Gene Simmons Opens Up: Coming To America With Nothing, The Mindset That Built An Empire & The Man Behind The Makeup

0:29Did you ever doubt yourself? All great champions do. They psych themselves up. I'm going to win it. I am the champion. I am the greatest. I heard Muhammad Ali doing that. I never heard a human being talk like that publicly. Like, who is this guy? Actually, he was stating fact. It's our problem that we thought, well, you're not supposed to say that. Why not? Why not set greatness in front of you and then work towards achieving it? Yeah, that's true. What have you learned about fame that you wish everyone knew? if you become famous.

1:08And I heard an interesting story, or a very powerful story, that when you and your mother were trying to get to America and trying to come here and migrate to America, what was the lesson you learned from your mom and the courage to get over? My father had gone, so the provider was no longer there because my mother stayed at home while he worked. So once my father left, my mother was forced to go out there while I went to school. So when I'd come home from school at 3, 4, whatever it is in the afternoon, I was alone at 6, 7 years of age and would cry myself to sleep because my mother would work until late at night, six days out of the week.

1:57There was no such thing as five days, two weeks. two days off. And in Israel, it's the Sabbath, Saturday that you take off. Sunday, you go right back to work from 6 a.m. until 7, 7.30 p.m. And so both of my mother's brothers became successful in America. They already came to America. Yes, right before World War II. My mother and my father went to Israel in 1949, and both brothers had already started working in America. And the stories I could tell you about my Uncle George, until the day he passed, he loved Wonder Bread. In those days, you could, for 29 cents, you could buy a whole loaf. He would buy a whole loaf with water and sit in a park bench in Central Park.

2:50And to him, it was like eating cake from kings. He would just eat the bread and drink water because you didn't have it in Europe. There was barely any. The fact that he could eat an entire loaf of bread by himself and nobody would kill him to get a slice of bread was beyond anything because Europe never really recovered from the 1929 stock market crash. People were killing each other all the time and in concentration camps, if you had a loaf of bread, they'd kill you for that. It's a different world. In America, the land of plenty, even during World War II, people ate, you know, we grew wheat.

3:31So her brothers were already here. And successful. And successful. So they said, hey, you come over and stay with us? That's exactly right. Was it that easy to kind of, you know, leave the country at that time? So when my mother came to America, She had to work, you know, the whole time. And I was, I remember going into my Uncle Larry's house, and they had their own house with a basement and stuff. I mean, I just couldn't. And you'd look out the door, and there were paved streets and cars going everywhere, and people were fat. And I never saw a refrigerator. We had a box, and if you had a piece of ice, you'd stuck it in there so you can have milk.

4:14By the way, not branded. they'd give you a sheet of newspaper and your week's piece of meat and your week's butter. There was a new country. There was nothing. There were no stores. People can't fathom that. I remember all that. And I remember just everything was new. You know, you have branding cups and canned food. I never saw canned food until we got our first care package from the UN and we opened up the box and there was a I get choked up when I and there was a can of peaches hmm and I never saw okay I know people are gonna think well he's exaggerating no I never saw a can of food there were no supermarkets or grocery stores nothing you lived in hills and I remember taking the can and they were a full color picture of peaches dripping with stuff.

5:16And I remember at about seven years of age looking at it and my mother grabbed that out of my hand and she took a big rock, there's no such thing as can openers, and she put it on the ground and banged into it and then peeled back the metal so the sharp stuff was going there and she gave it into my hands and my little hands grabbed it and I looked and saw the yellow peaches inside and my mother said you know in Hungarian because I spoke Hungarian Hebrew Turkish Spanish and those stuff and I remember tasting it and I sorry I'm getting a little for Clamtear. Never tasted anything. I still taste it.

6:07Never tasted anything so sweet or anything and I wanted to show my mother and she was like we were just amazed at this thing. And the fact that this and it also had a Bugs Bunny book colored with these going down the road and all that. I never heard of Bugs Bunny. And a sweater that was all torn. My mother put it on me It was all too big, but it was colorful and all that. And my mother would read me the same Bugs Bunny book every night, but she had to make up the words in Hungarian because she couldn't speak Hebrew and the words were in English. So she'd make it up and I'd just look at the pictures and I'd go to sleep with that.

6:50And as a matter of fact, Mel Blanc, a Jew who did all the voices for all the warrants, who did all the voices, Daffy Duck and Melton, you know, all that. Elmer Fudd told him the story, and he said, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do these voices for the children whose lives had changed.

7:12And which is why as soon as I got some money, I made sure that I took a bunch of money and sent it to kids in need, originally through the Christian Child Fund and then became the child fund. And to this day, support 1 ,400 kids in Africa who, if they don't go to school, won't get clothes and won't get fed. That means you'll starve because there's nothing there. Zambia. You come to school, you get fed and stuff. So it teaches you that school has it. So I got lost. What was the question? Well, really about your experience when you got to America. You never saw anything like this before. You never experienced the taste, the foods, the refrigerator, all these things.

8:01I was in the kitchen with my Aunt Magda, who herself survived the camps and had some problems. And she married my Uncle Larry, who was my mother's brother. And we go into the kitchen because there was always another room. There were bedrooms and like a palace. You can't believe it. And there's this big white box or something and a metal thing. And my Aunt Magda opened it. And I was, you know, I was a little kid. I never saw anything like it. And it's just food. There's wrappers and food and cheese and things. And on the side, I'll never forget it, my Aunt Magda, I was attracted to the red because it was a jar of red.

8:46And I later remembered it was Schmuckers. With a name like that, it's got to be good. It was Schmuckers jelly. Out of Ohio. And my mother said to me in Hungarian, you know, have some. And my Aunt Magda opened the can. I'd never seen that before. You don't understand. In Israel, they'd give you a slab of whatever, butter, never jelly. And that would be it for the week. You'd have to make it. There was no refrigeration or anything. So my Aunt Magda gave me a spoon. And in broken Hebrew, she must have said, taste it. Because she was fascinated that I wasn't quite sure what it was. I'm only halting because if you weren't here, I'd start bawling.

9:38And I thought she said, eat it. Because she gave me a spoon. So I started like a Christmas goose. I just started my mouth full of jam with the jam falling off, just eating it because I never tasted anything like that, the entire jar. And both my mother and my Aunt Magda were laughing so much, they were in tears, and I didn't know what was going on. I just said, this is the best thing I ever had. And America just kept, and then I was afraid of crossing. I still have the marbles. I was afraid of crossing the street because cars were going by. You know, people cross. I didn't understand it. So I walked around the block and I saw other houses next to each other.

10:25I said, this is like, where are all these houses? Everybody's rich. Yeah, everybody's rich. And I went to the other side of the street. Then I had to come back and went a little further. Then eventually went around. I thought if I went around, I'd get lost. I didn't know that came around to this. I know it sounds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And on the other side, eventually, I saw some guys playing marbles on the grass, which would be, I don't know if you have a marble or something. No. And they're throwing it like this. It's not what we did in Israel. You stood up on two legs, and you went like that. And you get really good, because you can aim it on the ground.

11:04If you do the marbles like that, you know, the ground would make the marble another thing. and what are you stupid can't you speak English yeah I know I don't know that good god it's an idiot I play I play yeah here they gave me a marble or two I won all their marbles they didn't laugh for long yeah I still have all the marbles I won about 80 of them really in an old Dutch masters cigar box that's cool. To remind me, don't ever take shit from anybody. Just roll up your sleeves and go to work. Wow. Make them work for you. How did that make you feel, though, when you didn't speak the language, you didn't have any friends, when you came to America, you're in this new world?

11:50How did that make you feel? Were you more excited or more scared? I've never been scared, not after my mother survived Nazi Germany, but I've always felt like an outsider. I still don't feel like an outsider. Maybe that's okay. Maybe I want to be like everybody else. I want to be an ordinary guy. No, I don't want to be an ordinary guy. I want to be an extraordinary guy. I want to excel at anything that I try to do, and I'm willing to work harder than you do. And the only thing that prevented me from getting into sports and everything else is because the pragmatism in me tells me that you've got a short life.

12:29When you enter sports or things like that, If you get an ankle, you're done. But I can be a banker or a lawyer or a teacher, think forever. It made more sense and therefore more dollars. Yes, if you're lucky, because every kid in every poor neighborhood wants to be the baseball player or the football player and stuff like that. Because 50 million, Carmelo Anthony made it. And for a while I worked with Carmelo. They make all this money. You don't see the tens of thousands and millions of carcasses on the side of the road that wanted to put all their eggs in one basket and achieve nothing. You only see, you know, the tip of the iceberg.

13:11Yeah, the winners. Oh, that means anybody can do it. That's a fallacy. So when did music start to come into your life? Because I heard a story that you saw the Beatles on TV when you were 13. Was music something you were interested in before then? or did that open your mind to a world of, oh, dreaming that maybe I could be this one day? I didn't put the two and two equals four thing together. I was more an observer on life because in America there were so many attention deficit disorders, so many different things going by. There was sports and television and radio and all that stuff going by. And so I worked.

13:53And when I was about 13, I came home. Yes, I worked on Sundays. And Sunday nights, I'm pretty sure it was the Ed Sullivan Show, unlike any show that's ever been on TV. At that time, in 1963, 64, the population of America was 170 million people. About that. Now it's double that. It's 330 million. and the Ed Sullivan show was so big they had pooping elephants and comedians and puppet guys and you know one rock band for the kids and I remember coming home from work and my mother got one of those TV dinners people have no idea what that is but you buy them frozen because poor mom had to go work and it was like this kind of like old shoes crunched into like burgers with peas and some mashed potatoes, and you pour the gravy, and that was it.

14:49And I didn't know anything. I liked it. So I was eating it, and ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles! And I'm going, what is that? And by the way, I've met the biggest stars in the world, especially musicians. They all point to that pivotal moment. Scientists call it a singularity. all of a sudden these feminine looking guys with hair over their ears because in those days even shorter than your hair you'd see the meat between the ear and the hairline above it yeah or like crew cuts and these guys talk like that you know i work my fingers to the bell and all that like what is that and they're small compared to ed sullivan and everything you know kind of feminine in a way because americans were bigger and and fatter and stuff and these guys were all you know like bone thin and spoke strangely i didn't understand i was watching and i thought gee they look weird and i remember my mother coming in and saying gee i think they look weird and bango at that moment i said no they're cool because my mother thinks They're weird.

16:01You want your own thing. You don't want to do Lawrence Welk. You never heard of Lawrence Welk? Oh, my God. Kill me now. Oh, man. Lawrence Welk was on every Sunday, and it was mom and dad music. Okay. Ooh, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo. Okay, and now we're going to do the polka. Yeah. So since your mom said it was weird, and you were like, that's cool then. Right. Uh-huh. And it's different. And different is better than... Different is good. Yeah, different is good. But you were... I mean, you're a branding and marketing genius when it comes with... That word genius is not right. I've been careful, so I win.

16:42Well, you've been a branding and marketing master at studying and executing it. A success. Yeah, at studying and executing how to brand yourself. I mean, your book, Me, Inc., you built a personal brand before personal branding was a thing. You studied how to be unique and different from seeing the Beatles and other people, I'm assuming. Well, more specifically, how to be Disney without the overhead. But it's not as difficult as people think it is because unlike other countries, all information is available for free to anyone who wants to put in the time. And it's the house of God, otherwise known as the library.

17:24Don't forget that second R in the middle. It's not library, it's library. And I used to go to the library every day after yeshiva. I was studying to be a rabbi, but then I discovered girls. So I was in school, yeshiva, which means the sitting, the whole day. And afterwards, I'd go to the library, which was only a few blocks down. And I'm the only guy I've ever met or talked to who's actually read the Encyclopedia Britannica. Cover to cover. Wow. I am the corniest, most boring guy at a party. When did you feel like you were able to really monetize the artistic gift that you were developing? Take it more either in the country, globally, like when did that start to happen?

18:13You said, oh, this is more than just weekend parties. Yeah. In 19, even during college, I went to the State University, upstate New York, took out my own bank loan, paid for it myself and all that. So afternoons, I'd be the lifeguard at the Pines Hotel up in the Catskill Mountains, otherwise called the Jewish Mountains, literally. because every weekend you'd have Jerry Lewis there and like all these guys, Milton Berle. And so I worked right after I'd finished classes and I'd go make some more money. And on the weekends, the Wicked, not Wicked Lester, but what was it called? Bullfrog Beer. That was the college band.

19:03And we played covers and some of my original songs, which by then I learned how to write my own songs. Not very good. Two of them or so wound up being Kiss songs. And during one weekend, I'd make more money with the band, having fun with the chicks and the attention and all that, than I would the whole week working. It started to make more financial sense. Yes, I had more fun. And then I graduated 1972 from the City University at Richmond College and started teaching sixth grade in Spanish Harlem. segue to being the assistant to the editor of Vogue magazine assistant to the director of the Puerto Rican Interagency Council a government funded research and demonstration project where I saved$23 ,000 by the time I was 23 years of village I lived at home, makes more sense you want to meet a chick, go to the Holiday Inn, otherwise save your money Yeah.

20:12Save your money. Lived at home when I didn't need to spend money. But, of course, I contributed a little bit. And I met another guy who shared the love of English music, which is really American music, Anglicized. We were Anglophiles, the Beatles and the Stones and Zeppelin and, you know, all that. and made our own pastiche, our own thing, like they did their own thing of American music. And by 1973, we got signed to Casablanca Records, a new record label. How old were you this time, roughly? Just after college? 23. Okay. 22. Was this called Kiss at the time or no? Yes, we became Kiss. And you got signed, but how big were the venues where you were playing before you got signed?

21:13We played clubs from nothing to everything. Really? Yes. We played New Year's Eve, fourth on the bill at the Academy of Music in New York City, 1973-74. And two months after that, the first album came out. We were fourth on the bill. Kiss, Teenage Lust, which was a local band, Iggy Pop, and Blue Oyster Cult. And on the first, by the third song, I'm spitting fire. If we're full makeup, my hair catches fire, and we're on the covers of all the magazines and everything. New band from Hellfire, and you know, all this kind of stuff. I was just glad to be alive. But within a year and a half of coming out, before MTV, before cell phones.

22:01We had still rotary calls. Superman was still going into that booth and changing. Of course, people can't see him taking off his pants because he's in a phone booth. While all this was happening, within a year and a half, we're headlining Anaheim Stadium in Los Angeles. Wow. Yeah, just that overnight thing. We had no hit singles, nothing. Really? Yes, it became what the Germans called Zeitgeist, the water cooler conversation. The way you spread your brand in those days were rock magazines, circus and raves and all these colorful magazines that had posters. And we were always on the cover because the rest of the band is just boring.

22:43Yeah, they're not visual. So our brand and people, you know, the fans, we started selling out multiple days in arenas before we even had a gold record. Interesting. It went ass backwards. So you guys developed a brand almost before you developed the music. That's right. It's like you were like, let's create the image of us. Let's create the persona. You're giving us too much credit. We didn't know anything. You weren't thinking about it. No. But that's what happened. You were just rock and roll gypsies. Right. You were glad you didn't have to do nine to five. Right. And be in the same cubicle, doing the same thing.

23:23That's interesting. Did you intentionally think about let's be so different so that people pay attention? Or were you just like, let's have fun and just be playful? Or how did this character develop? None of that. Scientists either call it a singularity or an anomaly. We were rehearsing doing these songs that Paul Stanley and I wrote. Stanley Eisen. Oh, Eisenberger. And I started writing. And then Ace Frehley contributed a song or two. and as we heard, you know, this kind of sounds pretty good and we had Peter Criss on drums and everybody could sing everybody could play and then instead of doing a market analysis or anything I recall clearly because I never got high or drunk one of us, and I can't tell you who, said let's go down to Woolworths which was like a department's lot.

24:22And it was around Halloween, I believe, and they had a lot of gimmicky things like plastic ice cubes with fake flies in the middle that you could stick in your girlfriend's drinks or whoopee cushions. You know what a whoopee cushion is? Yeah, yeah. Sit on it and make a part. Yeah, yeah. And we went down there and said, let's buy clown makeup. And we literally, almost like our hands were being directed, bought Stein's Clown White, Stein's Clown Black, Black Stick. Paul bought red lipstick, a few other things. And we went up to the rat-infested loft where we rehearsed and found ourselves hypnotically looking in the mirror and putting on makeup without anybody telling anybody what to do or what to think or do.

25:15It just happened. It sounds suspicious. And then when we looked around the room, we were fascinated by, wow, that kind of... That kind of cool. Kind of looks... Yeah, different kind of cool. So much so that, and because I'm kind of a make a list, check it twice, find out I'm that kind of a guy. I worked in offices all my life. there was no manager so I was calling local gigs clubs to try to get us and then booked ourselves in for I don't know$35 a night to Coventry and there was nobody there we had my girlfriend somebody else there was like five people but for us we were at Madison Square Garden and then the second show was at The Daisy in Amityville where they had Jaws and all that, and the Amity Vihara and all that, in Long Island.

26:17And shortly thereafter, we got signed. We barely played any shows. That's crazy to think about. And then a year and a half later, you're selling out arenas. Breaking so much so that within two years of that, we're breaking the Beatles record in Japan and playing five days, I think, at the largest arena, Budokan. And before bands were playing stadiums, we're doing multiple days in Australia in stadiums. 1980, 1980. Where do you think you'd be if you guys didn't put makeup on that first day? You mean if I wasn't in a band or would Kiss have done as well without the makeup? Without the makeup. Like if you guys didn't go to that store and say, hey, let's start putting a makeup on, where do you think the band would be if you never did it like that?

27:07You just said, we're going to go out there and play and wear cool jeans and look like rock stars, but not put on the makeup or the... Yeah, jeans is so boring.

27:19If I'd have to say, not as big. Really? You could ask the Beatles, what would you have gotten as far with the same songs and everything, if you didn't have the matching haircuts.

27:38It's always pieces of the puzzle that somehow fit that make the whole bigger than the sum of its parts, which are fancy words that says all of it helps. It did, yeah. And if you take like a house of cards, if you take any one of those, it's just one card, maybe all of it comes down. Interesting. It's so interesting to think about. I get paid a lot of money for this kind of stuff. Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm kind of a big deal. I know. I know you are. Now, when did you... Was there ever a moment in your career where you said, early on, where you said, I'm actually going to use this. This is working.

28:18You know, wearing the makeup, putting on the outfits in this way, it's working. I'm going to make it a character. I'm going to make it an alter ego. I was always aware that character is not the right thing. It's persona. persona, not alter ego, or... Alter ego, and by the way, I know people get so upset when I keep bringing up the Jew stuff, but the idea of the alter ego was created by them also. Okay. All the superheroes, Superman, yes, Batman, the Hulk, fantastic, were all created by Jews who dress British, think Yiddish. The idea of the weak man and the secret superman. Der Übermensch. Well, that's Nietzsche.

29:05And all created by disenfranchised people who never felt powerful. So the superhero was created by those guys who were never lifting weights, couldn't dribble a basketball, but they owned the teams. Yeah, or they built the IP or whatever it might be. So did you think about building the persona or the alter ego as you were developing the band then? No, it happened very quickly and you react to market. The smart people react to the market. And immediately, we didn't think about it, but fans started to make homegrown t-shirts. Oh, they want t-shirts. Let's make t-shirts. And they wanted... We were aware that if you were a, I don't know, a Joe Cocker fan or somebody, you didn't necessarily want to look like Joe Cocker.

30:00And Joe was a fantastic artist. It was music. And somehow we would, we didn't plan it. We want it to be unique and all that's true. But we didn't quite understand the cultural significance of the idea that you may not be able to be in Kiss, but you can feel like it. How many more tennis rackets did we sell because people bought those and put on Kiss makeup and pretended when they were 13 that they were in a band? because just as soon as you and i'll show you photos of lenny kravitz when he was 13 like all down the line these people going what did he was kicked out of school for at 13 coming to school dressed like that that's interesting but he wouldn't be kicked out of school for coming to school dressed like george harrison right right yeah but that's not cool no it is cool but it

31:06It doesn't get attention. There's nothing negative I can say about the Beatles, but market research. Market research is a strange thing. It makes assessments based on the way things actually are. So Mount Rushmore, you've heard of it. Could you tell me who the fourth bases are? Yes. I've been there. I mean. Yeah, you've been there and you still don't. Washington. Yeah. It bears noting that market research says the four Kiss faces are more well known on the entire planet than Mount Rushmore. That's great. That's great. You can go to Africa, and as soon as they see one of the four faces, they say it's Kiss.