KISS- Alive! End of the Road- Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons

“The lovefest ended when we hit the stage,” Kiss lead singer/ guitarist/ songwriter Paul Stanley told me about the band fraternity of support groups opening for them some forty-plus years ago,”because we were there to destroy them.” Gene Simmons agrees. “Putting on the make up was like putting on warpaint.”

Few things from the mid-Seventies  can totally freeze time the way that listening to Kiss Alive!  does. While the world was weary of the Viet Nam War and Nixon’s Watergate scandal, the puckered foursome had cranked out three studio albums in eighteen months, somehow managing to play every college gym and theater between their New York City base and the Rockies. Now they could perform the strongest of that material while making the leap to select arenas, such as in rock-and-roll-mad Detroit and Cleveland, and record their amalgam of testosterone-fueled comic book fantasy, horror movies, and good old teenage lust. How could it not work?  KISS kollaborators Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons join me In the Studio for a remarkably frank, insightful look at  Kiss Alive! featuring “Deuce”,”Strutter”, “Hotter Than Hell“, and “Rock and Roll All Nite”( #12 on Billboard).

Get the dates on the KISS End of the Road North American tour beginning August 6 here. –Redbeard