Annie Reuter of Radio.com reports:
Gene Simmons of KISS has some heated words for drug addicts and people dealing with depression in a new interview with Songfacts.com.
When asked if he keeps in touch with the original players of KISS he answered with a resounding “no.”
Why’s that? Simple: they’re either drug addicts or just downers.
“I don’t get along with anybody who’s a drug addict and has a dark cloud over their head and sees themselves as a victim,” Simmons said. “Drug addicts and alcoholics are always: ‘The world is a harsh place.’ My mother was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. I don’t want to hear f–k all about ‘the world as a harsh place.’ She gets up every day, smells the roses and loves life.
And for a putz, 20-year-old kid to say, ‘I’m depressed, I live in Seattle.’ F–k you, then kill yourself.”
He added “I never understand, because I always call them on their bluff. I’m the guy who says ‘Jump!’ when there’s a guy on top of a building who says, ‘That’s it, I can’t take it anymore, I’m going to jump.’ Are you kidding? Why are you announcing it? Shut the f–k up, have some dignity and jump! You’ve got the crowd.”
While Simmons said KISS has new songs ready, there are no plans to record anytime soon. But, there is one artist he’d love to record with in the future: Lady Gaga.
“I think Lady Gaga is the only new rock star, although she’s not a rocker,” he said. “I would like her to throw away all the disco stuff and get a band. Don’t use tapes, come out with a real live band and guitars. She’s a bona fide musical artist. She did a duet with Tony Bennett, real great pipes. She can sit at a piano all by herself. She’s a legitimate artist. A lot of the other pop divas who are really talented are not artists.”
Simmons said KISS and Gaga tried to collaborate on their last record but both were too busy.
“We got close. She got busy, we got busy. We would have done it.”
additional source: radio.com
245 Responses
155 comments and MAYBE 1/3rd are actually about Genes comment….The rest, just an opportunity to spew crap about Nothing news related…Gene has this attitude because he doesn’t have sympathy for anyone because he and his family had it terrible with what his parents dealt with in the Holocaust as well as his own childhood…Gene sure sounds like an ass a lot, because of how he says things…instead of saying something like “nothing is bad enough for suicide, look at what my family has been thru, but look how I turned out”, he says “f you, go kill yourself because my family has been thru worse…” That’s just Gene…all mouth, but he has done that his entire life in front of the camera…not my style but it shouldn’t be any surprise that he would say something like that…And he has said that same thing probably five other times over the years, especially when speaking about Kurt Cobain, so this isn’t really news…
I am so proud of all of you. 160 comments!! Wow, you really did it!!
I’ll say this again, Gene hates quitters. That’s all he’s saying. I’ve experienced Gene one on one, what he did completely changed my life…at first my depression put him off, but he’s a smart guy and he figured it out, and the thing is: no one else in my life, people that I’ve known for years, did. Doug the Red Rocker, take care man….
See you around Clown, “get on your bad motor scooter and ride”. Cheers! 🙂
Kiss was a big reason I even held myself together at all. The concepts that they put across are, and this is the originals, so complex that they have to be presented in a way in which a third grader would understand them. It’s this bursting forth, an opening up where you really find this authenticity within yourself.
It’s kind of sad that people on here equate ‘success’ with numbers, sales numbers, attendance, etc…that’s not what art is about, art is not kitschy. Kiss is such a true art form, though, they are a new beginning, this is always present throughout their power circuits, so the merch, the extraneous endeavors are really a non-issue. Further, too many Kiss fans, instead of being fully disclosed, attempt to dominate the disclosure, so they get tattooed and become obsessed with every minutiae detail…so, they end up being dominated, and believe that they have to like everything Kiss does invariably, which is a distortion of the true Kiss disclosure.