News.com.au has a feature article on KISS’ Paul Stanley. Select quotes from the story appear below.
Discussing the day when there will be a version of KISS without him:
“I look forward to a day when I’ll see Kiss play without me. Don’t want to do it next week, haven’t pencilled anything in, but it would be the culmination of what we’ve built and a consistent progression…The people who said it had to be all the original members to be Kiss are already 50 per cent wrong. Do I cast a big shadow? Sure. But am I crazy enough to think I’m the only person who can do this? That would be ridiculous. Do you go to a Yankees ballgame and hold up a sign “Where’s Babe Ruth?’ The team continues because the ideal is met. The standard is met….There’s no need to call it anything except Kiss. The idea that every time we change members we’re going to be Kiss 2.0, Kiss 2.1 is ridiculous. It’s Kiss. Kiss is a philosophy and a way of presenting music and presenting ourselves.”
On refusing to perform with original band members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss when KISS was inducted into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame:
“I enjoyed the Hall Of Fame in a twisted way. It was a terrific night but there was no way I was going to play with them. Frankly, I have too much pride in what I do than to create a moment of nostalgia for someone else. To get on stage with Ace and Peter was an interesting, surreal moment but nothing I wanted to prolong. It’s like if you ever went back to an old girlfriend because you doubted your choice to leave, it only takes five minutes before you want to get back in your car and leave. Someone asked me before the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame ‘Couldn’t you just play with the original line-up again for one night?’ And I said ‘How about spending a night with your ex wife? What’s the point?’”
Talking about how he never read Ace or Peter’s books:
“On tour some people showed me a few pages. People will think I keep taking potshots, but I keep getting asked about this and I give honest answers. In Ace’s case, how can somebody who can barely remember what happened last week write a book? I’m not talking about today, hopefully according to Ace he’s clean and sober. But there were certainly decades that he was anything but. When you have to call your friends to tell you what happened is that really an autobiography? Or creative fiction. No, that was pointless. I think Peter’s book began with him in an earthquake where the ground opened up and he had a gun in his mouth. Well, I know where he was living. The ground didn’t open up. You gotta consider the source. A book can be a great opportunity to have an alibi or an excuse. If you choose to be a victim then you will never accomplish anything you’re capable of because your defeats and your lack of success will always be due to somebody else.”
Read the News.com.au‘s entire piece on Paul Stanley, here.
source: news.com.au
31 Responses
The most remarkable aspect of this interview is that Paul actually acknowledges his vocal problems and its deterioration. I was beginning to think that he was either in complete denial or that it was a taboo issue that no one was to address.
Really? I need to read it again, missed that
True. he only used the mentioning of it to give an excuse, lame. Maybe he thought that he must act now that so many comments on Youtube and elsewhere have elaborated that issue. He did not by any means acknowledge that he lost his voice, he calls it re-phrasing the tunes … The Paul Stanley we have known from so many similar interviews over the last years will never admit that he is a mortal guy facing the same problems as others:-)
Wish he’d stop answering these questions…same canned answers and the day he and/or Gene are gone is the day Kiss no longer exists…period
I agree, Coredrum. Same old stupid soundbites. “It’s all so obvious and insidious that it’s boring” lol
I think the real Starchild was kidnapped by aliens from planet Jendell! LOL!
Paul still thinks Kiss can go on without any original members? Well, at least he’s got “Great Expectations”. 😉
I still don’t know why one person won’t ask him what happened to his voice? It is amazing how people ignore the elephant in the room from a guy who always says “if you can’t cut it time to move on”. As much as I don’t like the Ace/Peter stuff to me the biggest issue if you are still a Kiss fan is that a once great singer can’t sing! Has to be some medical issue? Regardless of how I feel about Kiss now it truly is sad to hear.
Agree Eddie, I remember Paul saying about 15 years ago, ” I’d rather have people come up to me now and say why are you quitting, instead of hanging around too long and have people say, why don’t you quit?” That was during the farewell tour. I guess Paul really hasn’t been listening lately.
That is one of the sad things of aging, you forget what you said or did … 🙂
To some extent he actually talked about his voice “getting older”, but of course he did not admit that he lost it. Reading the article and between the lines, it somehow seems as if he tried to give an excuse for the changes everyone knows about, which of course has also come to his his recognition. But – not surprisingly – he misses the opportunity to tell the truth by just pointing at other singers who try to “phrase” diffferently when apparently Paul does not only phrase differently, he e.g. leaves whole chorusses to Eric and the others to sing.
Eddie – Paul has acknowledged in the past that he’s had throat surgery (if I recall correctly, he may have done it on Sanjay Gupta’s CNN show) around the time just before the Sonic Boom album. Elton John had the same surgery, and his voice is similarly shot.
Eddie, you know that Gene and Paul will always tell the journalist or dj beforehand, “No questions about…” and fill in the blank. I remember once I called in to Rockline in ’93 and I was told on the phone before I was allowed to be on the air, “The band will not answer any questions about a reunion tour”, I was like oh wow a tailored “exclusive” with Kiss lol.
It is “The Paul Stanley Show” yet again. Kiss got a captain now (Gene being no more than the chief officer now) and a there is no objecting the captain’s orders in the cheap seats. Yet, when you compare his self-satisfied words and claims with that acoustic pre-show disaster regarding his performance (guitar AND voice) – as one out of numerous examples – that was recently posted on this website you can only shake your head. The article again shows us that there is only one truth on this planet about Kiss and everything the guys in Kiss ever did or said, his. And here is a magazine that gives the guy the forum to once again congratulate himself and directly or indirectly bash everyone else who might dare to object to his view on things. I say: you only defiantly insist on your version of the story when you know it is not entirely true. The more you repeat it, the more people will have their doubts, so again you have to repeat it …. etc etc. This will go on forever, unless, for real, there actually will be a “new Kiss” which I hope will show even the most naive fan that it is not about the band right now, it is about egos and money and, most of all, imortalizing yourself. But Kiss is already immortal, a new Kiss would only take away from what is already achieved. At the top there is no way further but down. So maybe it is just about immortalizing the idea that Paul was actually the (only) one who brought Kiss to where it is now, seizing every opportunity given to him to cement this view of his. But: every below-par and sad performance of Paul on Youtube, for thousands to see a second after posted, will take away the memory and the relevance of the great things he did in this band in the past. This is also the reason why I am happy that Led Zep did NOT embark on a tour after their acclaimed O2 reunion even though myself and a zillion other fans would have paid for tickets whatever the cost. They left it at that. Plant was clever seeing that he could not keep the up the quality of the performance for the time and strenuous length of a world tour. he kept his integrity, and thereby the band’s unspoiled fame. They left the fond memory of a great band no one will ever deny. No sour taste left. That is a kind of class Gene and especially Paul will never show as they are already past the point. They are, of course, not the only ones in this business who have missed that point. So in the end it is not about fame itself, these people are all famous, it is all about how you deal with fame, it explains who you are. In this respect, Paul is doing himself a major disservice.
This interview continues to show how full of it Paul is.