Gene Simmons picks his favourite Kiss song
Following The Beatles’ split at the beginning of the 1970s, metal, glam, and prog-rock genres grasped the baton before passing it slowly to punk for a mid-decade shake-up. During this period, the hippies’ countercultural outcry was rejuvenated for a new generation. Amid this fruitful turmoil was Kiss, a band born of glam rock blood and forged in the fires of heavy metal.
As their thick makeup and bold, imposing costumes suggest, Kiss have long found value and optimal satisfaction in live presence. However, beyond aesthetics, they established themselves as consummate musicians and competent composers through the mid-1970s.
By the time Kiss set off on their first tour in 1974, the glam era was enjoying its peak. Meanwhile, the genre’s early progenitor, David Bowie, was already en route to the soulful territory of Young Americans. “Being in Kiss in the very first year and touring around the United States, we felt like we were taking off,” bassist and co-lead singer Gene Simmons recalled in the ‘End of the Road World Tour’ programme.
Adding: “It was like somebody pushing you into the deep end of the pool whether you can swim or not. The early years of Kiss were far from glamorous. We rode in a station wagon hundreds of miles every day.”
“We would take turns driving and sleeping in the back,” he continued. “We ate burgers at roadside taverns. We stopped and peed on the side of long stretches of a highway when we couldn’t find a town anywhere near. We ate beans and franks because we couldn’t afford better food as we were on an $85-a-week salary! Becoming a rock star was better than anything and beyond anything I ever imagined. There were moments of doubt for me that we were gonna make it.”
Although Kiss improved greatly through their years of service to rock and roll, both as songwriters and musicians, Gene Simmons claims one of his first-ever songs is his favourite. While discussing a list of his favourite songs in a 2014 interview with Celebrity Shuffle, the Kiss bassist and co-lead vocalist picked out just one of his own credits, ‘Goin’ Blind’.
Although the track, which documents a 93-year-old man’s vain attempts to communicate with a 16-year-old girl, appeared on Kiss’ second album, Hotter than Hell, Simmons wrote it while at school several years before under the initial working title, ‘Little Lady’.
“‘Goin’ Blind’ was a song I wrote with my school chum Stephen Parnell,” Simmons said of the song. “In those days, I didn’t think much about lyrics. I have no clue about why I sat down and wrote a letter called, ‘I think I’m going blind.’ Except I thought it was terribly romantic. It was about an old guy. I remember a movie called… Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea. My vision of that was the old man and a mermaid.”
“A little lady from the land beyond the sea and all that kind of stuff. She was this kind of love interest for this old guy,” he continued. “When we were recording the song, Paul Stanley thought that the lyrics were ridiculous, of course. He yelled out ‘I’m 93, you’re 16.’
“That was Paul Stanley’s sole contribution to that song, ‘I’m 93, you’re 16, can’t you see I’m going blind’. Of course, it makes absolutely no sense. I can’t tell you what ‘Goin’ Blind’ means, except everybody’s told me what it means. Every single version has been a different story,” he added.
Listen to Kiss’ ‘Goin’ Blind’ below.
