KISS / Gene Simmons On The Origins Of That Iconic Look

As Chris Dale noted in his Undiscovered Kisstory – Alternative Make Up Designs article, there is a long and storied history of KISS and the Demon, the Starchild, the Catman and the Spaceman personalities. These masked their real personalities entirely and built up their mysticism. Here, Gene Simmons speaks about those early days and the trip to Woolworths, which would make them an instantly recognisable household name across America in the late 1970s.

Gene Simmons told Michael Franzese of the science of singularity, meaning something with an unusual or unique quality. “It doesn’t happen often, just every once in a while,” Gene said. “That could be a millennia or something just happens when the planets align and you have the right thing at the right place and the right time.

The bands rise to fame was a perfect storm of visual spectacle, musical ambition, and cultural timing. The larger-than-life personas, paired with their explosive live performances, set them apart. This would turn them into cultural icons, captivating fans worldwide.

Gene Simmons can pinpoint the exact moment when singularity would strike. 

“The first right thing in the right place at the right time was when I met Paul Stanley,” Gene told Franzese, as transcribed by MetalTalk. “My partner knew stuff I didn’t know, and hopefully, at least, he told me I knew stuff he didn’t know. Then one plus one equals three, and then we decided to put together the band we never saw on stage.”

During the two-hour interview, Gene Simmons often spoke about the bands and musicians he saw on TV growing up and how memories of his father with people in the music industry helped to shape his beliefs and drive.

Both Simmons and Stanley agreed on one thing. “It’s worth noting we looked at it visually,” Gene says. “We wanted to get the songs and everything. But we noticed that the bands we liked, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles, had unique visuals so that if you closed your eyes, you saw it. 

“There were lots of hits on the radio where if you closed your eyes, you couldn’t tell [the band]. Foreigner was a very good band and had a lot of hits. You close your eyes, you have no idea who’s in the band, and you don’t care.Predominantly, that’s the thing.

“So we wanted the visuals to be part of it. We didn’t know that it would become a multibillion-dollar industry. Kiss continues to be everything. From Kiss caskets and Kiss condoms will get you coming and we’ll get you going. See, that was a joke. I’ve said that many times before, but it’s actually true, literally.”

Gene spoke of how the early days of KISS and how Ace Frehley and, particularly, Peter Criss were important to the creative process. “It’s worth noting Paul and I went to see Peter play in a gentleman’s club,” Gene said. “Very small. They played in a trio, and the drummer, Peter Chris, had scarves on, and he was singing Wilson Pickett. He had the right voice and the vibe. The rest of the guys on stage could have been the guys that would wait for you outside to pick up a few bucks. They didn’t look like musicians, but this guy.”

Criss stood out big time. “Yeah,” Gene said. “He had the voice and the attitude.” The story of KISS would begin. “But not everybody has the genes,” Gene said. “Not everybody can run a marathon. There are some people whose genes, whoseDNA, are more akin to running a short race, which is why very few bands last a long time.

“The Beatles lasted seven years, shockingly. We’ve been around 52 years, with different members and all that, because not everybody lasts.”

Gene then spoke of how, whenever he talks about the very beginnings of the band, he gets the same imagery in his mind.”We’re sitting around in our rat-infested loft,” Gene says. “10 East 23rd Street, and we’ve been rehearsing. It’s a rat trap and a fire trap, no windows, nothing.

“After the rehearsal, one of us, I don’t know who said, hey, let’s go down to Woolworths, which was a local store where you could buy anything. Before there were malls, you stuck everything into Woolworths: aspirin, anything, clothing.

“So we somehow veered towards the Halloween area [where] there was clown clown makeup. Steins Clown White jar and Steins Black Lipstick. For some reason, Paul Stanley went to the red lipstick. I don’t know why. We just bought the stuff, and we bought two mirrors that were four and a half feet tall. Fifteen bucks all in and we brought it up to the loft. Nobody said, I have an idea, let’s sit down, we’ll do this.”

There was no direction, the four men just started. “If you would look at it,” Gene says, “you’d say, OK, who’s telling you what to do? No, it’s just happening. We’re looking in the mirror, putting on makeup and looking at each other and just talking.”

Weird it was, and Gene Simmons describes it as “sticky”, talking about how it felt. “Then we started drawing designs around the eyes,” he says, “and looking at each other and getting off on it, kind of, as it was happening. 

“And Peter Criss liked cats, so he was doing that. I was always fascinated by horror movies and sci-fi, that imagery. Ace always talked about that he’s from another planet and stuff. His equilibrium was not all that good, so he would often fall. So he thought of himself as a spaceman.”

Paul Stanley’s original makeup “was a round circle, black around his eye.” Paul had taken his inspiration from Mack Sennett comedies. “We looked around and go, what the hell is that? And he says it’s like Pete, the dog from the Little Rascals. There was a dog in an old black-and-white half-hour thing that went back to Max Sennett comedies, the beginning of movies that have these short stories about kids in poor areas.”

These films had an impact, though. “They had black kids and white kids hanging out together like friends,” Gene Simmons says, “but in regular civil life, well no. Black and white are supposed to be separate. Not with our gang. They were just black and white friends.

“The dog was part of it. He would have a black circle. We went, nobody’s gonna know that if they’re younger. So he [Paul] decided to do that. I think it might have been Ace who said, you always wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star instead of a pudgy Jewish kid. Why don’t you put stars over your eyes?

“So he did. He did two stars over his eyes, but they didn’t align. It’s difficult to do that freehand. So he decided just to use one, and that’s where his makeup came from. Just one star over the eye, and that was it.”

This was before the first KISS show had even been arranged. Gene Simmon says it was between that first makeup session and three weeks later that the first show was arranged. “I was acting like a manager,” He says. “I always do. I called up a local club, the Coventry, and convinced them to book us sight unseen or anything else for $35 dollars.

“I remember there may have been ten or fifteen people there. My girlfriend at the time, a girl named Jan, her brother’s girlfriend Lydia, the drummer’s wife, and a few others, and that was it.

“But we were on stage in makeup getting off as there was something going on. Within a year and a half of the band forming, at the end of 1973, we were headlining Anaheim Stadium.

“Before MTV, before digital. We didn’t even have hit records. Something happened. It just pervaded culture. All of a sudden, young kids started talking about this, and in those days, you could make a career from magazines because that’s how things spread before Wi-Fi or anything.”

KISS would unleash two final shows at Madison Square Garden in their hometown of New York City on the first two days in December 2023. “I remember the first time playing here,” a choked-up Paul Stanley said on the first of those, “and I could see my mom and dad over there and Gene’s mom over there. No matter how big you get, you just want to make your parents proud.”

KISS balloons fall from above as the band played Do You Love Me for one of the final times. “Whadaya say… we rock ‘n’ roll all nite?” asked Stanley. Huge clusters of red and white confetti descended onto the crowd as KISS closed their set.

Fifty years after that first show, this was a united moment of rock ‘n’ roll.

Michael Franzese, a former Colombo crime family caporegime, rose to wealth and power through schemes like a multimillion-dollar gas tax fraud in the 1980s. Despite his deep mafia ties as the son of underboss John “Sonny” Franzese, he left the mob in the mid-1980s without witness protection. Now a motivational speaker and author, he shares his story of redemption and transformation, inspiring others to turn away from crime.

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