The Kiss song Gene Simmons wrote about an alien conspiracy
“You’ve never seen that. I mean, the shock of that,” said Geezer Butler, once struggling to find the right words to describe Kiss. They took the huge nature of a lot of rock music and extended it beyond just the airwaves, making their appearance and setting as much of a statement as the music itself was. “I went out and watched them,” he added. “There were all these flames coming out the stage and everything. It was like ‘Oh my God, what’s going on here?’”
If you had never seen Kiss before and then were thrust into one of their massive live shows, you could probably be convinced that you were watching an alien invasion happen before your very eyes. The make-up, the lights, the fire, the pyrotechnics were all akin to getting abducted, a true out-of-this-world sound and appearance that has been capturing the hearts of rock ‘n’ roll fans for decades.
Of course, Kiss wasn’t trying to look like aliens when they initially took to the stage with their outlandish wardrobe. Their rationale for the make-up and flamboyancy is actually incredibly earnest and makes a lot of sense: they felt as though rock bands looked too alike. They’re not exactly wrong either; long hair, denim, and leather were all becoming synonymous with rock music, and bands were losing a sense of identity. Kiss had no intention of slipping into the same bracket as their contemporaries.
“Those ‘60s British groups all looked like real bands. No member of The Beatles could have fit into the Stones,” said Stanley, “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.”
Even though Kiss didn’t come up with their alien-like show using actual aliens, that doesn’t mean that beings from another planet have never had an impact on the band. Gene Simmons drew on the idea that aliens had already visited Earth when he put together the song ‘100,000 Years’. One night, after reading some extracts from a particularly thought-provoking book, Simmons picked up his bass and started writing.
“I read a book called 100,000 Years where 100,000 years ago we were visited by aliens,” he said, “Also Einstein’s theory of relativity. I was reading all kinds of space and time continuance stuff, and it was all swirling around my head.”
Drawing from the mind-bending idea that aliens might have already visited Earth, Simmons put together an equally mind-bending song. While ‘100,000 Years’ might not be considered one of Kiss’s biggest hits, there have to be some points awarded for creativity, as the bassist was able to take a singular idea with very little backing and make a cohesive and engaging piece of music out of it.
