Paul Stanley on the Last Days of KISS
I’m sure you’ve noticed that Kiss is one of many acts of your generation announcing some form of retirement.
It’s not a coincidence that there are so many people and so many bands, performers announcing their retirement or farewell. As much as you want to believe an icon is ageless and timeless, time will prove that not to be so. For a band like us – and there is no other band like us, you don’t have other people running around onstage with 30 or 40 pounds of gear… if I was just up there prancing around singing, that would be fine, if I was on a Persian rug sitting on a stool playing a Martin guitar, yeah I could do it forever. But that’s not the case, there aren’t basketball players, football players, or athletes my age out there doing it so…I want to make sure that we go out there and fully represent and celebrate everything that we are, everything that we have been, and it’s bittersweet but it seems very much the right thing to do.
Are former members going to be joining on this tour in some form?
I really can’t say.This will be a celebration of Kiss and not any individual lineup or any individual members… I wouldn’t rule anything out but it’s not the crux of what we’re doing. It really isn’t at the heart or at the center of what we’re doing. We’re going out proudly as Kiss, a few months ago we were in Portugal and Spain playing for anywhere from 20 to 50,000 people so we’re doing this in all our glory and we’re doing it unapologetically. And we’re gonna do it bigger than we’ve ever done it. This show will really dwarf some of the things we’ve done before.
The Rolling Stones had Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor come out for a couple songs each night on a recent tour. Are you ruling out any scenario like that?
No, but I’m not…and I’m not being coy either. I don’t want to mislead anybody. Really, that’s not something that’s been given a lot of thought at this point, the majority of our time has gone into what is the stage going to be, what is the show going to be, and we’re actually in the midst of toying with setlists now.
