KISS icon Gene Simmons recently expressed that he wished he had been smarter in his efforts to help Ace Frehley and Peter Criss lead better lives. He mentioned that he should have practiced more “tough love” with those closest to him.
The relationships between Simmons and Frehley have been strained for years. After joining forces and then breaking up twice, Simmons and Frehley have fluctuated between friendliness and public disputes for the past couple of decades.
Gene Simmons talks about Ace Frehley
Frehley stressed that he didn’t “hate” Simmons or Paul Stanley, regardless of what happened before, as The Spaceman himself said mere months before passing away. Now that his former bandmate is no longer here, Simmons admitted at the recent Kiss Kruise event in Las Vegas that he wished he could have handled the relationship with Frehley better (via People):
“If I have any regrets, my hand to God, it’s that I sometimes — and I think we all go through this sometimes — wish we were smarter and better at trying to help Ace [Frehley] and Peter [Criss] have better lives.”
As per Simmons, there were times when nobody in the band was willing or knew how to approach difficult issues, instead trying to avoid confrontation:
“Let’s just continue doing the tour because you want to get through it for selfish reasons because it’s working, and the chicks, and the money, and you don’t want to ruin anything. Meantime, somebody who might be your brother is ruining their life by bad decisions.”
The KISS icon also said that he wished he gave more “tough love” to people he cared about:
“Tough love is a good idea in my opinion, with your children, with the people you love, with the people you care about, with the people you work with. It’s not going to be a popular thing or you’re going to argue about it, but in the long run you’re going to be helping that person hopefully change their life.”
