Gene Simmons told Michael Franzese about KISS touring in a new interview, “Within a year and a half of the band forming, 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.”
“In a very strange way, Kiss became a very big band without hit songs. It was about the live shows. And if people are curious, if you go to YouTube, we would literally blow away any act that dared put us on stage. We’d just blow them off the stage.”
“Some of it was smart. We had a Kiss logo that was about six or seven feet tall; these bright lights that spelled out Kiss. And nobody hung their name above them like a Las Vegas show.”
“That was not considered cool, but we thought it was cool. So that when the next band came on after we were off, a half hour later, if you closed your eyes, you could still see Kiss in your eyelids, if you know what I mean.”
“They didn’t have enough time to clear the stage. So while they were on, the Kiss logo was still on stage. And very quickly, we ran out of bands to open up for.”
