Michael Brandvold

Indianapolis KISS Expo

Tickets for the Indianapolis KISS Expo 2019 HERE at this link.

iHeart Radio

By Andrew Magnotta @AndrewMagnotta

KISS front man Paul Stanley goes into detail about the state of his relationships with his fellow Kiss co-founders, drummer Peter Criss and guitarist Ace Frehley, in his new book, Backstage Pass.

While the Starchild writes he’s grateful for his rekindled friendship with Frehley*, he indicates that he has no misgivings about his lack of a relationship with Criss.

“Peter unfortunately is a different story,” Stanley writes (per Ultimate Classic Rock). “I don’t think Peter has any life. He seems consumed by some kind of reality that his wife tells him. He’s always been negative and always maintained an us-against-them mentality.” I don’t want that in my life.”

Stanley called it “nice” to get to work with Frehley on his 2016 solo album, Origins Vol. 1. He added that he knows he has “differences” with both the Spaceman and Criss.

The reason he and Criss can’t get beyond those issues, in Stanley’s opinion, comes down to the drummer’s attitude.

“It’s Peter’s overall sense of anger and resentment and feeling like a victim,” Stanley writes. “He needs to acknowledge his participation and then change things. I think Peter’s life is probably very one-dimensional, uninteresting, un-stimulating — which is a result of seeing the world negatively and seeing everyone from the band members to the hotel service people as disrespectful.”

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Michael Brandvold

Joe

Metalhead Zone

Anthrax’s rhythm guitarist Scott Ian shared a recent photo on his Instagram page and celebrated his followers’ Easter Day.

As you can see below, he said that he’s painting eggs like this for almost 45 years.

Here’s Scott Ian’s statement:

“Painting eggs like this since 1975.

Happy Easter! @genesimmons”

You can see the photo below:

Last week, Megadeth bassist David Ellefson spoke in an interview with Rock Sverige and revealed the reason why KISS bassist Gene Simmons is one of the greatest rock stars ever.

Here’s the statement:

“Gene and Paul [Stanley] very much credit The Beatles for the whole concept of KISS. KISS was my Beatles and it’s funny, as big of a KISS fan as I was and I was the biggest, as we all claim to be, funny thing is that in my bands growing up, we never played any KISS songs because they were hard to play.”

Click here to read the whole article.

Vinnie Vincent says that his appearance at one of last year’s Gene Simmons Vault Experience shows almost didn’t happen because of his lengthy battles with Kiss over royalties. He ultimately did decide to go, but says he was already regretting it on the way home.

As he recalled in a new Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon interview (embedded below), Vincent was driving to the event in Nashville when, thinking about his history with Simmons and Kiss, “I almost turned around and said, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ Why in the world would I come down and greet you with a smile and try to make this work when what you did to me was reprehensible at best?”

Vincent says he filed suit in 1997, claiming that he was owed millions of dollars from his tenure in Kiss. “These are mine, the fruits of my talent, my labor,” he explains. “These are my earnings and you have no right to them. … I was not giving up. I was going to my grave making sure I sought justice, one way or another. I was going to fight this lawsuit until there were I don’t care how many justices retired.”

All of this was replaying in Vincent’s head on the car ride to the Vault appearance, particularly a moment when he says Simmons’ attorney told him, “Oh, Gene would rather pay us $2.5 million in legal fees to fight you than to give you one penny.'”

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Matt Porter

KISSmuseum.com

We haven’t had one of these in awhile – a sale of nothing but rare KISS items from the ’70s. This stuff gets harder and harder to find, but we have been scouring the earth and came up with some good stuff recently…

KISS ’70s Sale at KISSmuseum.com

YouTube

Ultimate Guitar

Back in 1982, you auditioned for KISS. You were, I think, 18 years old at the time. What was it like standing there with one of the biggest rock bands on the planet and you’re just basically a kid? What did it feel like at that point?

“It was kind of… When you think about Hollywood, you think about… You know, people come from all over the world and they come to Hollywood to make it. And I didn’t plan on it being with KISS but I felt, like, ‘Okay, this might be what I’m supposed to do – to come to Hollywood and join KISS.’

“I just didn’t really think about it too much. I was definitely… I was scared to look at them in the eyes, in a sense. Because at that time people had never seen them without their makeup and I felt like I was breaking the rules if I looked them in their face. [Laughs]

“But in the end, I was just too young. But we had some good jams and it was the first time I ever got to play through giant stacks of Marshalls. I’ve never done that before. It always has been like a half-stack.”

How did that end? Why didn’t you get the gig?

“I was too young. They knew it – I was a kid. These guys were international rock stars and I was just a kid. My experience…

“Look, here’s the thing, David, if you want to get a gig, it’s 50% how good you are and it’s 50% how cool you can hang out together. Because in a band, you’ve got to be like a… it’s like a family.

“You have to hang out together and be comfortable and not have anything weird going on. Because you’re gonna be together on a bus, you’re gonna be together in hotels. It needs to be comfortable for the band.

“And probably they could see I was not comfortable because I was so young, I was nervous. So that’s probably why they decided. My playing was probably okay but they’re not gonna be comfortable on the tour bus with a kid.”

What was it like being with Gene Simmons? He does sometimes seem like a very demanding, not only a musician but a businessman, in a way.

“He was very funny. He was very kind and he basically spent the most time with me in the studio. They were working on their record ‘Creatures of the Night’ at that time. And I remember there was a song called ‘War Machine,’ I think.

“And he asked me to play a part of the song to check how I would record. And I remember playing that song, thinking, ‘This is a crazy riff, it’s really cool. It’s very different.’ And I’ve never heard a riff like that before. I was trying to figure out what key it is.

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Keith Flamer | Forbes

There’s no disguising this. KISS drummer Peter Criss needed an escape from his intense Rock-n-Roll fame. He found it in this enchanting Greenwich, Connecticut manor—a storybook chill estate where he could play with his dog, drums and guns in peace. Sort of.

KISS drummer Peter Criss’ Greenwich estate is on sale for nearly $1.88 million.

COURTESY OF DOUGLAS ELLIMAN

Criss’ idyllic former home is listed with Douglas Elliman’s William Tuck Keating for nearly $1.88 million. Criss (birth name Peter George John Criscuola) lived here from 1975-1977 with first wife Lydia. It was his prized getaway, a reality check cashed from his international fame and fortune.

Peter Criss on stage with KISS in 1977. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

GETTY

Criss was KISS’ original drummer, the heartbeat behind one of the biggest 1970s acts. An underrated hard rock band, KISS is often dismissed as a gimmick group due to their mysterious face paint, androgynous space glam costumes, and on-stage antics like tongue-wagging, fire breathing, and hell-raising pyrotechnics. Their induction into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame and 24 gold records prove otherwise.

Criss, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley (composers of “Rock and Roll All Nite”, “Beth”, “Detroit Rock City” and “Black Diamond”) dominated mid-70s headlines and rock charts. Criss, who commanded the drum kit dressed in Cat-like makeup, wrote five KISS tracks and sang lead on 13 songs, including the band’s biggest hit “Beth”. According to reports, Criss even helped inspire the band’s name, telling bandmate Stanley about his stint in a band called Lips. Stanley then came up with the provocative name KISS.

Drummer Peter Criss sang lead on “Beth,” KISS’ biggest Billboard chart hit. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

GETTY

The Greenwich estate is far from rock anthems and stadiums full of adoring fans. Or so he thought. As former Manhattan residents, Peter and Lydia reveled in the anonymity of Greenwich life. But diehard KISS fans could see right through the act (and thick makeup), identifying Criss at local restaurants.

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Michael Brandvold

Feyyaz Ustaer | Metal Head Zone

Megadeth bassist David Ellefson spoke in an interview with Rock Sverige, and revealed the reason of why KISS bassist Gene Simmons is one of the greatest rock stars ever.

Here’s the statement:

“Gene’s one of my favorite bass players. I defend Gene to the grave. Absolutely one of the greatest rock players ever.

I missed The Beatles. I was born in ’64 the year they came out and they were broken up by ’71 and I started to listen to music about ’74, so I just missed them completely.

Gene and Paul [Stanley] very much credit The Beatles for the whole concept of KISS. KISS were my Beatles and it’s funny, as big of a KISS fan as I was and I was the biggest, as we all claim to be, funny thing is that in my bands growing up, we never played any KISS songs because they were hard to play.

Paul’s guitar, his voicing and chord choices were so avant-garde and just really out of character and that’s what made them so cool. They were riffs, but there were these chords… whereas you listen to this kind of 12-bar blues kind of stuff that was going around at that same time… the KISS stuff was very challenging and they tuned down a half step.

I remember when I bought the KISS ‘Destroyer’ [1976] piano, vocal, acoustic guitar songbook and everything was in E-flat and I knew how to read music and I went, ‘But my bass only goes to E? How do you play this?’.

I got very frustrated and I didn’t realize they tuned down and of course in a piano book, everything’s very little. You can’t drop tune a piano and drop tuning wasn’t even in vogue. Gene’s bass playing was just incredible.

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Feyyaz Ustaer | Metal Head Zone

During the recent interview with Music Legends, L.A. Guns frontman Phil Lewis has responded to KISS bassist Gene Simmons’ claim of ‘rock is dead’.

He also slammed Gene for an interesting reason, and said ‘”If Gene Simmons had made an album as good as [L.A. GUNS‘ 2017 LP] ‘The Missing Peace’or ‘The Devil You Know’, he wouldn’t be talking that stupid shit.’

Here’s the full statement:

“That phrase ‘rock is dead,’ Gene Simmons [KISS] has been bandying that around for a while now, thinking he’s really edgy and how astute he is.

If Gene Simmons had made an album as good as [L.A. GUNS’ 2017 LP] ‘The Missing Peace’ or ‘The Devil You Know’, he wouldn’t be talking that stupid shit. Because it’s not dead. And I’m optimistic, I’m thrilled that GRETA VAN FLEET won a Grammy. I love those guys. Not just the music — just the fact that it’s that generation, it’s inspiring of 12- and 13-year-olds to pick up a guitar. And I’ve been waiting for that for so long.

There’s nothing cooler than being in a band. There’s nothing cooler than being able to pick up a guitar and play for people. And chicks just dig that. And the sooner that these guys in their late teens and early 20s realize that… They don’t wanna sit and watch you play a fucking video game. They want you to play ’em a song. Learn to play a fucking song — even if it’s one song, learn how to play it. And you’ll be amazed how it improves your life.”

Listen to the entire interview below. Click here for the source.

Marc Thiessen | The Washington Post

I have a confession to make. I’m a member of the Kiss Army.

In 1976, I bought my first Kiss album. I loved the rock band’s makeup and crazy characters, and quickly I was hooked. I had Kiss posters, Kiss action figures, a Kiss lunchbox, and on Halloween I dressed up in a Kiss costume to go trick-or-treating. Two decades later, I took my future wife out on our first date … to a Kiss concert. (She married me anyway.) And now, a couple of decades after that, we just took our kids to Philadelphia to see Kiss on their farewell “End of the Road” tour. Some of us (yes, me) even wore Kiss makeup.

In a sense, Kiss prefigured today’s age of populism. Just like a certain American president, they horrified the elites — but inspired a loyal, devoted following that reveled in their scorn and condescension. Being a Kiss fan was an act of rebellion against the establishment. The band was panned by the critics, never won a single Grammy, and were only reluctantly admitted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 — 15 years after they first became eligible. They got in by popular acclamation, despite the best efforts of the music industry establishment to keep them out. As lead singer Paul Stanley put it in the Philadelphia concert, “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame hates us!” The crowd cheered.

Kiss is a uniquely American phenomenon. Co-founder Gene Simmons was born Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel, the son of a Holocaust survivor from Hungary who saw her family killed in a concentration camp. His mother emigrated to Israel, where they lived in abject poverty. “We had nothing — torn sweaters and we never even saw toilet paper,” he says. When Simmons was 8, they moved to New York, where he learned to speak English by reading comic books — which later inspired the costumes and makeup that made Kiss famous. Stanley (born Stanley Bert Eisen) also grew up in New York to a Jewish family that fled Nazi Germany. They seized the opportunities this country gave them, rising from nothing to sell more than 100 million albums, license more than 3,000 product categories, play more than 2,000 shows and earn more Gold Records than any American band. Kiss is arguably both the biggest rock band, and the biggest rock brand, in history. “I am a direct result of the capitalist system. I came to America and I had nothing,” Simmons says. “We’re blessed to be living in America, which is the land of opportunity.” Simmons will turn 70 during the course of this tour, yet he is still breathing fire and selling out stadiums. What a country!

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KISSmuseum.com

Boxes and Boxes of KISS Figure came with the last collection we purchased – some common as well as not-so-common KISS figure and dolls – check it out!

KISS Figures are HERE at KISSmuseum.com

Jody Havenot

Michael Brandvold