Paul Stanley discussed selling KISS for $300 million in a new Off The Cupp with SE Cupp interview. “I think in the last year, I’ve come to articulate it as life’s a one-way street. And it gets narrower. And time is precious. Do I miss being on stage in front of 50,000 people, 100,000 people? Hell, yeah. Does [basketball legend] Michael Jordan miss what he did? Everybody who’s attained that kind of success, sure, you miss it, but there’s a difference between missing and yearning. I miss it, but there’s no going back to it practically. I mean, you can’t physically do as an athlete, and what I’ve done was athleticism, whether vocally or physically. You reach a point where you can’t, and that’s something you have to come to grips with. And, okay, now what?
“I’m blessed to have done what I’ve done, and it will go forever. We sold KISS, which is something that’s unheard of, that doesn’t even exist in the lexicon of music. We sold KISS [several] months ago — I mean, everything: the logo, the makeup, the music. And there’ll be an incredible, immersive musical experience that’ll debut in ’27 that George Lucas is involved in, and those characters will live forever. And we’re involved — Gene [Simmons, KISS bassist/vocalist] and I — are involved in that. So, yeah, that lives forever. But I can’t. The Starchild can.
“If I had the luxury of going on stage in pseudo street clothes, yeah, I could be up there standing in front of a microphone and doing this forever. But that’s not what KISS is. That’s not what I created, what we created. So, I think that intellectually, I know why we stopped and that we had to stop. Emotionally, sure, it’s got all kinds of pangs, but that’s life.”
