Was the album that catapulted Kiss from cult attraction to mega-superstars. It was their first Top Ten album, remaining on the charts for 110 weeks. Culled from shows in Detroit, New Jersey, Iowa, and Cleveland on the Dressed to Kill tour, the record features producer Eddie Kramer doing a masterful job of capturing the band's live performance on record.
Kiss Alive 35 Cd
At the other end of the bill, things are a little different.Article: Metal fatigue - the view from the gutter
Most rock stars, on being introduced to a female interviewer, offer nothing more than a handshake. But Gene Simmons has a reputation to maintain. Given his claim to have enjoyed the company of 4,000 women in his 35 years as leader of American costume-rockers Kiss, a simple 'hello' won't do. The Simmons greeting starts as a hug, progresses into a pirouette and ends with the female bent backward over his arm, Simmons happily leering a couple of inches above.
To be on the receiving end is literally breathtaking, and the only possible response to burst out laughing, but it's all in a day's work for the singer/bassist. He has been motivated by - to quote the title of his 2003 autobiography - Sex Money Kiss for most of his adult life, and if there is a 58-year-old who loves his job more, I'd like to meet him. Kiss singer/guitarist Paul Stanley, seated next to Simmons on a sofa in a Munich hotel, comes close, but lacks the supreme confidence that must explain Simmons' appeal to women, including the likes of Cher and Diana Ross, both former girlfriends.
Depending on one's stage of life, their band - they are the only remaining original members - are either legendary pioneers of theatrical rock, or makeup-caked curiosities who haven't had a British hit since 1992 (and whose signature throbber, Rock and Roll All Nite, never charted here at all). The next generation of potential fans - or revenue streams, as Simmons would probably view them - is about to receive a vivid introduction to the New York-born band in the shape of a headlining show at the Download festival, the only UK date on their European tour. Whether Download's emo-teens will approve of a quartet of fiftysomethings who don't pretend to be in it for anything but money and laughs isn't at all certain. Whatever happens, Kiss are unlikely to be ruffled.
'We have more money than some small countries,' says Stanley, who in 2005 spent some of his on a hip replacement necessitated by decades of hauling his skinny frame around the stage in monster platform boots. Simmons' wealth has been estimated at $100m - accrued through the band and solo ventures such as the Channel 4 reality series Rock School - but he won't confirm it. 'We're very blessed, it's a privilege to do what we do - and let's say we make a living,' he hedges. 'Margaret Thatcher set the record straight: it's not having money that's the root of all evil.' From their 85m album sales and a vast array of merchandise - the band have granted 2,500 licences, ranging from Kiss condoms, to Kiss caskets, to 'fine art' - we can probably assume they're comfortably off.
At any rate, they're loaded enough to take a vast show on the road, which is all the more impressive given that they have no record deal and are funding it themselves. Having staged at least two 'farewell' tours since 2000, they have now dispensed with the pretence that they'll ever retire, and the current Kiss Alive/35 Tour (celebrating the 35th anniversary of their first gig) supports their boast that they're the most spectacular live act in hard rock. Later tonight, at Munich's Olympiahalle, they'll stomp out a set that is the ludicrous last word in pyrotechnics and effects; for 90 minutes, the arena will belong to a quartet of aliens who've invaded from the 70s and brought platforms, PVC and rhinestone codpieces with them.
At the moment, in this plush suite overlooking a tree-fringed beer garden, Simmons and Stanley look like a couple of off-duty American rock dudes: denim and shades for the saturnine Simmons, silver jewellery and chest-hair for his bandmate. The other founder members, drummer Peter Criss and guitarist Ace Frehley, are long departed, and their costumes now inhabited by session musicians. Audiences don't seem to mind; it's the characters - known as Demon (Simmons), Starchild (Stanley), Space Ace (whichever jobbing guitarist is filling in for Frehley) and Catman (as before, but substitute drummer for guitarist, and Criss for Frehley) - they've come to see, and they're unconcerned about who's behind the facepaint. Stanley views the anonymity as a route to even more cash. 'I've always thought Kiss should continue even if there are no original members. The iconic characters and faces can go to Africa or India or anywhere, and everyone knows the faces. The vast majority of the public knows Kiss without dissecting who's behind the masks. It was true 35 years ago, and it'll be true 35 years from now.'
Starchild sports diamante stars on a Lycra catsuit, with a black star covering half his face; Demon wears a bat-wing cape and greasepaint 'flames' around his eyes, the gruesomeness increased by the frequent appearance of his supposedly seven-inch long tongue. The campery of it all is rooted in the same 70s traditions as Alice Cooper and the New York Dolls, the bands who inspired them when they were struggling nobodies from New York's outer boroughs. Even with the booming nostalgia market, there's no good reason they should still be selling out arenas. Yet the look, and the thrashing glam rock that accompanies it, is evidently still potent today. Six hours from now, a packed venue will sing along, in English, to every song, and Simmons assures me that they get the same reaction everywhere. 'They love us. And we get a wide spectrum at gigs, from kids in makeup to girls in the front row airing out their goods.'
'Airing out their goods' - lifting their tops to display what's underneath - is a typically Simmons turn of phrase, from which you could infer that he has an unreconstructed attitude toward women. And you wouldn't be wrong. A lifelong teetotaller and non-smoker, he directs his energies toward an almost parodic appreciation of the opposite sex - his website even has a section titled Ladies in Waiting, dedicated to mildly provocative pictures posed and sent by female fans. But the 'ladies in waiting' choose to do it, for whatever reason, just as a young woman recently chose to appear with him in a sex tape that's been doing the rounds on the internet. (Simmons is married with children, and the tape subject to legal proceedings, so he won't discuss it.) With so many willing partners, he can't be blamed for describing his life as 'like being on a Disney ride with lap dancers'.
Where Simmons seemingly thinks only about money, sex, then money again, then sex again, Stanley has been pondering Kiss's legacy. 'Look,' he says, 'the greatest thing about being creative is turning the intangible into the tangible, whether it's the spectacle or the music or the costumes. When people ask if we're gonna put out a new album, we say, 'Why?' Because if we do, someone's gonna say, 'Yeah, that's great, but play Detroit Rock City.'
If they stick to their word, and let's hope they do, the last Kiss album will remain 1998's Psycho Circus, which doesn't figure in their current show. If only all veteran bands were realistic enough to realise that new albums are very much surplus to requirement. But Kiss's willingness to give their audience what it wants - the hits, in other words - doesn't mean they're without ego. Very much the opposite.
Asked what they thought of being namechecked in the Robbie Williams song Strong ('Every morning when I wake up, I look like Kiss, but without the makeup'), Stanley smiles serenely. 'I liked it. When I ran into him in LA, I think he was afraid I was gonna deck him. But I liked it.' He chuckles as a thought strikes him. 'But, as big as Robbie Williams is, he's not in one of our songs.'
Simmons nods. 'And other bands have mentioned us, too, as they should - Weezer, Jimmy Buffet, Cheap Trick. And that's nice, and our DVD box set selling 19 times platinum in the last few years is nice, but the best award is being able to play to living, breathing fans.' Stanley adds, without irony: 'It's glorious to return as returning kings - showing the world we are Kiss.'
Their high self-esteem probably owes something to their remoteness from the current music scene, which Simmons has described as 'little boys in little bands'. Liberated from the need to sell records yet playing for 10,000 air-punching fans at a time, they're in a position that most other groups of their vintage can only envy. 'All the [bands] who talk about music, music, music,' says Simmons, waving his hand dismissively. 'It's more. It's a lifestyle. It's running away with the circus, it's wine, women and song.'
Stanley fervently agrees. 'You have to practise what you preach, and if you're on stage preaching a lifestyle you don't practise, it's stupid.' And they'll be practising it for as long as they can stand up on stage, if not beyond. Stanley's 2005 hip replacement was preceded by operations on both knees, and he proclaims himself ready to rock and roll all nite for the next 20 years. 'I'm proud of all my battle scars, and I'm good for another 50,000 miles.'
The next time I see Kiss, they're in full makeup, striding down a backstage corridor at the Olympiahalle, a 12,000-seat arena built for the 1972 Olympics. Starchild and Demon are quite unrecognisable as this afternoon's denim-clad millionaires - in their boots, they're getting on for seven feet tall, and the white makeup transforms them into ghouls. As they pass a photographer, Simmons's tongue unfurls to its full length. This is undeniably impressive. Stanley was right: there's something majestic about them.
There's a quick meet-and-greet with a roomful of competition winners, who make British metal fans seem reserved, and the band sink their palms into a slab of wet cement for the venue's wall of fame. Then it's on stage, Stanley bellowing the slogan that opens every show: 'You wanted the best, you got the best! The hottest band in the world!' Cannons shoot confetti, Simmons spits fire, fireworks blaze upward, and 12,000 Germans sing the chorus to Hotter than Hell: 'Hot, hot, hotter than hell!'
Kiss have always been despised by the critics, but watching the Munich crowd, something Simmons said comes to mind: 'We're really grateful to the fans. Every band would give their left nut to have our fans. The masses know things that the media don't.'
路 Kiss headline the Download festival, Castle Donington, on Friday June 13