During the recent “KISS Kruise: Landlocked In Vegas” event, Gene Simmons opened up about his longtime former bandmates Peter Criss and the late Ace Frehley. While the Q&A session touched on a wide range of topics — from career longevity to the band’s future — Simmons’ reflections on the original members stood out as some of the most heartfelt comments of the evening.
When asked if he carries any regrets from KISS’s five-decade history, Simmons didn’t hesitate to acknowledge his own shortcomings. Looking back at the band’s turbulent years, he admitted that the drive to keep KISS moving forward sometimes overshadowed efforts to truly help those closest to him.
“If I have any regrets, it’s that I sometimes — and I think we all go through this — wish we were smarter and better at trying to help Ace [Frehley] and Peter [Criss] have better lives,” Simmons confessed. “All of us are guilty of it, and so am I — ‘I don’t want to start an argument. Let’s just continue doing the tour,’ because you want to get through it for selfish reasons because it’s working and the chicks and the money… [In the] meantime, somebody who might be your brother is ruining their life by bad decisions.”
Simmons went on to say that, with hindsight, he wishes he had taken a more proactive role in confronting the problems his bandmates were facing.
“I wish I would have practiced more tough love and been more in the face of people that we cared about… Tough love is a good idea in my opinion… It’s not going to be a popular thing — you’re going to argue about it — but in the long run, you’re going to be helping that person hopefully change their life.”
While Simmons reflected on the past, Paul Stanley used the moment to speak on the band’s resilience — especially during the challenging commercial years of the 1980s.
“I remember thinking, ‘Nobody [else] is going to decide when this is over,’ and that’s enough of a reason for it to continue — to show those pr*cks that we decide how long this is going to go on,” Stanley said. “What mattered to me was KISS, and if somebody wasn’t bailing water and the ship was sinking… I just worked that much harder, because I love the band, and the most important thing to me was to see the band survive.”
Despite the ongoing speculation about whether KISS might ever return to the stage, Stanley kept expectations grounded, stating: “We haven’t talked about it… What we’ll do at this point? I have no idea.”
Simmons, however, reassured fans that while the touring chapter may be closed, the KISS legacy is far from winding down.
“Despite the fact that some of you think that this is the sunset, I promise you, this is the beginning,” he said. “This is the caterpillar that’s going to become the beautiful butterfly. We’ve seen plans for the future, and it will blow your mind.”
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