It was announced today (Wednesday, March 1) during an episode of “The Howard Stern Show” that KISS will be having their final shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City on December 1 and December 2.
KISS began their final tour in early 2019 but had to halt it when the coronavirus outbreak occurred in 2020.
“End Of The Road” was originally scheduled to conclude on July 17, 2021 in New York City but has since been extended to late 2023. The trek was announced in September 2018 following a KISS performance of the band’s classic song “Detroit Rock City” on “America’s Got Talent”.
Last month, Doc McGhee, the long-term manager of KISS, declared to “Podcast Rock City” that their last performance will occur in 2023 without a doubt.
When questioned about the feasibility of KISS carrying on without its original members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, Doc responded: “There’s a lot of talk about everything. And nobody knows what’s gonna happen in the future. So what we’ve kind of put in our minds is let’s go through this like this is the end of KISS as we know it. And whatever comes our way, with technology and everything else, we’ll look at it. Will be Gene and Paul out there in makeup. No. I can tell you that. They’re hanging their hats up after the [final] show, which is gonna be very, very difficult and very emotional for them after 50 years of doing this. And they love it.
He continued: “A lot of my bands — most of my bands — [say], ‘I hate this. I don’t wanna be out there anymore. I don’t wanna do this. This is bullsh*t.’ That’s not [Paul and Gene]. They love it. They thrive on it. We have a great time on the road, or an extremely good time on the road. So, it’s, like, ‘Why are we ending this?’ And we’re ending this because this is the time to end it.
“This is it, 50 years of KISS. And let them move on to their next phase of whatever they wanna do, whether it’s Gene in business or having a country named after him, the Gene Simmons World; we don’t know, however that works. And Paul‘s got a family. He’s got three kids — he actually has four kids, but he’s got three kids in the house.
“For us, we’re just kind of open,” McGhee added. “People are throwing ideas around to us, and then we’ll look at it. But, really, it has to be amazing. We don’t fall for gimmicks, as much as some people would think we’re a gimmick. But we don’t fall for ’em. We didn’t do NFTs, we didn’t do all that stuff, because we didn’t believe in it. We didn’t believe that people were gonna get anything out of it. And it wasn’t gonna be long-lasting.
“I like to think years and years ahead; I don’t like to think days ahead. So with that, we’re gonna go and finish this up and see what happens in the realm of the metaverse and the world of that type of things that can come back and people can experience things in different ways for KISS.
“To me, KISS is more like Marvel. There’s all kinds of things that can happen with KISS, and probably will. So it’s a whole new frontier out there starting in ’24.”
