Paul Stanley Interview: End Of The Road is last 'victory lap'
By Martin Boulton / Sydney Morning Herald
On the phone from Los Angeles earlier this year, Paul Stanley's New York accent was a clear reminder of where the veteran entertainer and rock 'n' roll preacher began his life.
It was just a few days out from the start of what's been billed as the End of the Road tour for Kiss, whose breakthrough 1975 album Alive! opened with the roar of a crowd and a stage announcer declaring: "You wanted the best and you got it, the hottest band in the land, Kiss". Not Paul Stanley, not co-founding band member Gene Simmons or the huge Kiss juggernaut ever looked back.
"It's amazing how life intertwines and how we impact and influence each other," says Stanley, who had just collected his kids from school. "It's pretty astounding to know that a band ... that music can have that kind of power. It's not lost on me."
He was referring to both the rise of the Kiss Army, a growing legion of fans around the world on the back of Alive! and subsequent albums, particularly 1979's Dynasty; and the lasting influence of the band, and no more so than upon the rock 'n' roll disciples far and wide who discovered the power of Kiss and then went on to form their own bands.
Chatting on the phone, Stanley sounded supremely relaxed and ready to power up the amps again, for what would be more than a hundred shows this year across the US, Europe and Asia. And if it's truly the end of the road for Kiss, he was determined "to make sure the road we leave behind is hard for anyone else to navigate" once they've put away the guitars and make-up.
Kiss started their journey in New York City in 1973, when lead singer and guitarist Stanley, Simmons on bass guitar and former members Ace Frehley (lead guitar) and drummer Peter Criss first painted their faces and donned elaborate stage costumes. They released their debut, self-titled album in 1974 quickly followed by Hotter Than Hell and Dressed To Kill in '75, before Alive! The following year they released Destroyer and Rock and Roll Over before a second live album Alive II in 1977.
Looking back, Stanley says Humble Pie's Steve Marriott was "a huge influence" on him and "was the template for a lot of what I wound up doing" on stage, albeit surrounded by bandmates in face paint, pyrotechnics and a fire-breathing Simmons spitting fake blood in between pounding bass lines. "The idea of being on stage and preaching the gospel of rock'n'roll, which is basically what he (Marriott) was doing ... that was something I aspired to," Stanley says.
"As a child, a young child, I saw a lot of the early rock'n'roll and I was fascinated by rock'n'roll, so it started quite early. I was hugely influenced by the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. I was fortunate enough to grow up in New York, where on any given weekend in the late '60s or early '70s you could see The Who, you could see Humble Pie, Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix and that really, really inspired me; these bands who took pride in what they were doing, they left it all on the stage, so to speak."
There's been several line-up changes and another dozen Kiss albums since the release of Unmasked in the 1980s, which coincided with the first of several Kiss tours of Australia. Stanley still recalls the overwhelming response from fans, both at shows and in between performances in Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane.
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