IN six-inch stack heels and garish black and white make-up, Kiss spat up blood on stage and bedded groupies off it.
A heavy-metal whirlwind of guitars and 15-minute drum solos, their racy hits — including Lick It Up and Love Gun — were 1970s adolescent fantasies.
7
7
7
Frontman Paul Stanley once readily admitted: “Rock ’n’ roll is basically music made by people who were thinking with their crotches.”
Now, following five decades of debauchery, these monsters of rock might be more in need of crutches as their End Of The Road world tour sees them play the UK for probably the final time.
Rhythm guitarist Stanley, 70, who has had a hip replacement and two serious knee ops, blames their heavy stage costumes.
He said: “If we were wearing sneakers and T-shirts and jeans we could do this into our nineties.
“But we’re carrying around 30, 40, 50lb of gear on stage, and making it look easy.
“And at some point you realise you can’t do that indefinitely.”
Bassist Gene Simmons, 73, famous for bedding almost 5,000 groupies, now says he relaxes by eating cake and watching Game Of Thrones.
Known for his stage persona The Demon, Simmons likes to waggle the longest tongue in rock ’n’ roll.
Popular rumour in the Seventies was that his unfeasibly large appendage was the result of a cow’s tongue being grafted on to his own.
It is about the only wild tale told about Kiss that is not true.
Gene, now a devoted family man and married to former Playboy model Shannon Tweed, 65, recorded his conquests in Polaroid photos.
‘Girl had tattoo of my face between legs’
The dad of two admitted in 2020: “I didn’t do drugs in the crazy times but I did do sex.
“Did I sleep with 4,800 women? So they tell me. I did have the Polaroids to prove it, oh yes.
7
7
7
“But most of them were burned. Shannon and I got together with them and we had a ritual.”
Simmons, who has dated singers Cher and Diana Ross, said of his lothario days: “It just proves you can be an ugly b*****d and if you’ve got the right job you’ll have access.
“If you’re a rock star you will get some, even if you’re (late Motorhead frontman) Lemmy.”
Gene revealed how some groupies liked to wear the band’s trademark black and white face paint during romps.
He explained: “I have painted it on women’s faces who wanted to wear it for the sex.
“Once I had a girl who had a tattoo of my face between her legs. I felt sorry for her boyfriends.”
The rest of the band have been known to suffer for Simmons’ bed-hopping.
The whole group caught pubic lice after the bassist’s infected leather suit was packed in with their own costumes.
But unlike many in the rock world, Simmons didn’t like to mix booze and womanising.
He said: “As soon as you get drunk you’re going to throw up on that chick you’ve been talking to, you’re going to throw up on the new shoes she’s bought.
“If you drink enough your d**k won’t work and the next day you’re going to have a headache.”
And he was no fan of drugs.
He claimed he has only ever got high in a dentist’s chair, adding: “With drugs, you reap what you sow.
“I’d understand if drugs made you smarter, run faster, made your d**k bigger. But they don’t.”
If we wore sneakers and T-shirts and jeans we could do this into our nineties. But we carry around 50lb of gear on stage. You can’t do that indefinitely
Paul Stanley
Kiss formed in New York in January 1973, with their first gig in front of fewer than ten people.
In March that year they wore their signature make-up for the first time, with each band member adopting a comic book-style character.
Frontman Stanley was the Starchild, Simmons the Demon, lead guitarist Ace Frehley the Spaceman and drummer Peter Criss the Catman.
Simmons, who also appeared in 2005 reality TV show Rock School, remembers: “The early years of Kiss were far from glamorous.
“We rode in a station wagon hundreds of miles every day. We would take turns driving and sleeping in the back. We ate burgers at roadside taverns.
“We stopped and peed on the side of long stretches of a highway when we couldn’t find a town.”
Read Related Also: How Did Andre Payette Die? Examined Reason for Dying For The Newcastle Vipers
The band gained a reputation for stunning live performances featuring Simmons spitting fake blood, Frehley’s guitar packed with smoke bombs and bursting into flames, Criss’s levitating drum kit and Stanley smashing guitars.
They would go on to sell 100million albums worldwide and be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
By 1979 Stanley would say: “We were all, in some ways, drunk on success.
“There were sycophantic friends around, there were drugs, there was alcohol, there was every kind of vice that fame brings with it.”
Then, after decades of drugs and bust-ups, lead guitarist Frehley and drummer Criss left the band.
Simmons said in 2019 that his former bandmates were “completely undependable”.
Both Criss and Frehley admit to troubled pasts. In 1994 Criss — then a twice-divorced drug casualty — stuck a .357 Magnum pistol in his mouth as his life spiralled out of control.
He wrote in his 2012 memoir Makeup To Breakup: My Life In And Out Of Kiss: “I was sitting in a Hollywood dump in shambles.
“Carjacked; everything gone; 100 grand in a shoebox; gold records broken on the floor; nothing left. I owed the IRS (tax collectors the Internal Revenue Service).
“I thought, ‘My God, I really mean it this time’. I was gonna check out.”
Looking into his soul, he thought: “What do you really have to live for? Your two marriages have gone to s**t.
“You hardly see your daughter. You got a hundred grand, but you were worth 12-odd million at one point in your life.”
Only the thought of his late mother made him put the weapon away.
Former guitarist Ace said in 2011 he had “conquered his demons” after years of cocaine, which he nicknamed Betty White, and alcohol abuse.
The 71-year-old, who left Kiss in 2002, remembered: “If I was going to a party I’d call up my buddy and I would say, ‘Is Betty going to be there?’.
“I mean, it’s the perfect name. And she’s such a great lady and I just love her to death.”
I didn’t do drugs in the crazy times but I did do sex. Did I sleep with 4,800 women? So they tell me. And I did have the Polaroids to prove it. Oh yes
Gene Simmons
Kiss’s End Of The Road tour began in 2019 but has been delayed by the pandemic.
Four years on, the band will arrive at Plymouth Argyle’s Home Park Stadium on June 3, 2023.
7
There are also dates in Birmingham, Newcastle, London, Manchester and Glasgow.
All hell broke loose in 2019 when Simmons said Criss and Frehley would never rejoin the band for a full tour again.
The bassist revealed: “Ace and Peter have gotten three chances. They were in and out of the band — fired — three times.
“For drugs, alcohol, bad behaviour, being unprofessional. They weren’t carrying their load.
“Would we welcome Ace or Peter to jump up on stage for a song or two? Of course.
“Could we depend on either Ace or Peter to do a full set night after night? Not on your f***ing life.”
An incensed Frehley fired back on Facebook that Simmons was “an asshole and a sex addict”.
He added of Simmons: “The icing on the cake was when you groped my wife and propositioned her in Los Angeles at the Capitol Records building behind my back.
“She was planning on pursuing a suit against you, but I told her to call it off!!!”
In his rant he labelled Simmons and Stanley “control freaks”.
And Frehley slammed Simmons’ “slanderous” references to his substance abuse issues that have “cost me millions of dollars and now that I’m over 12 years sober you’re still saying I can’t be trusted to play a whole night’s show!”.
Frehley’s replacement as lead guitarist is Tommy Thayer, 62, who writes kids’ books in his spare time.
Drummer Eric Singer, 64, who took over from Criss, is no rock wildman. He is a regular gym-goer, who collects watches.
Earlier this year Simmons said old bandmates Frehley and Criss were still welcome to come on stage for encores.
“We care about them,” he explained. “We started this thing together and they were equally important to the beginning of the band, no question.
“But as time went on, not everybody is designed to run a marathon.”
Criss has said in the past: “No matter who they get to put stuff on their face, it ain’t us.
“You can take the mask off the Lone Ranger and put it on someone else, but it ain’t The Lone Ranger.”
But despite the bad blood, the Kiss behemoth rocks on.
Frontman Stanley said of the farewell tour: “We beat the odds. We kicked everybody’s ass.
“We outlived the naysayers. I want to go around and high five everybody around the world.”
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;
n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,
document,’script’,’
fbq(‘init’, ‘752905198150451’);
fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);
