Pushkin.

Gene Simmons is known for his theatrics, and man, did I get a concentrated dose of that in this episode.

Jean's the co founder, basis and frontman of Kiss Salama Paul Stanley and built an outrageous, maybe obnoxious persona dubbed the Demon.

Now seventy six years old and retired from touring, he's finding new ways to keep Kiss fans known as the Kiss Army, engaged, including a three day event this November called the Kiss Cruise Landlocked in Vegas.

I'd arranged for an hour interview with Jeane, like I did with Paul Stanley a few months ago, to talk about the event and Kiss lore.

I was excited to pick his brain since he has an almost encyclopedic memory for a certain era of music.

But things got off to a rough start, stayed rocky.

And an end.

This may be the strangest interview I've ever done.

We only talked for about thirty minutes, but it's still worth running to me because it is a pretty good inside I think into the man they called the Demon, Gene Simmons.

This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations.

Here's my conversation with Gene Simmons.

Can you hear me?

Oh?

I hear you loud and clear?

Sound great?

Okay, docent tones of Gene Simmons amazing.

Wow, i'minating for my own passage.

Are you in la?

Oh?

I'm straight.

I'm so sorry.

We just met.

We already want to know, so where ready to live?

We're off to the best start I could imagine.

This is This is perfect man, great to meet you.

Thank you, and thanks for trusting for the event.

You look great, Thank you, Thank you.

You look much better.

But would suspect you would always you know, I saw.

You by the way, speaking of potato chips.

Unfortunately, my apologies.

We're going to have to cut it shorter than i'd like to go because I got the stink of from one of the guys just says I've got a lawyer conference thing, So I'll shut up so you can do the talk.

Okay, sounds good.

You know, I saw you recently talking about Ozzie's death and being quite verclempt about about it, as many people are.

But I was I was thinking you.

You guys obviously must have first met on opening for Sabbath, right, Yeah.

We were both trying to make our mark, you know, And we came a little bit later than Sabbath, a year or two after, so they were starting to make some headway, but we were still in the two three thousand seater level you know of in the end, you know, a long time ago, before digital, before anything, you had amplifiers.

You had a chord that connected to your guitar and you plugged it into the amplifier.

There's no ear, no auto correct nor nothing.

You're not just meeting potatoes.

And since neither Sabbath nor Kiss wrote singles, you had to get in the back of the station wagon, go from one city to the other and take your case to the people.

So in a lot of ways, it was a much more honest time.

You know.

The bands that became big bands became big bands because the fans liked what they heard and what they saw.

When you say neither Sabbath nor Kiss wrote singles, what do you mean by that?

Well, if we took a look at the lyric, our first quote single was called Nothing to Lose.

I happened to write it before I had a baby.

I tried every way.

She didn't want to do it, but she did anyway.

I thought about the back door and it was about you know, the six from the backside, but radio didn't pick up on it.

But that's what it was about.

And you know, Sabbath came on sort of more darker, perhaps, but even we dabbled me as a demon and gout of thunder and all that.

Later on, I did some darker stuff, unholy stuff like that, but until I was made for loving you, I mean rock and roll All Night was a single but not really a hit, so we tended to write about chasing skirt and enjoying life.

We didn't write a song about how cold?

How could I you know, how could I live without you?

You know, all those songs that are directed at chicks.

In fact, even Best, which was a big hit, Best, I hear you calling, but I can't come home right now because me and the boys are playing all night.

In other words, what's more important me or the band?

Actually bitch the band?

You know.

It brings up a point I was curious about, which is, you know, I feel like your songwriting is so is unique in the sense if you mentioned nothing to lose, But if you think about I mean, some of your later songs seem not better, but they seem almost that you knew who you were and what you wanted to say.

Your writing became almost more direct and clear.

From my perspective.

Could be wrong, I'm happy to be wrong.

Then some of the mid career kiss songs or even some of the songs from like say Monster, sound like fully flatted, like this is, you know, Gene Simmons, the demon of Kiss.

Well, I don't know if you feel that way.

I will say that all of us, going back to I mean, the Brits really started writing their own songs, even though Sam Cook wrote his songs and Chuck Berry, but predominantly you have the brill building filled with my people, Labor Stoler and all that, who wrote all the hit songs.

You ain't nothing about.

How about now, these are not.

African Americans who wrote They were Jews who wrote all this you know on broad with all the sort of blues tinged new Et, nonbud Hound, Libre Stoller to New York.

Jews wrote that because they loved black music, So artists of the previous time, previous generations, lined up.

They came to the studio and they were given the music that somebody else wrote.

They had hits written for them, specifically by other writers and the Monkeys is probably the pre eminent example.

You show up in the studio and you have great writers, Boys, Boys and Heart, Neil Diamond.

You know, all the best writers would write hit songs for them.

But when the Beatles came along, it changed everything.

These guys started writing and performing their own songs, playing all the instruments.

As opposed to the Temptations, one of my favorite bands, didn't play instruments.

They just sang and you know, did stage movements.

They had full bands, and the Beatles were fully contained.

They play their own instruments, wrote their own songs, and in a lot of ways, crafted and designed their own you know.

It's like a sculptor who's got a big block of rock.

He's got, you know, a hammer and a chisel, and you know, kind of bangs his way through it and finds the form that he sees in his mind.

But I want to say that all of us, Henrik Optega whoever, and of course they are much higher life form, are self taught.

Nobody studied music theory.

Nobody to this day who's popular can read or write music.

Nobody's trained in music theory.

Nothing.

We're just you know, deaf and dumb, just bumbling through a forest of musical notes and trying to find that thing that you know appeals to us, versus real songwriters who knew exactly how to craft a hit song.

Max Martin, you know, the more modern who wrote Britney Spears, Christine Naguilar, all that stuff.

He sits there, Okay, what kind of and they craft, you know, this kind of song.

The rest of us are just bumbling our way through it.

It's actually quite an interesting enigma of how we get from I didn't know how to play a chord, teaching myself that first chord, and then I'm talking about all of us figuring out how to write songs because nobody sat down and said, okay, here's how you write a song.

We'll be back with more from Jean Simmons after the break.

For you.

You know, you go from playing that first chord to writing that first crap songs nothing to lose and co writing some stuff obviously with Paul strutters your song.

But then you know, you bring it to Paul, he adds some stuff one hundred thousand years.

But then and then you move along and it's like, you know, you mentioned holy unholy Domino love it loud, young and wasted.

Uh, you know Russian Roulette even or The Devil Is Me like these are songs like we're now getting much later even.

You absolutely not only did you figure out songwriting, but it seems as if over the arc of your career you didn't lose it where some people maybe did.

You maintained it, perhaps even got better, would be my estimation.

What then, have you learned about songwriting?

And obviously all into it, you intuited it along the way, but you must've.

Learned songwriting is a trip where you never get there, definitely do.

I mean I know Elton well, and all of a sudden you know great songwriters and they're always uh.

I mean Elton must have written hundreds of songs, three hundred maybe maybe more.

You're never there.

You're always looking for that thing.

And maybe that's the magic of that thing.

I don't care.

If you went through the Renaissance Mozart, Beethoven, Might you know Rockman and off Hide and Chopin, all those guys they kept writing searching for that elusive butterfly.

Bob lind you might wake up some morning before your time.

Elusive Butterfly a smash hit which barely had any rhyme in the In the verses, you might wake up some morning to the sound all of a sudden so blowing in the wind.

There's no rhyme.

The words just flowed nicely.

So watching.

Hey.

Look, I come from a time when you had more serious songs.

You had ballads, you had blues, you had country rockabilly.

Country artists were having hits right down the middle, and you had novelty songs.

And the first rap so I ever heard was well, even before Wild Thing, which don't kids yourself is spoken word goes like this wild Thing, you make my hearts.

There's no melody, it's just the chords and background.

In a lot of ways it's rap.

But before then we had a song by number one Napoleon the fourteenth.

Yeah, yeah, it goes like.

This, They're coming to take me a work, They're coming to take me away out to the funny farm, and the guy talks for you know.

It's about a guy who's crazy, I guess, and they're coming to take him away.

That's it totally.

On the cover, there's a guy with a Napoleonic hat with his hand and his thing, and that was it.

And then there was Dicky Goodman, who would string together pieces of hit songs.

This isn't before sampling, because it was sampling.

They'd take eight miles high by the birds and you know, wild thing and so little snippets and he'd craft the story, Well, there's a flying saucer landing over there.

I wonder where it came from.

Eight miles Uh, well, it can't be, you know, my goodness, it looks like a big fish coming out of the water.

Bump, bump ump.

In fact, one of his hits was Mister Jaws, about a guy going fishing who catches a big thing and they string together hits, some big hits.

So what chan.

Well, the larger point is that you have, though you did not go to school to study music, you clearly have an incredible ear for music, have an incredible given.

Incredible incredible is overused.

There's a wonderful movie called Amadaeus about Salieri, who was the King's composer, did operas and stuff, and well well known historically as a you know, fine melody craftsman during the Renaissance.

And he was a childhood friend somewhat of Mozart who was a little bit younger, and he was tortured his entire life by how Mozart would sit down and he would write full pieces, full symphonies and operas and everything like as if he's just putting it down because it had already been written.

The rest of us, poor mortals.

You know, you take a piece from here, now, I got to fix this.

Then you go back to it.

You know, it's like.

It's like even even da Vinci would paid something.

Now I don't like that.

Then he's got to go back and do that thing.

Nope, not most are to go from right to left.

And when he was done, that was that was you know, some something happens that is a prodigy.

That's the word incredible.

And Beethoven was actually deaf.

He wrote music in his mind, and he had wrote the entire symphonic arrangement, every single notation, the bassoons and the you know, what every instrument was doing is a countermlley and everything in his mind.

He never heard any of the compositions he wrote.

That's incredible.

Wow.

I would almost argue it's miraculous more than incredible.

Okay, these these are semantics, But I'm not anti semantics.

I'm pleased to hear that.

I mean, no, but it's your point.

I mean that is, that's clearly a gift.

There's no explanation for it.

It just is.

You know, it's like an idiot savant.

There was a wonderful movie called Rainman, and I was at the studio liaising with some guys and developing my own stuff as Rainman was being developed into a movie basically about I don't want to use the term, but an idiot who in life didn't know where.

He was going, bumbling.

He would cross the street and not pay attention to red light, green light and stuff.

But the first hint that there's something else going on happened when he was in a restaurant and he went over to reach for a toothpick, and the toothpick holder fell off the table and all these toothpicks were, you know, on the floor, Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, And when they were walking out of the restaurant, Cruise tells Hoffmann's character, don't worry about it.

You know those toothpacks, you know, it's fine.

I'm sure you put all that in.

They said, yes, two hundred and thirty seven.

And Crusad what.

Two hundred and thirty seven, Yeah, two hundred and thirty seven.

I picked up when it was two hundred and thirty six, and when I put mine and it became two hundred and thirty seven because it was two hundred and thirty siven, are you talking about?

So he went back in.

How many toothakes were in there?

He says, well, sir, let me count them.

Two hundred and thirty seven.

You and based on a real person, there was a idiot savant and they asked him, could.

You name that that day?

You know what day was?

You know, July third, eighteen forty eight, Friday?

Without thinking about it that people go and they check it.

Sure enough it is.

There's no explaining what that is.

So an idiot savant is a genius in one area and helpless in others.

I mean, the mystery of the brain.

I don't know how we got off to this tangent, but as you can barely see, clearly see, I love the sound of my own voice.

Well you were demure, Well, in fact, you're being a bit demure.

I would say, that's a big word, like dramasium.

I haven't met another human being in real life.

I use that word, not the straight guys.

Anyway, Well, we're on zoom.

So not yet.

You have still yet to meet someone in real life to use that who uses that word to you.

But what I was saying is you have an incredible recall.

And we could argue if it's incredible or just good or good.

I have a good recall.

It helps not to use drugs or alcohol or cigarettes.

And that way I can put my hand in front of my face and it doesn't do this.

I'm turning, turning seventy six in three weeks.

You look incredible.

I was saying that to myself, I said, self, looking good.

But I mean you're talking about a song, songs like you know, I mean the Bob linds On it's what sixty five sixty six?

So even is right?

Yeah, so even if he.

Even as a kid, though you proceed so long before you would have even gotten into could have gone well.

But I had an advantage because I wasn't born in America, so everything was so vivid.

You know, I came from Israel.

I'm sure you can tell.

I wasn't born in Sweden, and so I came here with my mother when I was eight.

As a matter of fact, I was eight before I was nine.

See what I did there eight before I was it's rain Man with the numbers, that's really.

What the dumpers.

And so one of the first music I heard was black music, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard.

I was fortunate enough to know Little Richard and spent time with him and introduced my young son at that point to Richard, I said, you know, we went to see Richard play live, and I took my son because I wanted him to understand, you know what some of this stuff was on backstage, young man.

You know, I I in rented rock and roll, you know all this stuff.

I'm only three am.

I don't know what's going on.

You know, it was hilarious.

Strangely, life is what happens to you while you're busy making your plans.

And sadly, I seemed to be the only one of note on some level who did the eulogy for Chuck Berry's funeral.

I was at the open casket, you know, where the whole family and friends and family were there in an auditorium and I was in the back.

And the Barry family found out I was in the back, and there were no beending on McCartney, Keith Richards.

They were not there.

I don't know why, because without Chuck Berry, they wouldn't be the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, you know, any of these guys that was the backbone.

And I was just there out of respect and they came up, Would you step up and say a few words about Chuck As a matter of fact, you can google and smoogle it and all that button pushing stuff that tortures me.

And I was.

I became so overcome by emotion because when I first came here as an eight and a half year old kid with my mother and hearing that music and not understanding the words, I just, you know, felt the feelings.

I didn't know what the words were, and I tried to maybe you know, I didn't know what I was saying, but the feeling of it made me move the way quote.

White music didn't, you know, torn between two lovers.

It doesn't make you want to Yeah, you know that feeling that's in the groin, under the belt buckle, that down there.

White music just didn't do that.

Da da da da da da da.

Oh yeah, I'm feeling it dead.

No, it doesn't.

That's head stuff.

Black music was all like down there kind of stuff, which is why you move your hips and your butt and do all that.

That's the magic of black music.

And again, nobody took music theory.

It's all self taught, and it came from the heart and from the soul, and that's why that music continues to resonate.

But American music really was founded on the backs of creative former slaves who could barely play guitar.

And somehow these melodies came out of I mean, blues, jazz and then rock and roll and rap, all that came from black music.

Yeah, most certainly, Well, Night's break and we'll be back with Gene Simmons.

Some of the funkiest kiss songs of your song almost Human from love Gun.

I mean, so that's a monster as a bass player, as a songwriter.

You know, obviously beatles, I know are paramount for you, the Beatles, But there was there was that other layer, there was another there was something else you.

Were I didn't I didn't have a uh.

I didn't come from a genre because I first picked up a guitar and tried to strummer a few chords.

Because it wasn't.

I literally have never taken a lesson.

I don't know why.

The smart thing would have been to sit down with somebody who could play how do you play a sea chord?

And so on and what does that mean?

But I never did, and that goes all the way down to that e Van Halen, like all the best players taught themselves, and well, I didn't start playing bass.

I started strumming those stupid songs My Uncle is a Raft and Stanley the Parrot, which became Strutter and all that.

There's just strumming CG D and coming up with my own melodies and then hearing hit songs House of the Rising Son and so and trying to figure out what those chords were and of course getting it wrong.

But then I'm going, well, wait a minute, I just these are my chords now, and I can do my own melodies.

Here's a song called Spice Islands.

I don't know where that came from.

And making up melodies, but I didn't have a genre because I grew up on Chuck Berry, Little Richard, you know, black music.

And then the Beatles hit, which was like a kick in the nuts.

It was like, what is that?

You know, she loves you?

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, and then you get that harmony that minor nine, yeah, you know that thing with I never heard that in popular music to this day.

It's not easy to do.

It's easy to sing the root and then the you know, do re me?

Do you know that kind of the triad thing, which sounds very nice, it sounds good, but that thing was like on another level when you started to hear those Beatles harmonies.

So, you know, I digress.

It is interesting that the most successful songwriters of all time, Paul McCartney single handedly, by the way, is the most successful songwriter of all time.

Just Yesterday on its own has been covered by over a thousand different recording artists on their own, which is unheard of.

But all the other songs too.

I used to manage Liza WESAMNELLI went to see Sinatra at the book and he comes out and introduces, I've got Sam Riddle on the man.

I've got to do a song for you.

It's one of the finest songs ever written.

It's called something, and then it goes into a Beatles songs like yeah, And it's worth noting again those guys didn't know how to play.

When they started to pick up.

They were doing what it was called skiffle, and then Buddy Holly and then the Everly brothers, and then you know they self taught.

And the fact that all these amazing writers came from a place called liver Pool.

You couldn't come up with a crazier name.

Now it's all poetic.

Oh Liverpool, No, No, it's liver Pisca River.

You know, it just makes When I first heard that, I thought that's disgusting.

A Liverpool, yeah.

The other day, but even hard Day's Night.

That opening chore that is so strange and it's amazing, but they never returned to it.

It's like.

Serious, it's like, let's do open with this and never come back to it.

Genius, genius.

They heard a sound in their head and they did it.

Just genius.

As a matter of.

Fact, if I felt follows opera in a way that rock and roll does not popular music.

If I fell in love with you, would you promise it'll be true?

And ilpe he understand because I've been in love before and I found that love was well than just holding hands.

Then the song takes up.

If I give they never come back to that intro.

That's what opera does.

Opera has this kind of mood setting, melodic intro, and then the material starts and you never come back to it, And the genius of these guys is still unequal.

Here.

I'm one of the beatles in your dream Simmons.

And you say, so you got a new song?

Yeah, got a new song?

How's it?

What's it called?

It's called help?

Okay, how's it going?

It goes like this help?

I need some bad But there's a pause.

It's the song title, which is the first thing you hear up.

Pause, I need somebody help, not just it, there's a pause.

It's not help, I need somebody.

No.

Do you have another that's really good?

You got another one?

Yeah?

Well, what's it called?

Yesterday?

How's it go?

It goes Yesterday?

Pause?

All my trouble seems so far?

It's you got another one?

Yeah, it's called Michelle.

How's it go?

Me?

Shechell?

You got any more?

Yeah?

Got one called she loves You?

How does it go?

She loves You?

Yeah?

It's crazy if you're right, If you're right, And they've written hundreds of songs like that, Paul, do you have a song?

Yeah, it's called Penny Lane and Penny Lane there what so if you write songs, or you try the hardest thing to do is to write a really good, simple song that hits the nail on the head right away.

We love the stares with satisfaction as much as we love it doesn't touch that because you got to get through and we love the rip.

You gotta wait about forty seconds until satisfaction comes in the title.

Is there a Stone song to you that approaches the Beatles?

Like?

If there were one, would it be satisfaction?

Or is there another that you think?

I love the Stones, but they don't approach that songwriting.

In point of fact, you may like the Stones more, but that's taste.

In fact, the first hit the Stone Side was written by Lennon McCartney.

I want to be Your love a baby, I want to be oh man.

They gave it to the Stone that they didn't write songs at that point.

They were doing you know, blues covers, John Lee Hooker, stuff like that.

Well you know the lessons of that stuff.

Is it unconsciously in your mind as you're writing?

Is it top of your mind as you write?

I think, I mean even a song this is a little the Beaten Path, but it it felt always felt a bit beatlesque to me in a sense, I confess from Carnival of souls.

You know, it's just a really it's kind of it's it's it's really experimental and abstract in its way, like are you thinking, like, let's try to do something out or is it just coming?

Oh?

It just comes.

So I wish I had the talent of the Bill Street building, all those guys that wrote hit songs, even Phil Spector and all these guys.

It's a very it was a very strange building because all those writers, will you Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Carol King, who was Carol Kleinb.

They were all of a certain persuasion.

They were all members of the tribe Neil sedaka Carol Kleinb, Neil Diamond.

You know, they all americanized their names.

Carol King, No, they were my tribe.

Uh.

Phil Spector genius, No, him too.

And they knew how to write hits.

And that just comes with talent.

The rest of us, you know, just bubbling our way through it.

And if you come up with something that people like, certainly doesn't have to be a hit.

Certainly one of the biggest fans of all time didn't write hit songs.

Led Stepplin.

The hits.

The astonishing thing about Page Who over the years I'm proud to see has become a friend.

Are those amazing riffs?

This guy who played on Donovan Records and every British artists who had hits had Jimmy Page playing guitar, but he himself has come up with more classic riffs than all the other English guitar players put together.

And it's instantly recognized.

You know that is you know.

It's not air supply.

I want to ask you once to go back to something we were talking about the top of our conversation.

Then I just want to quickly ask you about the Kiss Cruise and you can.

Well, this is a fan run event.

This ain't a Kiss concert or anything that's being held in November in Las Vegas.

We're just trying to stay in touch with the fans because since Pophouse bought Kiss, we are.

In fact, we had a conference call this morning.

There's a movie coming and the Kiss Avatars and a cartoon show and I'm awful lot of stuff, if anything, since Pophouse came into the picture, we're really ramping up to big, big stuff, the kind of stuff that hasn't been done respectfully by other bands.

Just because you know, while you're alive, try you know, reach for the stars and so the fans.

This is a different kind of stuff, not like a tour, so we're sort of we're not seeing the fans so you can talk touch.

So this is more of a chance for us to stay in touch with the fans.

Open to only a few thousand fans.

It's going to be at the Virgin Hotel.

No, you don't have to be a virgin to a ten.

See what they just did there.

And it's going to include Q and A and photos and you know, all that kind of stuff, and we'll get up and we'll you know, strum and do stuff for shits and giggles.

But there's not going to be a kiss show.

It's not like going to blow up the Virginal Hotel.

I just got the stink guy from the other side of the room.

Yeah, yeah, okay, I got it.

Well, you know, I thought I had longer, but I'll tell you what.

We wrapped everything we could possibly wrap it.

I got made fun of, I got lectured.

We had a great talk some kids, we talked to kids.

Cruise no charge, beatles, we did it all no charge.

You know, we we we we.

We can conclude.

Well, I had fun.

Thanks so much, and I wish you well.

And by the way, when did you quit modeling?

I never did, I never did.

I don't know, man, I never did.

Yeah, well, I have a I have a sneaking suspicion.

You would be very popular in jail.

Well, let me let me go.

Maybe let me go try some blue collar crime or white collar crime.

It's all.

You won't need to do anything.

They're going to bring you hot tea in the morning and tuck you in at night.

Don't you worried.

That's a that's a real I'll wear that with the badge honor everywhere I go.

Thank you.

Just don't tell what happens in jail stays in jail.

You don't have to.

You know, if you don't tell, it doesn't count.

Man, it's incredible.

I hope, I hope we get the chance to speak again.

It was real real, I mean, you know, you have a real You demurred.

Here's the word again, you demurred, But you really interesting musical mind and it's appreciated.

And hopeing you to speak again.

Thank you, I wish you well.

Bye Bye.

An episode description, you'll find a link to a playlist of our favorite Gene Simmons sung or written kiss tracks.

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I'm justin Richmond.