During his recent appearance on Billy Corgan’s podcast “The Magnificent Others,” KISS bassist Gene Simmons opened up about some of the band’s biggest mistakes and one particular moment in time when they faced quite a few difficulties.
“Trouble in paradise…’79 disco is full-blown: Stones, Rod Stewart, everybody’s doing [sings disco beat], and it’s huge,” Simmons recalled. “I’m going to Studio 54 and all the stars are there, and all that stuff. And we bring out ‘I Was Made for Lovin’ You,’ and just massive immediately.”
Simmons went on to say how changing their sound didn’t sit well with some of their fans.
“And the core fans are upset, except for the fact that the ticket sales… tons, making more money. And the toys, the younger fans came in because all of a sudden, mom likes the song, and the kids liked it. So, we were selling,” he said.
“And our ‘Kiss Meets the Phantom’ movie came out. We were talking about cartoons and theme parks and all this stuff, getting bigger and bigger. But clearly, by the early ’80s, disco was going into the shadows, and there was punk coming up, and I really liked the Pistols and the Clash and all that. But they already exist. You can’t just go, ‘You know what? Maybe we could nudge our way there.'”
The bassist then revealed that after the disco scene petered out and KISS’ popularity was on the decline, the band considered capitalizing off of the popularity of the grunge music featuring Nirvana scene.
“Grunge came out. We even toyed around with ‘Carnival of Souls’ with a kind of [a ‘grunge album’]. The makeup is off, ‘Let’s take the makeup off and see what that [does].’ So, as soon as you start to bend over for the soap, it’s not long before you become somebody’s b*tch. You lose yourself, and it’s difficult to go on a long journey.”
