Iron Maiden and Kiss

I think I've written about this before in these pages (although I can't remember where) but I'm not the most technically savvy person. A friend of mine checked this blog on his phone and tells me it wasn't optimized for mobile reading. I made a face like Joey Tribbiani doing math in his head, and I still don't know if it is or isn't or what that entails. I do know that when I look at the blog on my own mobile. the whole right side of the page is missing, i.e. all the old blog links and my Table of Contents/ favorite posts:

These guys.

Is that what it means? (shrugs) Do people even look at those posts, anyway? I can never tell. Anyway, pursuant to cleaning all those up a little, I'm compartmentalizing a few of these and going to re-do some of them. So if you see a few "Table of Contents" posts coming down the pike, that's what I'm up to. Ye regular readers, feel free to skip. (I guess that goes for non-regular readers, too. Housecleaning alert!)

Anyway, if you clicked on the "Iron Maiden" or "Kiss" link in the Dog Star Omnibus Guide to Music, then away we go, below. 

1.

Here's an overview sort of post ("The Nature of the Beast.") I used to feel I needed to introduce a topic to the internet when I wrote about it. Ah, old-blogging-me! Now I can't even be bothered to provide plot summaries or tell you what comic which screencap is from. 

Here's a history of Iron Maiden Eddie, the coolest mascot going. Man I love looking at those old singles-covers. My brother and I would draw those in our art books all the time. (His were always much better - I never found the knack for illustration. Although once one of these drawings was found by my folks, who, not knowing the context, though I needed psychological help. I love telling that story.)

Here's an overview of Maiden on DVD that I think came out pretty well. That Flight 666 movie is gold. 

And finally, an Essential Maiden Albums to Own post that was meant to introduce a "Thirty Days of Maiden" month where I covered my 30 favorite Maiden songs. Which would be fun but probably tedious; anyway it never happened. 

What's that? You want to know what those 30 favorites would've been? Oh, all right. Of the Di'anno era, it has to be "Running Free," which is just a classic on the order of "Rock and Roll All Night" or any other big anthem you care to nominate. (I have a persistent movie sequence that plays out over the last minute or so, of someone running through and dribbling round the opposing team's defenses before clearing the keeper and firing one into the back of the net and then England wins the World Cup and Steve Harris becomes Prime Minister. The End.) The Dickinson era is much more of a challenge; how to pick just one favorite song? It's easier to do it by album:

Number of the Beast - so many classics. The title track and "Run to the Hills" are metal / Maiden staples. But "Hallowed Be Thy Name" is likely my favorite.

Piece of Mind - "Revelations" probably. But what an album.

Powerslave - "Back in the Village," "Losfer Words," or "Aces High."

Somewhere in Time - "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" or "Heaven Can Wait." or "Sea of Madness." Or the title track. 

Seventh Son of a Seventh Son - "Infinite Dreams" or "The Evil That Men Do."

No real favorites from No Prayer for the Dying or Fear of the Dark, although I like plenty of tunes from those. Ditto for the last couple of Bruce-led Maiden efforts. But Brave New World ("Dream of Mirrors," "Ghost of the Navigator", "The Nomad", that ending to "The Wicker Man", which I'll never forget being part of 8000 fans jumping up and down chanting that with all the lights and flames going crazy and the band on stage with big grins on their faces watching us, singing it back to them) and Dance of Death (title track, "No More Lies," "Wildest Dream," "Montségur") are both essential.

The Blaze Blazely era (see my posts for why I call him that) have a surprising amount of Maiden classics: "The Unbeliever, " "2 a.m.", "Man on the Edge," "The Clansman," and "Sign of the Cross" just to name a few. 

And:

2.

"Kiss is as American as Bugs Bunny or Indiana Jones." 

So I said in my overview post of the band (again following the since-discarded idea of "I need to introduce this concept before talking about it or the internet will be hopelessly confused.") I stand by this assertion. 

Album by album: 1974 to 1982 here, and 1983-1998 here. What about Kiss in the 21st century, you ask? No problem: please see "Kiss in the 21st Century." There will likely be a sequel to that in the future dealing with whatever DVD or CD comes out detailing their (latest and allegedly last) farewell tour. 

Here's a post on Attack of the Phantoms aka Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. 

(Gene voice) "Oh yeah!"

Each of the original members has released a memoir:

- Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley. (Lame title. I bet he was pissed the others took the titles below. That's what you get for being last, Paul.) Fun tidbit about this post: each and every week, the page-counts for this one go up by a fairly uniform amount. That could just be people finding the post, but I like to imagine Paul's long-suffering Personal Assistants required to find every mention of him on the web and refresh the page 50 times to keep active page-counts up. 

- No Regrets by Ace Frehley. Or as Chuck Klostermann called it "No Details." Ace has been writing pt. 2 of this for years. Given his memory problems I imagine this process entails getting everyone who ever knew him together and asking them what he was up to do. I look forward to reading it nevertheless. I still say a fictional biopic of an alien from Jendell would've been the better conceit, for this or the proposed sequel. Ah well. (I also did a post of my favorite Ace Frehley tunes; enjoy.)

- Makeup to Breakup by Peter Criss. Another terrible title. A raunchy, guilty-pleasure of a read, which doesn't really make its author come across too well. Ditto for:

- Kiss and Makeup by Gene Simmons. Gene probably made sure to write his memoir first so he could call dibs on that title. Like Paul says in his book, Gene's main accomplishment as a businessman (I say this as someone with zero accomplishments as a businessman, so no need to remind me of how unworthy I am in the comments; I know. Believe me, I know.) is taking credit for the work of Paul Stanley others. Whether or not this book is an exercise in such a thing, I don't know. Good read, though. (And RIP to Gene's Mom, whom I rather enjoyed getting to know in the chapters dealing with Gene's early years in Israel. Peter calls her out for not letting gentiles in her home in his memoir, but I bet it was more that she thought Peter and Ace were just a couple of scrubs and didn't want them scuffing up her furniture or urinating on the floor.) 

I only reviewed one of the "Kiss books" out there: Kiss and Sell by CK Lendt. A wonderfully dishy book on the most excessive phase of their career (surrounding the "Dynasty" era). In these days of my blogging career, I felt I had to leave lengthy excerpts from any work in question. I've given this up, but man, I remember holding this book open in my lap and furiously typing up all the sections quoted in that post. Rather ridiculous amount of hand-copied text in that post - imagine an actual book review that reproduced that much of the book! - but as a Kiss fan, I still love reading about that crap.

I also wrote a story (loosely based on "The Beard Hunter" by Grant Morrison from his stint on Doom Patrol) about a man who hunts his enemies with knock-out darts and then face-paints them in Kiss designs, before being hired by the Kurt Cobain Died For You Society to take out Dave Grohl. I came close to getting this one published a couple of times but it was never meant to be. Of any of the stories I sent out during that period  (2005-2007) this always got the most fun responses. No takers, but a lot of bemused back and forth with submissions editors. 

~

There! Now when I re-do the Music post, I don't have to include separate links to all the above but can just link to one (this) post. Mission accomplished. 

Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley

I'm not just a member of Kiss.
I'm a member of the Kiss Army.

Paul Stanley has released his autobiography:

Despite his booking a steady string of ongoing media appearances to promote it, the book's release was overshadowed by the induction of Kiss into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which finally happened last week.

The RRHOF has an odd policy of dictating to the band it's inducting which specific members it considers worthy for inclusion. Gene and Paul (quite rightly, from where I'm sitting) said they couldn't in good conscience reward such a ridiculous policy with a live performance, as it would be a dis to the other members of Kiss. Whereupon the web exploded with much vitriol. It was immediately perceived as yet another example of Gene and Paul depriving Ace and Peter of their due consideration.

I'm actually surprised people vented anger at Paul and Gene for this one. Shouldn't all the members, past and present, of the band being inducted be included in the band's induction? I mean, why on earth wouldn't they be? And why on earth would the Hall of Fame think they get to dictate anything like that to the actual band or their fans?

The day after induction, Paul referred to Jann Wenner et al as "spineless weasels," citing the inconsiderate treatment they received at the event.

I can understand some fans' disappointment at not seeing one last performance from the original members. But really, how many times have these four guys played "Rock and Roll All Nite?" Can anyone seriously be justified in feeling deprived of one more? Especially at the (at least metaphorical) expense of Eric Carr et al.? Say whatever you want about Tommy Thayer or Eric Singer or whomever (I do it all the time;) they all are or were legitimate members of the band. Acquiescing to the RRHOF's presumptuous demands does not seem a proper way of celebrating the band's legacy.

Regarding the "at Peter's and Ace expense" business: there are plenty of times where I've speculated about some shady behavior on Gene's or Paul's parts vis-a-vis their former bandmates, but it must be acknowledged that that road has also extended from the former to the latter just as often. How would Peter act, say, if the shoe were on the other foot? (Ace probably wouldn't give a crap.)

Anyway - they all had nice things to say about one another at the induction, which was nice to see. (And that intro by Tom Morello was pretty rock and roll.)

Morello is also in Flight 666, come to think of it, professing his love for Maiden. I guess he and I'd be fine taking turns with the tape deck on a road trip.

Paul's book (segue!) has some nice things to say about everyone - probably about the same amount as you find in Gene's, Peter's, or Ace's books - but when he's not being nice, he's really not being nice. Particularly about Peter. He unloads an awful lot on Peter, but - at least the way he tells it - this is all a long time in coming.

It's one thing to put up with somebody who's a virtuoso and a prick. It's quite another to put up with somebody who can barely play their instrument and is also a prick.

Zing! Fair? Maybe. The playing on the last couple of tours with the original members was indeed pretty shoddy on Peter's and Ace's parts. I will say: of the 4 books, this one definitely seems the most self-aware. Perhaps due to what Peter wrote in his book: "I guess that's what talking to your shrink four hours a day for 20 years gets you." He meant it as a swipe, but there's some truth in that. Paul is pretty candid about his own narcissism and insecurity and jealousy issues and seems to have emerged from it all to a happy place.

It clocks in at 462 pages, making it the longest of the Kiss bios. (I'm sure someone from Peter's camp will see that as an over-compensation.) I chuckled a few times at some of the things from other books (Paul's compulsive cock-doodling, the band's lawsuit against Polygram in the 80s, etc.) that weren't mentioned. (Paul even laments that the label "did fuck-all" for the band in the 80s; well, no kidding. You called them Nazi sympathizers and brought them to court.) Mainly, it was nice to finally read a history of the band from just Paul's point of view. It's a lot easier to see how things played out the way they did, now that I've done so.

Paul, then and now.

I've avoided reading any reviews of the book, so I honestly don't know what others have been saying about it. I imagine reactions have been minor variations of the same reviews for the other Kiss-books.

Did I learn anything new? For the most part, no, but I've been a fairly gluttonous consumer of Kiss product over the years and particularly over the past few months, looking stuff over for these blogs. I wasn't surprised, therefore, to discover he's got complicated feelings about his longtime friend and business partner.

(Gene's) being the default spokesman of the band would lead to countless more episodes of him using "I" instead of "we," subtly and not so subtly implying that he was the frontman, lead singer, and mastermind all wrapped up in one. He never attempted to clarify his role or refute media assumptions. Why would he? These false assumptions were based on Gene's own statements. I found myself scratching my head at his refusal to be honest.

But I was taken aback at the acuity of some of his insights into Gene and was happy to see some of my impressions reflected back at me.

Anyone can write a song in 5 minutes. The difference is since we had a record deal, Gene got to put his songs on an album, whether or not they were any good. (In the 80s) Gene denied his subpar and often nonexistent contributions to the group. (...) He was clearly going to do whatever he wanted to do, regardless of any objections from me or even his legal obligations under our partnership. (...) I had the choice of walking away or of doing the work of 2 people. The catch was that I had to share the credit, even if I did double the work.

Finally confronted about this during the Crazy Nights sessions, Gene owned up to his lack of involvement and professionalism and apologized by way of buying Paul a black Porsche. It can be seen in the "Reason To Live" video:

Which also features...

Eloise Broady, who married...

John Paul DeJoria, who took the place of Gene in Shark Tank when Gene passed on the show. (According to Gene, "the deal wasn't good enough." Whether this is true or just one of Gene's flights of fancy regarding his own business acumen, I have no idea.) All roads lead back to Kiss, is what I'm getting at.

I was apparently in error when I wrote in my review of Gene's book that he "was (and remains) the driving force behind Kiss's merchandising." According to Paul, this isn't even remotely true.

Gene's most successful venture in business was promoting the perception that he was a savvy businessman. That has been an undeniable success.

Back to Gene's songwriting, a subject I can sometimes get cranky about:

I was annoyed that he saw himself as operating at a level that qualified him to pass judgment on me, particularly because I hadn't thought much of his songs. The idea that he was judging me seemed arrogant, condescending, and ludicrous. (He) wrote a lot of very odd songs. Maybe it was because he was originally from another country? I wasn't sure. He had one called "Stanley the Parrot" and another called "My Uncle Is a Raft." He even had one called "My Mother Is the Most Beautiful Woman in the World." Uh, okay, (I thought.) That's weird.

I kind of like "My Uncle Is a Raft" as a title. But what do I know? I once named a song "Johnny Cash Goes to the Bathroom."

All in all, as he notes several times, he and Gene laugh at each other's quirks now and accept that they're just different people and count their (considerable) blessings. Still, some resentments linger. Paul doesn't bother hiding his antipathy towards Gene in a recent Rolling Stone overview.

Kiss' only enduring relationship is between Simmons and Stanley. "We've always seen each other as brothers," Stanley says. "What we seem to be at odds at is how you treat your brother. Gene's priority, by far, has always been himself. And he's not one to let anyone else's feelings or contributions get in the way."

The same article contains some really amusing interaction between Gene and Billy Ray Cyrus. ("You got any Matzo?") It's worth reading in full.

What's more surprising is Paul's commentary on his and Eric Carr's relationship. I had no idea it was as ambivalent as it was. Eric's side of it will sadly never be known, but Paul relays long periods of bad communication and hurt feelings and confusion. And expresses some real regret about it:

In the wake of Eric's death, I continued to spend a lot of time wondering whether I had handled things correctly. Though I thought I had made the best choices at the time, I began to realize I'd been wrong. We had cut Eric off in perhaps the worst way, by denying him what mattered to him most - his place in Kiss. (...) I should have seen that, since the band functioned the same way for me, and I wasn't even sick. I should have known.

Paul's referring to his and Gene's decision to exclude Eric from Kiss activity during his chemo and recovery period. (Gene doesn't seem aware of any of this. Outside of relaying a couple of anecdotes about paying his hospital bills - no small thing, certainly - and banging his girlfriend, Gene, tellingly, experiences no such regret in his book.) It's easy to see how doing what one felt was only right in the situation (i.e. stay home and rest, Eric; we'll handle the tunes) could have such unintended consequences.

Less surprising than his feelings towards Gene and Eric are his feelings towards Peter and Ace. 

If I even attempted to corral Paul's many Peter-is-just-an-idiot stories into this blog, we'd be here all week. Suffice it to say, Paul must have really been pissed about Peter's book, particularly Peter's assertion that "on Paul's best day, he could never out-sing me." (My favorite of all of these anecdotes was during the reunion tour, when Ace missed rehearsal because (he claimed) he had Lyme Disease from a deer tick. That's bullshit, said Peter, "genius that he is," Ace has never been bitten by a deer.)

As for Ace

you get the usual mix of bemusement and exasperation at his antics:

He would go through all kinds of contortions (to get more prescription drugs.) He even managed to get a superficial gunshot wound in Dallas. (...) While I traveled with one rolling suitcase, Ace was now traveling with 17 bags, including one that weighed more than 100 pounds. In it was a projector and cables so he could run an image of his face and Elvis's face morphing into each other on a loop in his hotel room.

Elsewhere:

A Russian oligarch offered us $1m to play for about 300 people at his 30th birthday. Ace wouldn't do it. He thought the whole thing was a dastardly plot to get him out of the country so Gene, Doc, and I could have him assassinated. That way, we could replace him with no problem. (But actually) replacing him was easier than all that.

Kiss was bigger than any of the individuals. And I do not mean "except for me." I have a high regard for what I do, but I don't fool myself by thinking I'm the only one who can do it.

I found this very interesting. One, you'd never hear Gene say anything like that. Two, of all the guys who have ever been in the band, Paul is easily the least replaceable. I'm not sure anyone can really do what Paul Stanley does, if I'm being honest.

Maybe Lady Gaga. Maybe.

Incidentally, the look on Paul's face here is hilarious.

I do appreciate his point - and I'm very curious what will happen to the Kiss brand once Gene and Paul retire or die - but it's just kind of funny that the guy most responsible for the band's longevity, its principal musician and songwriter, and harshest critic, is capable of making this observation.

He addresses the controversy of using the Catman and Spaceman make-up for Eric and Tommy.

The idea that we would stop using any of the four iconic images was as ridiculous as the idea that we would stop playing any of the songs. Interestingly, years before, when we decided to try and buy the rights to the Catman and Spaceman images, Peter and Ace dealt their characters away as if they had no value. To them, they were mere bargaining chips. That they so readily relinquished them showed me how little they cared for them. I was glad those guys couldn't start turning up at Halloween conventions signing autographs in tattered Kiss costumes and makeup. I valued the images and wanted to protect them.

 

I've been pretty critical of this in the past, but what he says there is certainly understandable. And to be completely fair to Paul, he applies the same reasoning to Gene when the need arises:

(Gene's) use of the Kiss logo and make-up and his self-promotion in the press escalated in the 90s and beyond. (...) He was no marketing genius. He just took credit for things. (...) After the Farewell tour, I saw sketches of a concept for a cartoon series Gene had sold. The cartoon was basically Gene in Kiss makeup. It was about a guy in a band. Hey man, that's a Kiss entity, I said. (Gene denied it.) That got settled real quickly. Fairness prevailed, but not by Gene's volition. Beyond the anger I felt each time he showed such blatant disregard for our partnership, my feelings were also hurt that the guy with whom I'd built all of this would treat me - when it served his purposes - with the same indifference I often saw him exhibit with people I knew he didn't care about.

Beyond his feelings on the other members of the group, there's a whole lot about Paul's romantic misadventures. Not, admirably, in a self-aggrandizing way (though of course there's some of that; this is a Kiss-related project, after all. Live! To! Win!) But he (and ghost-writer Tim Mohr of course) combine it all pretty well with the book's themes of self-discovery and overcoming the childhood insecurities resulting from lack of parental affection (that old chestnut) and his deafness/ ear deformity (since surgically corrected) that prevented him from meaningful interpersonal relationships.

So much of my life was about chasing approval, acknowledgement, and love. I was stunned (when I actually caught it.)

This translated to a progression common to many diehard narcissists: first maintaining only sexual relationships ("Room Service"), then only love triangles, ("Wouldn't You Like To Know Me?" "It's All Right," "Tonight You Belong To Me") and eventually to the sort of public-eye pairings expected of rock stars then and now, i.e.  actresses and Playboy and Penthouse models. ("Psycho Circus." Okay, just kidding. Probably "Bang Bang You.") Many of whom might not be recognizable names nowadays. Here's a partial list - whole lot of 80s hair coming your way:

There was Cher's sister, Georganne LaPiere.

Donna Dixon, who left Paul for Dan Ackroyd, and for whom Paul wrote (allegedly) "I Still Love You."

Lisa Hartman

Samantha Fox

then Pam Bowen, whom he married. (Without, as he laments later, a pre-nuptial agreement.)

Pictured here with son Evan.

Pam was mostly a guest star during her heyday.

Those of us with Cheers OCD may remember her from Season 6's "The Sam in the Gray Flannel Suit."

And no, sadly, I did not need imdb to help me with this one.

Paul's fairly candid about his own failures with all of the above, and it all ends on a happy enough note when he meets current wife-Erin, an attorney.

They've since added 2 more children to the above picture.

This sort of thing is a staple of any celebrity memoir. But I give Paul credit for not slagging off any of them, despite the manner in which many of the above have conducted themselves when asked about their relationships with Paul.

He touches on a few other things worth mentioning:

ON ANTI-SEMITISM

Our entrepreneurial ability wasn't a positive trait, but rather deceit or manipulation - because this wasn't rock and all, this was what Jews did.

I'm usually the first one to roll my eyes at criticism that is deflected into "Oh you're just saying that because I'm black / a woman / Jewish," etc.; all too often it's a misdirection away from any relevant consideration or the substance of the criticism. But this is certainly something I've noticed many times when Kiss is brought up. (Even from their fans.)

ON MEETING GUNS N ROSES

When Axl played me "Nightrain," I thought it was really good, but I told him that maybe the chorus could be used as a pre-chorus instead, and there could be another chorus afterwards. That was the last time he ever spoke to me. Ever.

I offered to help Slash get in touch with people who could hook him up with some free guitars - we were sponsored by all sorts of instrument companies, and I figured a young guy like him could use some help getting equipment to record with. 

Immediately after my interaction with the band, I started to hear lots of stories Slash was saying behind my back - he called me gay, made fun of my clothes, all sorts of things designed to give himself some sort of rock credibility. This was years before his top hat, sunglasses, and dangling cigarette became a cartoon costume that he would continue to milk with the best of us for decades.

The surprise came a few months later when Slash called me and wanted to follow up on my offer to help him get some free guitars. "You want me to help you get guitars after you went around saying all that shit behind my back?" Slash got real quiet. "You know," I said, "one thing you're going to learn is not to air your dirty laundry in public. Nice knowing you. Go fuck yourself."

AND SINCE HE BROUGHT IT UP...

Each member of the band included a note written from their personas (the Starchild, Demon, etc.) in the packaging for Alive. The Starchild's reads: "Dear Lovers, Nothing arouses me more than seeing you get off on me."

It could have been taken for heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual love. I wasn't threatened by any implications of the superficial aspects of sexuality or style.

Admirable a sentiment as that is, I feel the utter ridiculousness of the message is being obscured. But that's kinda what I love about Paul. He's so committed to his narcissism that the homophobic hang-ups common to many American heterosexual men never even occur to him.

Well. Usually:

Paul's much-maligned appearance in The Decline of Western Civilization, pt. 2: The Metal Years. He claims he was sending up his image, "it was all obviously just a joke."

Still sending it up, I guess! (With the LA-Kiss cheerleaders.)

ON THE 80S

The sections of the book dealing with the 80s are perhaps the most interesting. During this period, the band was more or less Paul's baby. Gene was pursuing Hollywood ambitions and half-assing his Kiss work, and Paul was in the driver's seat. Unfortunately, (rightly or wrongly) the car he/ Kiss was driving was following the other bands of the period rather than pursuing its own course. Nowhere was this more evident than in the lyrics and costumes of this period of the band's career.

 

He disses both the songs (which I think is unfair; "Rock Hard" is a great little Kiss tune. Catchy, melodic, and fun-silly as hell) and the videos (definitely fair, though they're not the worst examples of 80s videos) recorded for Smashes, Thrashes and Hits.

In the course of those 2 videos, I wrote the textbook on what not to do in a music video. I mean, I don't walk around on the street in tights with bicycle reflectors sewn on them or Body Glove tank-tops cut off just below my nipples. This was a whole new level of bad taste and judgment.

"Love's like a glove and it fits just right." There's a lot of literal-interpretation going on in these things. Everytime Paul sings the word "down," for example, Gene points to the floor and nods sagely.

He's a bit of a dick about the models hired for the videos. ("They look like underfed pelicans - no tits and no ass.") But if anyone's expecting more body-image-enlightened commentary from the author of "Let's Put the X in Sex" and "(You Make Me) Rock Hard," they may be debating in a vacuum, as Captain Kirk once said.

RAISE YOUR GLASSES

All in all, Paul Stanley's life and career is compelling reading. I wager that we all like a "I was blind and now I see" sort of story, and this certainly follows that trajectory. I leave you first with these typical-from-Paul-but-no-less-worthwhile sentiments from the end of the book.

What Kiss does is timeless. We sing about self-empowerment, celebrating life, believing in yourself - and sex. It ain't a crime to be good to yourself. 

Is there anything more truthful than that?

(Sounds better coming out of Paul than it does out of Gene, doesn't it?)

and lastly with these 45 glorious mind-warping minutes of time-stretched Paul Stanley stage banter. I agree wholeheartedly with the first commenter: "This piece is not just beautiful, but NECESSARY and INEVITABLE."

Kiss and Make-Up by Gene Simmons

In my life story I am the main character. My story is about power and the pursuit of it. Ultimately, all conflict seems to center on it: who has it, and who wants it.

If I had to choose a single passage to best summarize Kiss and Make-Up by Gene Simmons, that might be the one. It provides the best lens through which to view the events relayed  and even the ones completely omitted from the narrative but alluded to in other Kiss books. Another one might be:

In a lot of ways, I was delusional and still am. I am one of those few guys who can look in a mirror and believe I am better looking than I actually am. This has always been the case.

It's especially for this reason that I think Gene Simmons Family Jewels was a good move for the Demon. He's difficult to humanize - especially when he's trying to do the job himself - but the affection his family obviously has for him and he for them softens his oft-times insufferable public persona.

The fabricated reality of Reality TV is pretty much a perfect fit for Gene. And at no time - at least in the episodes I've seen - do Gene and the gang come across like the Kardashians or any of the Real Housewives or whomever.

It's fairly easy to dump on Gene. He's such a goof in a lot of ways, and he says such crazy things about people and things. And not in an "I'm a crazy rock star saying crazy things" sort of way but in a double standards and I'm-going-to-bang-your-girlfriend sort of way. Not to mention he's deliberately misleading. He constantly represents both himself and the band as the biggest musical success story after the Beatles, for example. This is a dubious claim to make any way you crunch the numbers, but it's one he never tires of making.

I guess from his point of view he's just being a good businessman and up-selling his product, but such things are certainly at odds with his assertion in the preface to Kiss and Make-Up that "everything you're about to read is the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

Then again, caveat emptor.

THE EARLY YEARS 

Gene was born Chaim Witz in Israel and moved to the United States with his mother (a concentration camp survivor) when he was 8 years old. He patterned his speech after what he heard on TV, particularly Walter Cronkite. He certainly did a good job of it; listening to him, one would never know English wasn't his first language. I've never been a particular fan of Gene's vocals (or when he goes into that game-show voice in concert or interviews) but it's certainly an impressive feat to achieve stardom singing in one's third language.

It's kind of funny, too, to consider that native-born Peter was the one whose lines had to be overdubbed in Attack of the Phantoms on account of his Brooklyn accent being too thick.

Upon arrival in the States, "one of the first things I remember seeing was a Christmas billboard for Kent cigarettes, with a picture of Santa Claus smoking. He had this big cherubic face, and in the background the reindeer were up in the sky, waiting for Santa to join them. Since I had never really heard of Christ or Christmas or Santa Claus, I immediately thought, Oh, that's a rabbi smoking a cigarette. I figured that he must have been a Russian rabbi."

As a teenager, he discovered rock and roll but only as a means to end. His philosophy - which would be articulated many times in the years to come - began to take shape.

This is the big secret of being in a rock and roll band. There are no messages, there's no inner being striving to express itself through music. We all picked up guitars because we all wanted to get laid. Plain and simple. (...) Having a band was simply a tool for getting access to other things. (...) It was never about friends. It was never about hanging out. It never was, and to this day it still isn't. (...) The master plan was to create a cultural institution that was as iconic as Disney. (...) Disney is not just the theme park or the cartoons - it is anything you can imagine, from pillows to pajamas to videos. Mickey Mouse started out as a cartoon, then became part of America. Whether Mickey Mouse is respected or not is such a small issue. When you're too big to argue with, you make your own rules.

Is Elvis credible or not? Who cares? The question is moot. You may think Santa Claus doesn't have any credibility. But at a certain time of year, he rules. That's what I wanted for Kiss: to make such a big impact that authenticity or credibility would be beside the point.

Gene was (and remains) the driving force behind Kiss's merchandising. Few topics are more nebulous or lines more fine than the whole concept of "selling out." Gene's approach at least has the virtue of being unambiguous:

We have no illusions about our corporate identity - we're like any other corporation. Some rock bands are delusional. They say they're a people's band, but even they don't perform for free. Whether you have long hair or razor blades in your eyeballs, you're a corporation. (...) Americans by and large feel a little awkward talking about money or showing it off when they have it. That's why the richest men in the country walk around in jeans. When a band that has sold millions of records walks onstage in jeans, it's every bit as much of a costume as Kiss's costumes. 

At the same time, maybe not everyone gives a crap about such things? I'd say this is where Gene gets himself into trouble. He makes absolutist statements that no one could ever really back up. In this, he's no different than most people in the media, but that's hardly a standard of comparison of which to be proud. So many people disagree with him or embody a counter-ethos that you'd figure he'd at least acknowledge he doesn't speak for everyone, yet he consistently implies (if not outright insists) that anyone who does is just being dishonest.

Regardless, he at least approaches a live and let live attitude about it all, even if he does so somewhat dismissively.

Let other people go into trances and think about spirituality or Werner Erhardt. I'd rather concentrate on having something to eat. The here and now. Be glad you can get a good night's sleep and eat a good meal and, if you're lucky enough, have somebody attractive sharing your bed with you. That's about all there is to life.

He devotes a good amount of space to the early years of the band, how they came together in the local New York scene of the time, his bonding with Paul and forging the connections in the industry that would lead them to recording the first album. When it came time to choose an image for himself - the band having decided upon the course of theatricality that would define their stage presence - he mined his own preoccupations to create The Demon. One part Universal Horror movie and one part comic books

Specifically, Jack Kirby's design for Black Bolt.

And one part a codpiece that would make A Clockwork Orange's Alex blush. But that was always (part of) the point: to be over the top, to obliterate artistic pretensions with a very sincere sensationalism.

The main point (to Gene) was always to score chicks, of course:

The lifestyle really appealed to me, spending the night with a girl who wanted me just because I was in a band, whose name I barely remembered. I wanted to do (it) all the time. I understood exactly what I wanted out of the touring experience. I wasn't drinking. I wasn't using drugs. (...) There was only one more thing to do, and that was to go out and chase skirt. I got a reputation for being indiscriminate, and I suppose it was earned - I didn't have very specific tastes in women. If they were female and in my presence, I was interested.

Which brings us to...

GENE'S BINDER FULL OF WOMEN

Gene liked to take photographs of his many liaisons with the ladies of the road. Those who have seen this legendary tome have all attested to its tastelessness. He got permission from each of the girls and hasn't published it on the internet or anything like that, so I don't quite see the big deal. It isn't a crime to be tasteless. (Surely, the world proves that on an hourly basis.) But Gene's attitude about it - and his bewilderment at his subsequent girlfriends (and eventual wife's) reactions to it - is worth noting:

As far as I was concerned, it wasn't any stranger than any other road behaviors - drinking, drugs, and that kind of thing. In fact, it was quite a bit less strange, and it didn't hurt anyone.

Gene is an unabashed chauvinist and will argue - as he did with Terry Gross during his notorious Fresh Air interview - that this is just the male condition. As with his unabashed capitalism, sometimes his candor on this topic is somewhat refreshing. But it, too, gets caught up in his curious web of double standards. (Then again, as he states in the forward: every personality has contradictions, and a large personality has large contradictions.)

The AV Club takes him to task on this in their review of the book:

In Gene Simmons’ myopic mind, where his own needs and urges take precedence over everything else, collecting an extensive collection of photographic evidence of your sexual conquests (...) then sharing news of that collection with your girlfriend is a far healthier, more normal, and understandable quirk (...) than drinking some Riesling after a show or smoking a bowl before bed. After all, he isn’t a degenerate like those animals Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, merely a reasonable chap who likes to pass around a massive photo album of strangers from various towns and countries whose orifices he has penetrated. 

"Women exist to be fucked. Men exist to give him money. It’s as simple as that to him, and he seems genuinely bewildered that others think there’s more to life than that."

And speaking of Ace and Peter (from the same review:)

Simmons pats himself on the back for having the courage to deliver the unvarnished truth about Kiss in spite of what fans might think, but that mostly means he’s comfortable repeatedly trashing Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. To critics who ask how he could have treated core members of his group so coldly, he responds, “Would you want to be in a group with Criss and Frehley?” Simmons portrays himself here as a man who patiently endured Criss and Frehley’s drugged-up craziness until he was forced to replace his band’s problem children with company men eager to go along with their bosses’ wishes.

This is the revisionist version of the band's history that he's engaged in over the years. Gene never seems to recognize that a musician like Ace is never going to take someone like Gene - whom Ace nonetheless acknowledges as a decent songwriter and showman - seriously. Gene almost takes pride in the fact that he couldn't care less about jamming with other musicians and can't distinguish between different models of guitars. (This strikes me as completely at odds with his "the fans are our bosses" attitude; aren't you telling the fans you don't give a shit about your craft, just their money? If a pilot got into a cockpit and said I don't bother with all the controls and the console or the safety of the passengers; I just like the stewardesses, what would people say?)

Gene brags about his prolific songwriting, but the difference between quality and quantity seems entirely lost on him. Don't get me wrong. Gene's not a bad songwriter. But simplistic? Absolutely. I don't know if he's qualified to tell Ace what is or isn't a great Kiss tune. (Apparently, "Great Expectations," "Charisma" and "Sweet Pain" and so many others are "Kiss-level" but any of the tracks on Ace's '78 solo album aren't? Please.) I'll even go so far as to say this: of the original line-up, Gene would have been the easiest to replace. Picture the scene in The Prestige where they find the drunk actor to impersonate "the great Danton" in the magic show. With the exception of his tongue - which I don't think would have been a great loss, despite Gene's assertions that it was / is the singlemost important visual element of the band - you can't tell me they couldn't have found dozens of musicians in New York alone that could have done the job equal to or better than Gene.

So, to answer his question, "Would you want to be in a group with Criss and Frehley?" Perhaps not. But perhaps the alternative - having someone with questionable qualifications to evaluate musicianship and an equally delusional relationship with reality micromanage, manipulate and criticize everything you do under guise of being "the reasonable one" - is just as intolerable and ridiculous.

The band was designed as a democracy. This was the blueprint - it was the Beatles model. But like the Beatles, it was clear that Paul and I were in the front seat, because we were writers, and Ace and Peter were in the backseat. (...) Whenever there were decisions, we made them democratically, which didn't always make sense. If Paul and I wanted to do something and Peter and Ace didn't, we were in a stalemate. To get our way, we had to emotionally batter them, and often they felt like we were ganging up on them.

It's passages like this that best corroborate Ace's and Peter's version of events. Gene basically admits here that he and Paul actively exploited Ace's and Peter's insecurities, vulnerabilities, and fears in order to achieve their own desires. Perhaps Gene's ideas of his own power and the pursuit of it shouldn't come at his allegedly democratic bandmates' expense. He bitches about "band members who didn't see us as a unit, who sought to undo everything we accomplished," yet is this not exactly what he reveals about his own behavior in this passage?

That said, I certainly walked away from Kiss and Make-Up with sympathy for Gene's position. Drunks and druggies - particularly at the level of Ace and Peter - aren't easy to put up with for very long. And Paul and Gene had to put up with them in close quarters for agonizing lengths of time. And were forced into enabling it all, in many ways. Given the financial hits the Kiss organization withstood as a result of their antics (particularly the situation Gene and Paul found themselves in with Ace's departure, as recounted in Kiss and Sell) it's completely reasonable for Gene to have, as the kids say, simply run out of fucks to give.

LADIES IN WAITING

In between assuring the reader of his many road conquests and STD adventures, he spends a good amount of time describing his relationships with Cher, Diana Ross, and the woman who would eventually become his wife, Shannon Tweed.

It comes as something of a surprise to discover how into Gene these women actually were. (Are, I guess, in Shannon's case.) I don't think any of them would be on anyone's short list of "Most Reasonable Women of Hollywood," but each had dated rock or Hollywood royalty (or Hugh Hefner, making Ace the only member of the original line-up not to marry one of Hef's exes) and you'd just figure they'd have no time for someone as nakedly gutter-chasing as Gene.  This was a guy whose criteria for spending time with him was simple proximity.

But who can fathom such things? Gene was rich, reasonably good-looking, and led an adventurous life. He remains friends with Diana and Cher to this day, so obviously, in private, Gene must be something more than the sleazy and proudly unimaginative pig he excels at being in the public eye.

This section of the book is fun for some of his fish-out-of-water revelations:

It took me awhile to get accustomed to Los Angeles. (...) It seemed absurd in every way. I had never watched soap operas, partly because I never understood what everyone was so miserable about. In those shows everybody was good-looking. Everybody was rich. Everybody was healthy and young. And everybody was miserable. The promiscuous characters were berated and tortured for not curtailing their natural lusts. The others were talking about their innermost emotions and needs and priorities. And eventually, everyone became promiscuous. 

Once, I remember, I was in a room with a bunch of other people, friends of Cher's, and we were watching television commercials with footage of poor African children. People got sadder and sadder, and finally someone said, That's it, I'm adopting an African child. Then another one chimed in. Yeah, me too. It was almost like the Home Shopping Network of kids. I didn't know what to make of it. (...) There were lots of things like that in California.

Or celebrity interactions: 

I met Jane Fonda through Cher. Our interaction was brief. (...) She asked my opinion about a movie she had been working on and what I thought about the title The China Syndrome. She told me what it was about. I told her I didn't think much of the title. I said I preferred something like What If... The three dots following the If... would light up one at a time and start to cycle faster with a beep being heard for each visual flash. The movie came out. It was called The China Syndrome. 

Gene doesn't mention it in Kiss and Make-Up, but Lendt recounts in his book how Gene introduced one of the stagehands, a white guy whose girlfriend was black, to Diana Ross by telling her This is so-and-so and he also dates black girls. He seemed genuinely befuddled at Diana's (and the stagehand's) embarrassment.

One assumes the binder - which more than likely does not contain any pictures of Cher or Ms. Ross - is collecting dust in the closet these days. Or at least let's hope so.

The book came out before Gene and Shannon tied the knot and contains plenty of Gene's anti-marital philosophy. Which is kind of funny to read considering how it all turned out. Guess she wasn't as firmly committed to "unmarried bliss" as he makes her out to be in the book.

One final revealing passage from the "Hollywood Gene" days (on the set of Runaway:)

Kirstie Alley played my girlfriend. I got to stick a knife through her neck in the movie. That made me a really likeable fellow. I tried coming onto the actress Cynthia Rhodes. That didn't work out, so I tried her sister. That didn't work out either, so I went for one of the extras on set, a real knockout of a Canadian girl. That worked. If at first you don't succeed...

THE DEMON AND THE STARCHILD

(Neil Bogart) worried that we were projecting a gay vibe, particularly Paul. We talked to him for awhile and explained our vision of the band, which was to go beyond glam to something else. As far as the gay thing went, our feeling was that we dressed the way we felt inside, and the gay vibe really wasn't part of that.

 

Paul's sense of things is what you'd more traditionally think of as the female perspective. Call me simplistic, but I think women are less interested in the endgame, in winding up in bed with somebody, than in just being recognized for being attractive. Paul is more like that. Paul is less interested in whether the girl winds up in bed with him than in whether she finds him good-looking. I'm not interested in whether she finds me attractive; I'm only interested in whether she winds up in bed with me. 

JOURNEY OF 1000 YEARS

There's a bit in Ace's book where he describes Gene calling him up to ask if he'd take part in his roast. That Ace would consider doing it at all is remarkable considering the things Gene's said about him over the years, but that's the way Ace is. He decided not to, though, once he realized that Gene didn't really have anyone to call. He'd focused so intensely on his position in Kiss and in scoring with the groupies that he didn't leave much room for developing or maintaining friendships. When the time came to be roasted, he had to basically hire people to come in and "good-naturedly" rib him. 

In a way, that's kind of sad. But in context of everything in this book, it makes sense. Gene's world was first he and his mother and no one else, (so much so that he forbade her - in so many words - to have a boyfriend or relationship of any kind until he moved out of the house) then just Gene (this includes all his years in Kiss,) and then just Shannon, and eventually Nick and Sophie. So, really, it's not only a natural outgrowth of his entire life and perspective, it's also a story with a plausibly happy ending for him.

And the fact that he has to manufacture the appearance of friends to make fun of him is soooo Kiss that I don't think anyone could have scripted it that way and maintained plausibility. As Stephen King (someone Gene actually contacted to write the Kiss biography; King was unavailable, though) has often said, reality is the fakest thing going.