Gene Simmons talks about when Kiss started wearing makeup

In an interview with Michael Franzese, the frontman of KISS Gene Simmons was asked how the “KISS phenomenon” began over fifty years ago.

This is his detailed response taken from Blabbermouth.net: “Scientists talk about this kind of thing. There is such a thing as singularity. Things just happen, that means it doesn’t happen often, it could be in a millennium, something just happens when the planets align and you have the right thing in the right place at the right time The first right thing in the right place at the right time was when I met Paul Stanley, my partner, who knew things that I didn’t know, and I hope that. , at least that’s what he told me, if I knew things he didn’t know. Then one plus one equals three. And we decided to put together a band that we had never seen on stage and, it’s worth saying, we wanted to have the songs and everything, but we noticed that the bands that we liked, the Who, Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles had unique images so that if you closed your eyes, you saw them. There were a lot of hits on the radio where if you closed your eyes, you couldn’t tell. Foreigner was a great band that had lots of hits. Close your eyes, you have no idea who is in the band and you don’t care. That’s the thing, so we wanted the image to be there too, we didn’t know it was going to become a multi-billion dollar industry. KISS continues to be: there’s everything from KISS coffins to KISS condoms.”.

He then continued his story: “So once we got Ace (Frehley, KISS guitarist) and Peter (Criss, KISS drummer), the two original guys, it’s worth noting that Paul and I are Went to see Peter play at a very small gentlemen’s club, they played as a trio and the drummer, who was Criss, wore scarves and sang Wilson Pickett, R&B songs, had the attitude and the voice right.

The other guys on stage could have been the ones waiting outside to ask you for some money. They didn’t look like musicians, but this guy had the voice and the attitude. So the band started, but not everyone has genes, not everyone can run a marathon. There are some people whose genes, whose DNA, are better suited to running a short race, and that’s why very few bands last long. We’ve been around for 52 years, with different members, because not all of them last. One day, I already talked about it and every time I talk about it, it comes back to my mind. We were sitting in our rat-infested loft at 10 East 23rd Street in Manhattan and rehearsing. No windows, nothing. After rehearsal, one of us, I don’t know who, said, ‘Hey, let’s go to Woolworth’s, which was a local store. You could buy anything. Before there were malls, there was everything at Woolworth’s: aspirin, anything, clothes. There were some wacky things too. so we looked towards the Halloween area and there was clown makeup. The white clown, a jar and black lipstick. For some reason, Paul Stanley got some red lipstick – I don’t know why – and we bought that stuff and two mirrors five feet tall, this wide, $15 total, and I took it up to the attic. Nobody said, ‘I have an idea. Let’s sit down. Let’s do it.’ It was just happening. We look at ourselves in the mirror, we put on makeup, we look at ourselves, we talk. Well, it’s a little strange, it’s a little sticky to talk about this feeling. Then we started making drawings around our eyes, looking at each other and getting excited, in a way. Peter Criss liked cats, so he did that. I have always been fascinated by horror films and science fiction, by that imagery. Ace always said he was from another planet. His balance wasn’t that good, he often fell. So he considered himself an astronaut. Originally Paul Stanley’s makeup was a round or black circle around the eye. We looked at each other and thought, ‘What the hell is that?’ He replied: ‘It’s like Pete, the dog from ‘The Little Rascals.’ (…) We told him: ‘No one will know him. If they’re younger, not.’ He decided to do it, I think it might have been Ace saying, ‘You always wanted to be a rock star, instead of a chubby Jewish kid. Why don’t you put stars on your eyes?’ It went like this. Then he made two stars over his eyes, but they didn’t line up. It’s difficult to do them freehand. So he decided to use just one. That’s where his makeup comes from. Just a star above the eye, and that’s it. About three weeks after the first trick, I called a venue – I acted like a manager, I always do – the Coventry and convinced them to book us sight unseen for $35. $35, wow! I remember there must have been 10 or 15 people. My girlfriend at the time, a girl named Jan, her brother’s girlfriend Lydia, the drummer’s wife and a few others. But we were on stage wearing makeup. Something was happening. Within a year and a half of the band forming in late 1973, we were headlining Anaheim Stadium before MTV, before digital. We didn’t even have hit records. Something happened. It just pervaded the culture. Suddenly kids started talking about it. And in those days you could make a career with magazines because before that was how things spread.”

Gene Simmons he explained further: “We didn’t have a manager.

Paul and I already had a record deal with Epic for a band called Wicked Lester. We finished the album, they gave us 40, 50 thousand dollars. For us it was a lot of money. But for some strange reason, we didn’t believe it. We sounded like Three Dog Night and the Doobie Brothers. It was okay, but nothing special. (…) Then we started writing a different kind of song, more English, more Humble Pie, more Stones, that kind of thing, instead of American pop. And immediately he turned. In a very strange way, KISS became a great band without having hit songs. Thanks to the live shows. If people were curious, if you went on YouTube, we would literally blow away anyone else who dared to put us on stage. We would just sweep them off the stage. Part of it was cunning. We had a seven foot tall KISS logo, bright lights that spelled out KISS, and no one had ever hung their name, band name like at a Las Vegas show. It wasn’t considered cool, but we thought it was cool. Half an hour later, if you closed your eyes, you could still see KISS in your eyelids, if you know what I mean. For the band that played next they didn’t have enough time to clear the stage. The KISS logo was therefore still on stage. With that kind of trickery very quickly, we ran out of bands to open for.”

When asked if he thinks that i KISS would have had the same impact musically and iconically if it weren’t for the makeup, Simmons replied: “Maybe not, but there is such a thing… I go back to the right thing in the right place at the right time. If you take away any of those elements , your chances go down. In the quote golden age of rock and roll… if you put KISS or Jimi Hendrix or someone like that back then, it wouldn’t work because the ears of the masses weren’t tuned into this thing. if you take the big bands of that era and you bring them to the present day… What are you doing I think it’s a big puzzle, and it helps, it certainly helps, it doesn’t diminish, it certainly helps, if you have most of those pieces of the puzzle, so that the picture is clearer. It helps Little Richard put his legs on the piano and play the piano like a savage, which has nothing to do with the songs, but it helps the set design Chuck Berry doing the duck walk does it have to do with the song? Nothing. But when you see it live, it really helps.”