![]() ![]() It doesn’t matter to me at all if people remember it 10 years from now. Simmons, 36, didn’t dispute the suggestion that most fans who bought Kiss albums 10 or 12 years ago when they were teen-agers have outgrown the music.īut, he said, “I don’t think that’s what rock ‘n’ roll is about. ![]() It’s sex with a back beat, modern strip music.” I think people are fooling themselves (when they ask for adult themes from rock). But I don’t want to hear music that brings me down. “It doesn’t mean I ignore the other realities of life. Simmons believes that the best rock ‘n’ roll should serve the pleasure principle and ignore the intellect. Kiss made a quick about-face-including removing the greasepaint from its collective face in 1982-and has merrily continued on, racking up gold and platinum sales with heavy-rock albums that are long on guitar solos and sing-along choruses and short on lyrical maturity. “It was a terrible disaster,” Simmons said. In short, it had little to offer Kiss’ legion of head-banging fans. The album, “The Elder,” had a symbolic yarn to tell, strings and chorales to embellish the music, and Lou Reed, one of the pre-eminent rock poets, to help with some of the songwriting. That desire led seven years ago to the band’s one great departure from its blunt, bump-and-grind music and its coarse lyrical appeal to adolescent libido and rebellion against adult authority. It matters more what fans think, but ultimately you want to be liked (by the press),” he said. “It matters, and anyone who says it doesn’t is fooling himself. Unlike many rockers who regularly get panned in the press, Simmons doesn’t downplay what he reads about his band, nor does he pretend to ignore it. Most of those sales have been racked up with music built on a single-minded heavy thump, and a single-minded thumping is what Kiss has received from most rock critics. But before long, Kiss was established as a headlining draw in its own right, launching a career that, according to the band’s own figures, has topped the 50-million mark in worldwide record sales. It was the first of many times in the early days that headlining bands would refuse to share the bill with Kiss and its spectacle of makeup, props and pyrotechnics, Simmons said. ![]()
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