Gene Simmons on the band “nothing can stop”
Regardless of your opinion of Kiss, you have to admire their audacity. The look, the pyrotechnics and the overtly sexual way they perform is tough to turn away from. They were destined to become rock stars as soon as they put on that makeup. No doubt there will have been a lot of planning and trial and error for the band when they put together their look and worked out how they wanted people to perceive them, but first things first, they just needed the confidence to be outspoken.
What gave them that? A natural confidence? Yeah, maybe. Good musicianship? Sure. But one of the driving factors will no doubt be the way that was paved in front of them by some of the earlier rock outfits that took to the stage. The pioneering and rebellious nature of some of the earlier rock music acted as a windbreaker for chaos. Without them, there would be no Kiss, and the OTT nature of music nowadays would cease to exist.
One of the most important groups Gene Simmons cites as an inspiration was Led Zeppelin. Each member was a fantastic musician in their own right, so much so that when people were asked to create their dream band based on the best musicians they had ever heard play an instrument, they recreated Led Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin approached music in the same way that Kiss approached their entire aesthetic, with absolute fearlessness. The sound effects they used on instruments, the in-your-face style of playing, absolutely everything led to the creation of one of the most unignorable bands on the planet. Or, as Gene Simmons puts it, they had balls.
“OK, so [Jeff] Beck takes the blues and gives it some balls,” he said in an interview. “Like I said before, Pagey was part of that scene, and he understood what Beck was trying to do. So, what did Led Zeppelin bring to the table? More balls! Fucking great big, huge balls! Steam hammer balls! Once they get rollin’, there’s nothing that can stop them. Even before the song [‘Communication Breakdown’] starts, you’ve got that machine gun riff. What the fuck is that? Woah!”
Simmons continued, “Then, bang, the song really kicks in. You’ve got Plant’s voice wailing over the top like some kind of demented witch. Don’t forget that this is happening at the same time as Miles Davis, Hendrix, the Beatles and the fucking Bee Gees. Enough incredible music to make your head explode!”
Gene Simmons’s upbringing was the perfect storm of innovative musicians behaving absolutely fearlessly. Led Zeppelin obviously left a huge impact, but so did a lot of other artists at the time, and seeing them permitted him to create the band that he went on to create—a load of make-up, some rock n roll and steam hammer balls.
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