A Conversation With Gene Simmons
by Michael Cavacini / https://michaelcavacini.com
In addition to recently interviewing Barry Manilow and John Oates, I interviewed the God of Thunder: Gene Simmons. I�ve been a KISS fan since September 4, 1996, when I saw the band perform under the Brooklyn Bridge on MTV�s Video Music Awards. So, having the opportunity to speak with Gene Simmons was a surreal one, especially when I answered the phone and he said, �Hi, this is Gene Simmons.� I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did conducting it.
In January you announced a partnership with Wizard World to launch your first-ever solo tour. This is a unique deal where you perform a concert in a particular city, followed by a weekend-long appearance at Wizard World in said city. How did this idea come about?
People that know me think of KISS and some business stuff. But underneath all that � the soft, white underbelly � is I�ve been a comic book geek all my life. KISS has had a long and proud history with comic books, going all the way back to the mid-�70s, starting with Marvel comics. Our KISS comics were the biggest sellers they had. And through the years we�ve had other comic book companies put out different comics. In the last year or so, Dynamic comics has started putting out KISS comics, as well as the Demon comics � my own comic. Of course, I�ve got the Simmons Comics Group, which puts out my characters: Gene Simmons� House of Horrors, Zipper and Dominatrix.
So, Wizard World wanted me to come by and do a deal for five conventions. They wanted me to do a Q&A and stuff like that, for comic book fans. Then, when we started talking with each other, we said, �Hey, why don�t we make this a two-day event?� Take over a local concert hall, put together a band of rockers and go do some obscure KISS stuff. That�s exactly what we�ve done, and we�ve done about two or three of them so far. They�ve been loads of fun and everybody�s been having a great time. If you go to WizardWorld.com, you�ll get the lowdown there.
You�ve been performing some deep cuts live with your solo band, such as �Charisma� and �Got Love For Sale.� What made you want to dust off these album tracks and play them live?
When the masses show up at our concerts, they�re the diehards who�ve been with me since day one. If you�re five-years-old, fifteen-years-old or even twenty-years-old, you still don�t scratch the surface because we�ve been around for forty-three years. If KISS played what they used to call in the music industry a b-side of an album, some of the more obscure stuff, most of the people wouldn�t know it. If you go to the Stones and they play something obscure, everybody sits down because they don�t know it. They know �Satisfaction,� �Jumpin� Jack Flash� and a few others. Doing these smaller concert halls, which hold 1,000 to 3,000 people, means they get filled up by real diehard fans. They don�t want to hear the same-old, same-old. They want to hear nuggets, as they say. It�s a hoot for me because I�ve never really had a chance to do this stuff live. It�s been a lot of fun. There�s nothing like playing �Charisma� and seeing a few thousand fans mouth every single word. Lot of fun.
