Cleveland Scene PAUL STANLEY REFLECTS ON KISS' 40-YEAR RUN
By Matt Wardlaw
One thing that becomes perfectly clear early in our conversation with Paul Stanley of KISS is that he doesn�t give a damn what the critics think. Instead, it�s the fans that have followed KISS since day one of their 40-year history as a group that really matter to the longtime singer and guitarist. During a phone call prior to the band�s current tour with Def Leppard, which stops in at Blossom Music Center this week, Stanley was happy to tell us exactly why the opinions of critics, �present company excluded,� as he added, don�t hold a lot of weight in his world.
�They didn�t go to school to get a degree in being critics � in a sense, they�re entertainers and they�re given a lot of credence by some people and ignored by others,� he says. �I don�t need somebody to tell me what good food is. Good food is what I swallow and bad food is what I spit out. Likewise, I don�t need to be educated about art or music, because it�s totally subjective. The people that count are the people who pay hard-earned money for tickets, hard-earned money for CDs, hard-earned money for T-shirts, belt buckles or whatever. So why would I chase the approval of people who really haven�t taken the test? So no, not at all. You�d have to ask the millions of people who are happy that we�ve done it. To this day, I still have issues with critics and with politics of critics and I am proud of what I�ve done and proud to continue doing it.�
From the band�s earliest days, Stanley says that they always knew what they wanted to do as a group and although they certainly made a big statement with their makeup, they wanted to make an even bigger statement with their music.
