The group Paul Stanley modelled Kiss on: “Real bands”
Is there another band like Kiss? Their sound, image, and stage show remain as timeless as ever. Their recent announcement of a show performed by avatars only further cements people’s love for them and hammers home the band’s timelessness, as people worldwide will be travelling to see Kiss perform, even if it’s not the band playing.
A combination of make-up, music, eccentricity and pyro made for a band that people couldn’t get enough of. In fact, they weren’t a band; they were superheroes, borderline fictional in their magnitude. Black Sabbath once admitted that they regretted taking Kiss on tour because of how much of a difficult band they were to follow. They had such a strong idea of who they were and executed that idea so perfectly that they won over crowds better than anybody.
“Kiss was the first one to use pyro,” said Geezer Butler, recounting their tour together, “It was a completely new direction for people. People had to start thinking about stage production after Kiss. It was tough to follow them. We went on as just an ordinary band, no effects or anything, and everybody else still had their mouths wide open from seeing Kiss.”
Kiss’s show was so tight that it’s hard to imagine it being based on anybody. Given that they looked like fictional characters and presented themselves creatively and eccentrically, it was hard to imagine the idea came from anywhere other than the member’s heads. While some aspects of that will be true, Paul Stanley admits that there was a band they modelled themselves after.
“The Beatles, in many ways,” said Paul Stanley, before confirming what was important to Kiss was that they looked like a band, “Those ‘60s British groups all looked like real bands. No member of The Beatles could have fit into the Stones. No member of The Who could have been in the Dave Clark Five. You had unified images of those bands, and at the same time, there was an emphasis on the individual members.”
Gene Simmons agreed with Stanley, adding that Kiss also had freedom within their music, similar to what The Beatles had. This is true because Kiss’s brand was so strong. Regardless of what direction they wanted to take with a track, it was still without question Kiss. Whether that made sexually-orientated tracks such as ‘Lick It Up’, love songs like ‘Beth’, or gospel ballads like ‘God Gave Rock n Roll to You’, it was a Kiss song.
“We also took pride in having the same freedom The Beatles had,” he said, “Their philosophy was, ‘No matter what kind of music we do, it’s still The Beatles’. That’s what was amazing about them… The Beatles were not trapped in that way. They could do music hall, psychedelia – anything – and they did. Yet somehow it always sounded like The Beatles.”
