensional thing. When you saw King kong, you understood that he actually loved that little girl but he loved her, he would die for her. That’s what made King Kong unique and what makes Dr. Doom unique is that this is actually damaged goods. This guy’s got his face with all kinds of acid and stuff so he’s not fighting the world, he’s fighting himself. I could have written ‘Unholy’ about him.

Q: How much control did you have over the characters and the writing itself?

Simmons: We respect and admire the Scooby mystique and the iconic nature of it so much that all we did was take care of Kiss. We take care of Kiss, they’ll take care of Scooby.

Eric Singer: They’ve got it! When they wrote the script, let’s face it, whoever did their homework, did their homework and basically got the real gist of the individual characters, physically, how the moved and basically stylistically with how they talked.

Chris Salce: You guys are obviously a really successful band, you’ve been around for years…

Simmons: And good looking too [smirks]

Chris Salce: [Laughs] yes, and everybody knows who Kiss is. How did you guys become such successful businessmen? You have a football team, TV shows, tons of merchandise all over the place and now Scooby-Doo.

Simmons: There’s no excuse because all the information mankind has ever put together is really available for free [picks up phone], so when a guy walks up and says ‘Yeah man what’s up?’ that’s not society’s fault, that’s his fault for not taking the time to learn language skills, people skills and all the information you want is right at your fingertips for free!

Singer: Yeah it’s called the internet!

Simmons: What you do before was the library and I used to go to the library everyday. Read. Seek and you shall find. I didn’t create that and you didn’t either so, in my new book, [smirks] ‘Me Incorporated,‘ it actually goes in there! It’s your responsibility, you can always make more money. I guarantee you tomorrow, if you cut out all the bulls*** money you spend on today, you’ll make twice as much money tomorrow. Cigarettes, bars, going on vacation, you don’t need to do all that stuff. That’s the first step, lean and mean.

Q: What’s the next team up that you would like to do?

Simmons: I would like to team up with God.

Q: Why God?

Simmons: He’s cool!

CNN

Mary Sollosi | EW

Scooby-Doo has sleuthed alongside a lot of celebrities over the years, but none of that is anything like the upcoming Scooby-Doo and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery, Gene Simmons assures us. “What starts out as one layer of a mystery soon opens the portals to what could be,” he explains, “and we’re off into deep space on an adventure you’ve never seen before on any Scooby-Doo adventure.”

Simmons, Eric Singer, and Tommy Thayer — also known as three quarters of KISS — stopped by the Entertainment Weekly Lounge at Comic-Con to talk about the movie, which hits VOD July 10 and DVD and Blu-ray on July 21.

But watch the video to see Paul Stanley stop by, completing the quartet; find out Simmons’ favorite comic-book character (he was at the very first Comic-Con!); and hear all of them muse upon the wide variety of Scarletts in pop culture (Witch! O’Hara! Pimpernel!).

Chad Childers | Loudwire

Masters of marketing KISS are about to lend their brand to another franchise. They’ve teamed up with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on a new animated full-length film called Scooby-Doo and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery that’s set to arrive on July 21. But before the film arrives, two new preview clips and a new song called “Don’t Touch My Ascot” featuring KISS with co-writers Greg Collins and Jared Faber from the film have surfaced online.

This actually marks the second time the band has appeared with Scooby, turning up on a 2003 Halloween episode of What’s New, Scooby-Doo? Gene Simmons told IGN in an interview (seen below), “We do very very few cross-branding things. We’re very careful about who we associate with. Scooby-Doo is iconic so for us it was a no-brainer. When Warner Brothers came to us and said, ‘How would you like to do a crazy-wacky thing?’ It was like, ‘Crazy-wacky is our middle name. What it is?’”

As for the plot, it finds the Mystery Inc. gang being invited to investigate when a ghoul begins to terrorize an amusement park. During their visit, the gang meets up with KISS, who claim they’re also there to investigate, leading them to team up to solve the mystery.

In addition to KISS, the film also features the voices of Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, Darius Rucker, Garry Marshall, Penny Marshall, Jennifer Carpenter and Pauley Perrette.

Check out the two preview clips below and “Don’t Touch My Ascot” above. And if you’re interested, you can pre-order the Scooby-Doo and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery film via Amazon.

In other KISS news, the band has received a nod from one of the hottest films in America. KISS shared a video featuring the minions from Minions performing “Rock and Roll All Nite” can be seen below. Meanwhile, Scorpion executive producer Nicholas Wootton let spill to Entertainment Weekly at Comic-Con that KISS’ Gene Simmons will appear in the CBS series’ expanded season opener on Sept. 21. Details of Simmons’ roll were not divulged however.

Sean Long

Danny Moloshok

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — Sophie Tweed-Simmons, daughter of KISS band member Gene Simmons, sang the national anthem. But it was Milwaukee Brewers’ bats that did the talking as they beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 7-1, on Saturday.

Brewers rookie Taylor Jungmann (4-1) tossed a three-hitter, striking out seven and walking two on 100 pitches to help the Brewers improve to 5-2 in his starts.

Danny Moloshok

Teammate Carlos Gomez drove in five runs, going 2 for 3 with a walk and a strikeout while tying his career high for RBIs, his second five-RBI game in a week.

Brandon Beachy (0-1) gave up three runs and five hits in four innings, struck out two and walked three. The right-hander was making his first start in nearly two years after coming back from two Tommy John surgeries.

For the second straight game, the Dodgers were held to two hits through six innings. Their lone run came on pinch-hitter Kike Hernandez’s sacrifice fly in the eighth.

The Brewers can clinch the series and return to .500 on the road with a win Sunday in their last game before the All-Star break.

Loudwire

Marisa Roffman | The Hollywood Reporter

Scorpion has nabbed a musical superstar for its season premiere: Kiss lead singer Gene Simmons.

‎Executive producer Nicholas Wootton‎ announced the news at Comic-Con, noting Simmons — who is currently at the Con, too — will cameo in the second season opener.

And that wasn’t the only big news of the hour —Scorpion will have a super-sized 90-min installment after the Supergirlseries‎ premiere on Monday, October 26. (Supergirl airs 8:30-9:30 p.m. that night, while Scorpion will close out the night from 9:30-11 p.m.)

As the show looks towards its second season, expect Walter (Elyes Gabel) and Paige (Katharine McPhee), as well as Happy (Jadyn Wong) and Toby (Eddie Kaye Thomas), to continue to awkwardly dance around their feelings.

“I love the fact that these guys have no idea how to navigate their love lives,” Thomas said, noting it was one of his favorite parts of the show. “It’s something we can all relate to.”

“You’re seeing a lot of our real-life relationship with how we mess with each other,” Thomas added, noting in the beginning, he was a bit afraid of co-star Robert Patrick, but now he they like to goof around with each other.

Lauren Beale | LA Times

KISS lead guitarist Tommy Thayer and his wife, Amber, have listed their house in the Ventura County community of Lake Sherwood at $2.695 million.

Rock-star cool features include a brick barrel ceiling in the gallery, two sets of 10-foot tall doors in the living room and a bedroom that was designed as an apartment.

The custom-built Mediterranean, constructed a decade ago, was remodeled and upgraded by the couple in 2009. They bought the property in 2008 for $1.815 million.

A formal entry, a breakfast area, a loft, four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms are within the 4,492 square feet of interior space.

Six patios, one with an outdoor fireplace, extend the living areas out of doors. Expansive views from the third-acre lot take in the lake and the mountains.

Thayer, 54, was first with the glam metal group Black ‘n Blue and in 2002 joined the hard-rock band KISS, known for their stage makeup, big hair and pyrotechnic-laden performances. He co-wrote 10 songs for the band’s 2012 album “Monster.”

Jerry Adams of Land Marketing Inc. is the listing agent.

See the photo gallery HERE.

Opportunity Rocks

Steve Mascord

@WLFpodcast talks to rugby POW Sol Mokdad in Exeter, we dig out a Paul Stanley chat from Lubbock, Texas, 25 years ago plus the conclusion of our chats with Jesper Binzer of Disneyland After Dark, Crash of H.e.a.t and Michael Harrison from Palace of the King 

Cassius Morris

Matt Wardlaw | Ultimate Classic Rock

Jim McGuire

We spoke with former Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick last year for an extensive two-part interview as he marked the 30th anniversary of joining the band and he had plenty of great stories to share regarding his 12-year run with the group.

During that chat, he spoke about his early influences, guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page and Steve Howe of Yes and in the process, dropped a hint at that time in regards to his planned activities for the new year.

“I listened to Yes a lot when I was young,” he said. “I loved Steve Howe, who is very different than Eric Clapton, but a very creative guitar player. I still love Yes. I’m going to be putting out in 2015 a band that I had from 40 years ago and we just cut a new song. I would say that we were a cross between like a kind of Cream and Yes because there’s a lot of sections that are very progressive.”

More than 40 years after Kulick went into the recording studio to lay down tracks with singer/bassist Mike Katz and drummer Guy Bois, fans now have the chance to hear the recorded results of those early sessions with the project that was effectively his first band called KKB. Incredibly, the songs have been freshly remixed and remastered from the original session tapes which had been lost for a number of years but happily, Katz found them in 2013 and got in touch with Kulick, who quickly made plans to revisit and release the material.

As referenced, there’s even some new music to enjoy — the original three members came together virtually to record their first new song since the original sessions in 1974. “Got to Get Back” is the result of that new collaboration and fits in seamlessly with the ‘70s material.

On an early Saturday morning recently, Kulick spent some time discussing the vintage recordings with us and how the new song and EP came together. We also discussed Blackjack, his hard rock band with Michael Bolton that came about at the end of the ‘70s and also, his work with Billy Squier on the The Tale of the Tape album.

The story of this KKB release is pretty incredible. Many folks have fond memories and maybe some recordings of that first band in their early days of playing music, but it just doesn’t usually happen that you find the multi-tracks of that material. I don’t know how much you thought about this stuff over the years, but it had to be a pretty incredible feeling, having that realization that you not only had those tapes, but you could revisit them and perhaps address some things that you all collectively might have wished you had done at the time.

Well, it was really exciting once Mike Katz, the principal singer/songwriter, found them. I did have a version of it that I remember playing Gene [Simmons] and Eric [Carr] years ago and them going, “Wow, this is pretty cool.” It was just like a footnote or whatever, just saying, “Hey, check out what I was doing when I was 20.” I’ve been trying to archive as much as I can, because we all know that the different mediums of music do degrade and you have to be careful about that if you’re trying to preserve things.

So I know I was transferring and digitizing a lot of things from even rehearsals with Michael Bolton for Blackjack and live gigs and then songwriting with him, which was late ‘70s. The reason why I bring it up is that I found this King Biscuit Flower Hour performance that I only had on a cassette, which is why I needed to digitize it. There’s this jam section of the live gig where we all went off and did our own thing, where Sandy Gennaro played some drums and then I go into a riff — and the riff was the riff that I contributed to this [KKB] song called “Trying to Find a Way.” I go, “Oh my God!”

So here it is in ‘79 and I realized, even though we weren’t going to go into that song, we needed a link in the performance between drum solo, bass riff, into something else, right? So that freaked me out — I always knew that I had that live King Biscuit Flower Hour performance, which was mostly songs from our album — and I think we might have done a cover song, like “Rocky Mountain Way” was something that I know I would do with Michael sometimes — but that was crazy, that there was that riff from KKB. So it wasn’t as if I completely ignored it and I know you started the question with saying that it was an early band — I don’t even know if we called ourselves a band.

The whole thing was just getting together and creating these songs that Mike was very clear about. As you can tell, since you digested the music, they’re pretty complex. Some of them are very, you know, there’s time signatures and there’s tricky riffs and to think I was doing that at such a young age was for myself, something I was very proud of myself.

Read More: Former Kiss Guitarist Bruce Kulick on Revisiting His First Band and More: Exclusive Interview | http://ultimateclassicrock.com/bruce-kulick-interview-2015/?trackback=tsmclip

Jeff Giles | Ultimate Classic Rock

Ethan Miller

When we’re kids, our fathers can seem impossibly huge and infallible, and getting to know them as adults — and understand their real personalities and human foibles — is often an unexpected, and very liberating, experience. And if your dad is Gene Simmons? Multiply all that by about a thousand.

That’s the impression given, anyway, by an affectionate and funny Vice editorial written by Simmons’ son Nick. Titled “My Dad, Gene Simmons, Is Full of S— and So Are You,” it looks back on the younger Simmons’ experiences living with the Kiss co-founder for a father — and his eventual realization that even if his dad has millions of fans who love him as their fire-spewing Demon, he’s still just a guy.

“I thought everything my father said was written in stone, and wrought from ages of experience and trial,” writes Nick. “But as I grew and he began to shrink, I started to see the cracks. I started seeing his pores, his grey hairs — those small flaws that made him human.”

And as anyone who’s been through this experience with their own parents understands, that dawning realization doesn’t necessarily mean seeing your father as somehow diminished; in fact, it can often lead to a richer and more rewarding relationship, as Nick argues has definitely been the case for the Simmons men.

A large chunk of the essay, which is well worth reading in full, looks back on the first time Simmons realized he disagreed with his father, and points to that moment as the beginning of the end for their lopsided personal dynamic. “It’s important to disagree. It’s important to kill your heroes. And, sometimes, you have to kill your father,” he reflects. “Kill him so you can love him, and his flaws, better than one can love a hollow archetype. The most important thing he taught me is that — just like everyone else — sometimes, he is full of shit.”

Chris Czynszak