Paul Stanley

0:06Pushkin.

0:10Today on Broken Record, I'm joined by a true rock icon, the star child himself, KISS co-founder and frontman Paul Stanley. Paul grew up in New York City where he fell in love with music attending shows at Manhattan venues like the legendary Fillmore East. Of course, he himself, as part of Kiss over 50 years, built one of the most fervently devoted fan bases in music history by turning spectacle into art. Now that Kiss has officially retired from the road, Paul reflects on life after the makeup, what fuels his creativity these days, and what it means to have reached the 50th anniversary of the Kiss Army.

0:46He also shares his personal top five Kiss albums and gives us a preview of Kiss Storm Vegas, the upcoming event that proves the end of touring doesn't mean the end of the show. This is Broken Record. Real musicians, real conversations. This is an iHeart Podcast. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

1:38That's your business, supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S. where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. Every great music conversation goes beyond the surface. The influence that shaped an artist's sound. The moment that changed their creative direction. The story behind the story that fans never hear. Cloud helps you discover those deeper connections. Upload interviews, liner notes, or music journalism, and Claude reveals patterns across an artist's entire journey, showing how influences become innovations.

2:19Whether you're a music journalist, passionate fan, or someone who loves understanding creative processes, Claude matches your curiosity about what really drives great artists. Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord. Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive. The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level.

2:56The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. Machines that make you feel more human. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something as a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. Here's my conversation with Paul Stanley. Oh, wow. How are you? The man, the myth, the legend. Is somebody else here? The guy behind you. I was talking about the guy behind you. Couldn't be you. No, you, of course. Wow. Great to meet you. Likewise. Great to meet you. Where are you at? in the world of things actually uh in the kiss warehouse that has to be um that has to be a incredible place it is it's like superman's fortress of solitude oh man how long have you guys had like a a warehouse oh since pretty much the beginning of the band although that's changed over the years location has changed over the years but we've always needed a place, uh, not only for musical instruments, but for stage pieces and all the miscellaneous stuff that goes along with a tour.

4:12Wow. Do you ever, I mean, you know, talking to you or anyone else from Kiss, it's in, in a weird way, like talking to, um, anyone from, you know, like Paul or Ringo or Mick or Keith or even Ronnie, it's like, you guys have had such long and storied careers and been asked everything but i have to imagine every once in a while going through the warehouse there's something you you see that you're shocked by or just didn't remember or or you're surprised to see or find um mainly it's just uh i think i have a really good memory and yet sometimes friends of mine will say remember uh in new york when we had dinner with so-and-so and so-and-so, and I'm like, for the life of me, I can't remember.

4:59So in terms of the band, my memory is really, really pretty, pretty strong. We can talk about the show that we did at the Capitol Center in Largo, Maryland, outside D.C., or we could talk about playing the Stanley Warner Theater in Pittsburgh or the Tower Theater. You know, my memory is, at least with the band, very, very, very, I'm quite lucid. Why do you think the band is the one part that you're able to compartmentalize and remember every little bit of it? I guess, you know, I would think that if you visit Disneyland, you'll remember everything you did. And I've been living in Disneyland.

5:47that's um that's a great way to great way to put it it's uh even even the early days of the band pre pre-alive when you guys were you know alive obviously most people who are at least our fans will know alive is really when the band hits and you guys break but it seems like even before that Like you guys were really, I mean, somehow living, you know, the rock star lifestyle. Like you guys were, in a sense, it almost appeared as if you guys had made it the way, you know, the stories. I think certainly there was a all for one and one for all attitude. And we felt like we were on a crusade. We were going to make converts of everybody, and it had nothing to do with our musical prowess, certainly at that point, but it had to do with a commitment to the band, to what we were doing, and to the fans.

6:47I have to say that initially, a lot of the earliest songs were almost us writing about things that we really hadn't experienced. It was almost wishful thinking. By the third album, we were really living it. You know, Strutter was about the women that I would see in the streets in Greenwich Village. There was this huge musical band renaissance of what became known as glitter, the glitter bands, or kind of like that androgynous look. and the women, the girlfriends, were wearing silks and satins and fishnet stockings, and they didn't want anything to do with me. But I wrote about that. I wrote about Black Diamond.

7:48Literally, by the time we were doing songs like Room Service, that's what I was living. All of a sudden, you go from wishing for something to actually being immersed in it. Was it, at what point do you start to realize like, God, this isn't everything? You know, this actually isn't all that you can want out of life. There's more to it. Well, you know, that's a tough question because when you're first exposed to something, how much cake can you eat? You know, you won't know until you eat it all. um you know um i i i think at least in my case it took a bit of time before i went you know although this is what i was on a quest to achieve once you achieve it i found myself going is this everything you know some some people aspire to something and think it's going to be a cure-all and are disappointed in a way when that's not the case and either wind up with a needle in their arm or a gun in their mouth.

9:03You know, I made it a challenge. Okay, let's see what else is out there. You know, what else do I need to complete who I am? But it certainly gave me the ability to do that. and uh along the way i was having a great time you know there's there's uh no i have no complaints about any aspect or time period in my life there's nothing you look back and wish you had handled it different or i'd like to say that i always did the best i could and nonetheless i'd say when our second drummer eric car when he had heart cancer i wish that i wish that i had realized that um i couldn't fathom the idea of him dying so i didn't deal with it the way i i would today I think, you know, there were certainly mistakes, I think, made in that period.

10:15And again, I was, you're limited by what, by your limitations. You're limited by what you know and how you perceive things and where you are in your life. So everything that you do in life gets you to where you are today. That's right. Good and bad. And you change one thing, you change everything. So even whatever missteps or things that may have happened, they're responsible for where I am today. when i when i'm thinking about the fact that for so many years you you you both you and gene really had dealt with ace's indulgences and peter's indulgences and you know i mean thankfully they're still with us but i mean i could i could understand how you you might feel like you guys were insulated from that kind of you know there were a lot of tragedies in other bands but you guys really managed to avoid that for so long it's i guess until eric and it was this unusual thing you know it's a very different level when you're dealing with um facing somebody's mortality yeah when you're facing uh a diagnosis and a prognosis and somehow maybe your defense mechanism is to go, oh man, he'll beat the odds or he'll always be like this.

11:48But that was the only thing that I really can think of. I wish I knew better how that was going to end and really understood it. that you know the finality of death that's uh we don't get to deal with that that often at that age yeah yeah and like i said you guys were real fortunate for a rock and roll group you guys really managed to avoid a lot of the usual pitfalls more or less you know you guys i really i think that part of what has gotten us to where we are at this point i mean gene and i I've been together 56 years, is the idea that we can succeed. We can make things okay. I think that's really what it is.

12:47It's more than we'll make it okay, we'll fix it. At some point in life, you start to realize you can't fix everything. It's kind of humbling. the only person you can fix is you. So I think there's a sense of being more powerful than you are. Yeah. Did that feeling of you and Gene sort of being able to weather anything, was there a defining moment of that where you realized, oh, we got past this, now it feels like, or did it just sort of at some point occur like, yeah, of course. I think that maybe it's because we're both survivors innately. It's born into us. You know, our parents were impacted by the Holocaust.

13:45Jean's mom was in a concentration camp. My mom had to flee on hours notice as a child with her family and get on a train and leave everything behind and go to Amsterdam and then flee there. So I think that they're, I don't know that it's the children of Holocaust survivors. I do think that that plays into it, that there's a sense of survival, a sense of not being victimized. You're the master of your own destiny. And when that is challenged, that usually gets my back up that further. If somebody tells me something's impossible, then I have to do it. That's not always a good quality, but I like to think that both Gene and I want to make our own decisions and live our own lives.

14:49And Kiss has always been the same. there nobody decides for us who we are or what we are and that's probably what's kept us around as long as we will stand by our victories and we'll brush ourselves off when we fall and you know there are times we've fallen and uh we're we're not prone either one of us to stay down yeah your your final full stage show is a is a year and a half like behind you guys now um although there's this vegas event coming up and we'll talk about that storm um does it does it feel weird to have the touring part of your of your life wrapped up to have that done after all this time totally of course um you can fill i can fill that time but i can never replace what's lost um in in a sense it's a death um you miss something you can't get it back and you can fill that time but there there's absolutely a loss nothing can take the place of 20, 50, 100, 150 ,000 people in front of you and the energy and the love that they're giving and the appreciation of what I'm doing.

16:17I think ask Michael Jordan, ask any athlete. Um, when you, you give up something like that, there's no replacing it. You find things to fill time and fill the time well but um if to to say i don't miss it is i can miss it i don't i don't um i i don't live my life today thinking about yesterday it's pointless and it doesn't take advantage of today but is there any part of you that reflexively just feels like a tour must be right on the other side of next year you mean because you've been doing it's just like periods at home and then it's just almost at some point must feel reflexive to just be like oh i'm gonna go somewhere soon to you know um i say to people look i've been home before for the stretches of time the difference this time is i'm not leaving well so um yeah i can do other things and i can play and i i can do things with gene or there's lots of things for kiss to be doing and to move kiss into the future but the touring aspect which has been a major part of my life is gone do you do you still play at home oh yeah no nowhere near up to this point nowhere near what i once did but i was touring i was playing five nights a week there was recording so i i think that without even planning to i just took a break i just i just put down the guitar and thankfully when I pick it up, it sounds like me playing.

18:17Muscle memory. Although I could sharpen the blade a little bit, and I will. But yes, I still play and music's so much a part of my life. Music has been salvation for me, oxygen for me since I was a kid, since I was five, six years old. and I discovered music or was exposed to it. It's always been my sanctuary. What inspires you these days when you're around the house to pick up the guitars? Is there something you'll hear or a feeling you'll get? Oh, it's more curiosity. Gee, can I still do it? It's different. It's really different because throughout my life there was always a reason I was playing.

19:08I was playing with different bands or to get better or to learn certain things. And right now, it could change tomorrow. But right now, if I don't feel like it, I don't do it. But I'm fully aware that I will. I'm fully aware that, like other things, you take breaks. I think it's important in a lot of senses to get away from things. We'll be back with more from Paul Stanley.

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22:07This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. One of the things I think is universal to nearly everyone is that warm feeling you get when you find someone you feel comfortable sharing parts of your life with that otherwise you might just keep to yourself. Often it's a friend, sometimes it's a loved one, but in those moments you really take a load off. That's one of the things I've enjoyed most about therapy, that there's someone regularly in my life that I'm able to talk to about things I'd probably keep to myself for longer than I really needed to. And they're clinically trained and licensed to help.

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23:08Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash broken. That's Better H-E-L-P dot com slash broken. It's been, I mean, it's been a year and a half since the last tour. It's been even much longer since the last original album. In all that time, or even since you've stopped touring, do melodies ever still come to you or riff? Yeah, they do. And I don't feel the need right now to do anything with it. But you'll hear from so many people, the music business has changed enormously. And what we once sold or other major bands, acts once sold, for the most part, that doesn't exist anymore.

24:05So you have to be creating for a different reason. And I've known some people recently who put out some fantastic music, and after a week or so, it's off the charts because there just isn't that sustainability anymore. So there definitely is a sense of, do I really want to put that much work into something? And even though I know what the outcome probably is going to be, do I want to build up for that kind of disappointment? And that's not, I may say that and be honest about it, but I've known a lot of people who feel that. And, you know, the other people who go, oh, you know, I just, I create for me and this and that.

25:03That's true to a point, but you, you did it to become successful or you would never have played it for anybody. You wouldn't have left your room. So by design, you wanted acceptance, you wanted mass appeal, whatever it was. Otherwise, if you really did it for yourself, you'd keep it to yourself. But once you start putting it out there, if things don't go the way they once did or you anticipate, I see a point where people just go, I'll tour. And there are other acts and people who have done that. But look, when it comes down to it, if I wrote Let It Be Tomorrow and we put it out as Kiss, people would say, that's great, play Love Gun.

26:06It's just the nature of things. You go to see the Stones, you tolerate whatever they want to play until you hear Brown Sugar or Honky Tonk Woman. so if mccartney does a show if i see it on tv if i turn off the volume i'll let you know every time he's playing a new song because the audience sits down so you know if you want to keep writing you know god bless you i'm i am at a point now where i'm i'm not sure you know i mean this is one thing i'll say this is one thing i i i mean there's many things to like about kiss but one of the things i especially love about um you and gene is you guys have never never shied away from the fact that you you wanted to be successful there's no pretense around it and to the point that i mean and i guess let me ask you this even you know it's amazing but the self-titled album um um hotter than hell dressed to kill like you you're to this day still remain disappointed in those albums even as incredible as they are and beloved as they are well because they they don't sound the way i envisioned or hoped and they don't sound the way we sounded live and we didn't have the know-how or wherewithal at that point to make albums that reflected what we sounded like um That's why it took Kiss Alive to break through, because people loved us and came to see us, but the albums didn't really reflect what they had experienced.

27:49So, yeah, I mean, I would like to think that you don't love everything you do, because that doesn't leave any room. And, you know, if everything is great, how great is great? I mean, it's, you know, there's got to be degrees of stuff. And out of all the albums we've done, we always gave it our best. And some of them I listen to and go, or I don't listen to. And I go, you know, at that time there was this going on or that going on. And then there are other albums I think are really good. And then there's some albums I think are great. So I would hate to think everything that we do or I do is fantastic because it's not.

28:39If I had to ask you to rank your top five Kiss albums, what would you? For different reasons. The first has to be Kiss Alive. Because Kiss Alive really captured the essence of the live experience. Now, that couldn't have happened without us going in the studio and enhancing it and surrounding you with people. Live albums were boring before ours. You didn't even know they were live until the end of the song where you heard some clapping. But for Kiss, we wanted an album that immersed you, immersion in the experience, which means being surrounded by people, which means bombs going off that are deafening, which means fixing any mistakes or a broken string.

29:40people may have snobs or purists may have looked down their nose at that idea but the truth is that album is still considered if not the greatest one of the greatest and in a lot of circles greatest live album ever not because everything was live but because it captured the live experience so kiss alive destroyer, even though it didn't sound much like its predecessors, but working with Bob Ezrin was such an education, such a schooling discipline, and upping the writing, and putting aside, at least temporarily, all the songs about sleeping with this one or this groupier parties and it it it raised the bar so so destroyer so many of those songs wound up in our show up until the very end detroit rock city god of thunder beth um shouted out loud so destroyer um i would say sonic boom um sonic boom was a great album by a band that recognized its roots and recognized where it came from and picked up the slack and kept moving forward um I love that album, and I love the spirit that went into it, where everybody knew what they wanted to do.

31:32And at our best, and most people's best, I think comes from trying to make the team or the band or whatever you're involved in better. And that will make you look better than just trying to make you look better. and the teen spirit on sonic boom was really really palpable and great album great album and again if modern day delilah had been on rock and roll over it would be a classic but But songs take decades to gain that kind of patina or to have that life connection of when you heard that song at a certain time in your life. So as time went on, songs could be great, but they didn't have the luster of being tied to the past.

32:39so whether it was modern day delilah or hell or hallelujah hell or hallelujah is as good as any you know both of those tracks as good as any lead off kiss songs on any you know come on totally ridiculous and i just found myself going you know that's as good as it gets and it's a different time now and people don't connect to songs as timepieces or a sonic photograph of a certain period so but long story short so not really but um so sonic boom would be in the that top three uh top three and other than that i would say i like rock and roll over i like that that album again it doesn't sound anywhere near what we sounded like and that's after Kiss Alive, it was very elusive for us, perhaps because of some of the people we were working with.

33:43It just escaped us. We did something with real focus and clarity of what we were doing. So that's really good. I love Kiss Unplugged, that album. I just listened to some of that a couple of days ago. The band at that point was just on fire. No effects, no amplifiers, no running around. Us with guitars and drums and singing our asses off. And also it gave a chance to showcase the songs because I've always adhered to the idea that a good song can be played on one guitar. If you have to go, well, wait till you hear the sound effects on this song. No, a great song can be stripped away, and it's fantastic.

34:44So to hear Sure Know Something or I Still Love You, you hear those songs, and there's a wow factor just because it's that good. So Kiss Unplugged, I would put in there. I think that's four. That's six. No, that's six. There you go. Well, hold on. Alive, Destroyer, Sonic Boom, Rock and Roll Over, Revenge and Unplugged? Oh my gosh, yeah. Or is Unplugged going to replace Revenge? You don't have to. You can have six. You're Paul Stanley. Yeah, I would replace Revenge with Unplugged. I just, I love the simplicity and the fact that it's undeniable. It's just four guys with their instruments. It's cool, too.

35:37I mean, and it's really, it's one, I mean, revenge could be that, too. But, you know, you guys, it's part of you guys being able to have these really unique moments in any decade. And every decade since you started, you have these moments where you guys still show, well, early on it didn't matter, but we guys show we're still kids. We're kids. And there are some, but there's not a lot of groups that are able to every decade have some sort of touchstone where you can say like that's. Yeah. And for some people, that's a flaw. And to me, not at all. I mean, I think that whether it's art or music, rock and roll, whatever, it's about exploring.

36:28The band that did rock and roll all night also did Beth. I was made for loving you. You know, it's all over the place. And I like that. that some people would want us to just be one thing, but I don't want to be, and we've never been one thing because we have so many influences. And that was one of the things that I loved about concerts when I was in my teens, is that it was like getting a three-course meal. You'd go to see a show and there would be three bands who were completely unlike each other. And that's healthy. When you have an opening act that just sounds like the headliner but isn't as popular or whatever.

37:29I saw so many bills where it was bands that were so divergent in what they were doing. And that was what made it so interesting. So I guess that's what I've always followed. We'll be back with more from Paul Stanley after the break. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

38:16With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity, even in times of high demand. With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients. And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite to mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.