Kiss News

On this day in KISSTORY - May 13th, 1976 - KISS played their first ever UK show at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England. The show before a sellout crowd of over 2500 was the beginning of KISS' first European tour. In addition to shows in England, KISS performed in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Germany where the Scorpions were the opening act. KISS wrapped up the tour with a final show on June 6th at Ontmoetingscentrum in Harelbeke, Belgium.

Gene recalls KISS' first visit to England:

"On the way over to our first English tour, I was struck by the notion that this was the Land Of The Beatles. To me, the English Kings and Queens never meant anything. I have always looked at it as an archaic and rather silly posturing about past glories. But as cultural oddities, I suppose it had its own innocence.

Still, I was nervous to set foot on Holy Ground. We got off the jet in full makeup and the fotogs were waiting for us. We came through customs and jumped on street cars at the airport for foto ops.

I was aware it was drizzly and grey. I was hoping that would change in the next few days to sunshine. It didn't.

We had a female chaperone/record company person with us. And, she showed us the sites. I thought the least I could do was return the favor. I did.

We visited the Palace and posed with street Bobbies (the English police) and were soon to hit the stage in front of an English audience. Would they like us? Truth was, we never thought much about it. We had a job to do and that was to punish the audience. They had, for too long, stood still for sub par live bands.

It was our job to show them that there was at least one band who had the balls to introduce themselves with: YOU WANTED THE BEST, YOU GOT THE BEST...THE HOTTEST BAND IN THE LAND, KISS."

Set List for the Manchester show:

Deuce / Strutter / Flaming Youth / Hotter Than Hell / Firehouse / She / Nothin' To Lose / Shout It Out Loud / 100,000 Years / Black Diamond / Detroit Rock City / Rock And Roll All Nite / Let Me Go, Rock And Roll

The great footage above is from the British TV show "So It Goes" covering KISS while they were touring Europe for the first time in 1976!

Awesome time last night at the SOLD OUT Westfalenhallen in Dortmund! Thank you, KISS ARMY Germany!

TONIGHT! SOLD OUT  Schleyerhalle in Stuttgart, Germany! See you there, KISS ARMY!

CLICK HERE to listen to the audio of this interview with Tommy!

by Maggie Wright / www.fullmetalrock.com

FULLMETALROCK
- Hi, this is Maggie at Full Metal Rock and I am here with Tommy Thayer of Kiss! I�m really excited for you. This is the fourth night of nineteen European date leg of the KISS World tour. How�s it going so far?

TOMMY THAYER
- It�s going fabulously. We did Moscow and Helsinki, and Stockholm last night, and we�re here in Oslo speaking right now. It�s really going great. We always have huge crowds in Scandinavia, and it�s just exciting to see so many people come out and be so excited to see the band. So the show�s been big, the stage, and our production is really going well, but it�s always� there�s some tweaking going on to begin with, at the beginning of a tour, as with anybody, in terms of the sounds, lights and the pyro and video and all that sort of thing.

FULLMETALROCK
- Yeah, the thing about KISS for me is that it�s an experience! It must be incredibly difficult to narrow down to the number of songs that you select (to play).

TOMMY THAYER
- That�s always a challenge because there�s so much back material and so many records that have been recorded over the years. The first KISS record came out in 1974, so we�re looking at 43, going on 44 years now, and that�s a lot of material to choose from. And of course you have the classics, and so many people are depending really on hearing those songs that if you don�t play some of them, they get pretty pissed off. Then there�s die hard fans, that are very, you know, the purists, that want to hear those deeper cuts. We try to throw a few things in, but, then again, the masses� it�s crickets sometimes with some of those songs. It�s a fine line. We try to balance it out the best we can though.

FULLMETALROCK
- I�ve noticed so far you haven�t played anything from the �Monster� album. Is that a deliberate decision, or is just, you�re going with the flow and seeing how things go?

TOMMY THAYER
- Well, again, you�ve got the classic songs, and I�m just gonna be honest with you, not as many people know the stuff that�s on �Monster�, the most recent record that came out a couple years ago, just because, as you know, records aren�t selling like they used to, the record business is in huge decline, so the sales aren�t there, people aren�t getting the new music as much, so, I guess that�s reflected when we decide on what songs we�re gonna play.

FULLMETALROCK
- And when you talk about the fans, and making them happy, because you now have a whole �nother generation of fans that have come into it, and possibly even a third generation. That�s got to be a bit mind-blowing!

TOMMY THAYER
- It is mind blowing. It�s really multi-generational, like you said, it�s not just younger kids or a certain window of age. It�s all ages, and families. It�s interesting to me that so many kids get into KISS because their dad and the family brings them to the show. Sometimes it blows me away! There�s so many young kids out there, I�m thinking �How in the hell did they find out about KISS now!� And so I ask people, and it has to do with fathers bringing their sons and other people talking about it, or the reputation the band has for the show and the theatrics and the big rock show that KISS has really made famous in the first place. You know, these big pyro shows, and the big spectacular like we do is, a lot of it is, forged by KISS through the years and we have that reputation and that kind of legacy. I think people come to see that, too. It blows us away though, �cause every night Paul will say, �How many people haven't seen KISS before?� and it�s amazing how many people raise their hands. But that�s a good thing because that means you have new people coming in, �cause guys need to keep re-inventing and bringing in new people, �cause there�s a certain natural attrition to anything in entertainment. You slowly lose people, and you have to keep gaining more people.

CLICK HERE to read the rest of the interview and view more photos now!

KISSWORLD2017: Dortmund, Germany tonight! See you at the SOLD OUT Westfalenhallen, KISS ARMY!

Photo by Nicola Ciccarone

KISS ARMY Sweden, you were amazing last night at the SOLD OUT Scandinavium in Gothenburg! Thank you!

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.

CLICK HERE to read the rest of the story now.

Swedish Royal Family rocked with KISS in Stockholm! Prince Daniel, Crown Princess Victoria (future Queen of Sweden) & their daughter Estelle - in KISS make-up!