The OC Weekly spoke with KISS frontman Paul Stanley about his new autobiography, Face The Music: A Life Exposed.
In it the singer recounts many stories including one that claimed drummer Peter Criss went on a racist rant at a Chinese restaurant and quitting the band for a few days and crawling back. “[Peter] didn’t crawl back,” Stanley says. “He swallowed his pride and pseudo machismo and came back. But part of the dynamic of the band was to have to pragmatically deal with the fact that two of the guys were often times more interested in sabotaging the band, sabotaging [bassist/vocalist] Gene [Simmons] and I, than doing the right thing. And they (Criss and guitarist Ace Frehley) also wanted equal say when they didn’t do equal work.”
He continued: “Part of what we gave the public was the myth that the four of us did everything together and contributed equally. That was something we wanted to maintain in the spirit of the bands that we loved and pictured doing that. The problem was that the guys in the band began to believe it themselves!”
When asked what it is about he and Simmons that they have managed to stay together over 40 years, Stanley said: “It’s hard to define and distinguish between friendship and brotherhood. I certainly see him as a brother, although we don’t always agree on how to treat your brother. At the end of the day, I know he will be there for me and me for him. My issues have always been more rooted in participating evenly and equally and still ending up with a equal share of money. I didn’t want it with Peter and Ace, why would I want it with Gene? He wasn’t doing his job and he was off doing other things and being paid for those things. I felt like if he wasn’t going to do his job and gonna go elsewhere. It was like he took less here or he gave me some of what he was doing elsewhere. That was an ongoing problem. But look, at this point we made the life for each other that each of us could only have dreamed of, and those lives have very little in common. I’m sure Gene would no more want to live my life than I live his. But there’s a bond there because we made it possible for each of us.”
source: ocweekly.com