More from Gene Simmons….
Readers! Enjoy our special presentation of the entire Gene Simmons Q&A before his Hoosier Park Racing and Casino show this weekend. Read our profile of Gene Simmons here. He’s always entertaining.
Jonathan Sanders: Has it been difficult to transition from the full KISS lineup to doing these solo shows, since it’s been your first time doing them?
Gene Simmons: You know, life is strange. Despite what people might think, I haven’t really planned a lot of these things that have happened to me. It’s just that when opportunity knocks I take advantage of it. Having said that … the overview is I like to stay busy. I don’t like days off, I’ve never taken a vacation, you know, I don’t want to wimp out. Life is short enough as it is, and so for 43 years I’ve obviously been in the band. We’ve reached the pinnacle, we’re America’s #1 Gold Record award winning group of all-time in all categories, by the way, which is really weird because we never really played the singles game. [Goes on to name dozens of KISS products.] But when we’re not going around the world, which sometimes seems like a KISS world – and by the way, we also own that trademark – I like to stay busy, so I have a film company and real estate holdings, and I’m launching another magazine and I have another book coming out, and just a lot of stuff.
Jonathan: Speaking of your book, I read your book Kiss and Make Up before I talked to you because I wanted the full overview of your KISS experience. But you had talked in an interview about, with this tour, getting the chance to play some songs that people might not expect to hear.
Gene: You got it, see, you cut to the chase. I was just being all flowery and all about me. But you’re exactly right. For the first time in 43 years of touring, some folks asked me if I’d like to jump up on stage and put together some crackerjack rockers and go through some nuggets that KISS will never play, or has never played. And I thought ‘gee, that sounds like a lot of fun!’ Because there are always songs that I think are kind of neat and we will never get a chance to play, because our blessing is also our curse. You know, we have at least 40 releases out there, and something like 25 studio albums, so it’s just a lot of stuff. And you can’t really play all the stuff, clearly, because you’re there for two hours and if you just sat down and listened to all the songs you’d be there for two days straight without pausing for a drink of water.
So this is an opportunity, with the Gene Simmons Band, we’ve got great players and it’s really like a guitar symphony. I’ve got three guitar players, bass (myself) and drums. So when I’m telling you it’s like a guitar army, and it sounds great, you can go online by the way and verify. Google “Gene Simmons Band” and you can put in, I don’t know, “Deuce” and you’ll see the band live.