In 2018, I had the immense thrill of interviewing original KISS guitarist Ace Frehley for Yahoo. We talked at length about his sixth solo album, Spaceman, as well as the 40th anniversaries of both the Halloween cult classic KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park and Frehley’s first solo LP. But of course, the Space Ace ran his (amusingly gum-chomping) mouth about his ex-bandmates and their End of the Road final tour (which featured longtime KISS member Tommy Thayer, who’d been controversially wearing Frehley’s Spaceman makeup since 2002, on guitar) and whether he’d be willing to participate in that tour if the opportunity arose.

“I knew you were gonna ask that!” Frehley chuckled when I inquired about any KISS reunion plans, with a glint in his eye that suggested he wasn’t telling the whole story. (At one point, he asked me exactly when this interview would run.) “OK, I have a pat answer, and it’s true: I haven’t been invited,” he said. But that didn’t mean Frehley wasn’t open to the idea. “For the right price,” he admitted, he would “absolutely” do it.

“The first year of that [1996] reunion tour, we grossed $215 million. … So, what would it be today? Probably double that? Half a billion? I’m there,” he laughed. “Anything can happen. … The ball’s in Gene and Paul’s court. So fans, if you want it, speak up. If you don’t, don’t. I’m OK either way. Don’t worry about me. Tell Paul and Gene what to do — because you pay their salary. It’s true.”

Frehley joked that his former KISS mates, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, had “big egos, and they’ll be the first ones to admit it. I have a big ego, but not quite as big as Gene’s. Gene likes to talk about three people: me, myself, and I.” But he did believe they would listen to the KISS Army if the fans want him back — if not for a full farewell tour, then for a specific one-off reunion concert. And that might have happened at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors, at which KISS are set to be fêted. But sadly, when the Kennedy Center ceremony takes place on Dec. 7, Frehley will now become only the third person to receive the honor posthumously, following the Eagles’ Glenn Frey and Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh.

My epic conversation with the Space Ace, in both unedited video form above and as written Q&A below, has never been published in full until now. Lyndsanity is running it today (Oct. 16, 2025) in light of the legendary rocker’s death at age 74.

LYNDSANITY: So, we’re going to start talking about your new album, Spaceman. It’s very nostalgic. What was your mindset with the record?

ACE FREHLEY: That wasn’t planned like it was on my [2014] album Space Invader, which came out several years ago. … You know what people are saying? I’ve done about 50 interviews already with people that have heard [Spaceman], and they said it reminds them of my ‘78 solo album. And I originally wanted to call the album 40 Years Later, because it’s been 40 years since “New York Groove” came out. But I’m doing a Vault Experience in Miami with Gene Simmons —  I traveled with him around the country for a few of his Vault Experiences —  and I actually polled the audience. We were doing a Q&A, and I said, “What does everybody think of 40 Years After?” And it was like… ha, you’re shaking your head too. So, all of a sudden Gene steps in. I’m going to do a Gene Simmons imitation. He goes, “Ace! You should call it Spaceman.” There you go.

And you listened.

Gene named the record, not me.

I think some people might be surprised by that Gene is involved with this record, not just in naming it, but he’s also on a couple tracks, right?

He’s on the opening track, “Without You I’m Nothing,” and he’s on “Your Wish Is My Command.” He’s playing bass on that. He co-wrote the first and the third song with me.

Interesting. I say people might be surprised, because it’s assumed that there’s bad blood with you, Gene, and Paul.

There’s no bad blood. I mean, think about it. A year ago, Paul Stanley did a video with me for “Fire and Water” and sang on [Frehley’s fifth solo album] Origins Vol. 1. So, that whole bad blood thing is over with. We all get along great, and we have been getting along great for a while. Who knows what’s going to happen in the future?

That opens up the question, obviously…

Ha! I knew you were going to ask that!

Well, you just set that question up, so thank you! You made my job easier. Obviously, Paul and Gene just announced the second farewell tour, but supposedly the real farewell tour, for KISS. So, I just want to know if you or Peter Criss will be involved in any way.

When is this [interview] going to be aired?

This will air when record comes out in October. What is the release date again?  

I think the 17th or 18th. Or 16th.I can’t remember dates.

OK, but I need to know if you’re going to be involved in this tour at all! I know the fans would love to know.

OK, I have a pat answer, and it’s true: I haven’t been invited.

You have not been invited?

Right. I was invited to the [KISS Kruise], and I’m going to perform on the cruise with a band and KISS is going to be performing at different times. But anything can happen on the KISS Kruise. I might grab Paul or Gene and say, “Hey, play a song with me.” They might do the same to me. Or they may not. I don’t know. All I can tell you is the minute they posted it on the internet that I was going to be on the cruise, it sold out in a day. So, who knows?

I get the impression that you’re holding some information back from me.

Well, you can’t lay all your cards on the table in one day.

You have my word that if you gave me a scoop, but it couldn’t run [until an embargoed date…]

I don’t believe you! I can’t give out any information. No, but I’m being totally honest when I say at this juncture, I haven’t been officially invited. I’ll use the word “officially,” which leaves a little to the imagination.

My imagination is running wild! What I want to know is, if you were officially invited, would you do it?

For the right price? Absolutely. And not necessarily because I want to do a reunion tour, because I’m having so much fun with my own band and recording records at home and producing them and writing them and singing them. I mean, Spaceman is my fourth album since 2009. So, it’s not something that I’m chomping at the bit to do, because my career has been going up and up and up and up. But the reason I would do it, if it was handed to me in the proper way, is for the fans. I know the fans want it to happen, because I read the comments on the internet, and 90 percent of them overwhelmingly are saying, “Bring Ace back!” But if Paul and Gene decide to put a deaf ear to the fans, I think it’s going to hurt their careers. Those guys always have done what they felt like doing, even when it was not necessarily the best move.

How do you feel about the fact that Tommy is wearing the Spaceman makeup?

Well, he’s been doing that for what, 15 years?

Yes, but I know a lot of the fans still are not happy about that.

I know some of the fans want to kill him! I actually like Tommy. He’s a friend of mine, and I have nothing bad to say about Tommy. But the reality is, the KISS configuration at this juncture is pretty much half a copy band. It’d be one thing if Tommy would’ve invented his own character, invented his own guitar solos, but unfortunately, he’s copying everything I do, note-for-note. So, there’s not much leeway for anybody to say that what he’s doing is original. I don’t know how I could handle that. I don’t think I could step into a situation and be somebody else. It is almost like being a robot. Poor Tommy. My heart bleeds for him.

Well, Paul once said that he thought KISS could continue on forever with no original members, and just handpick people wearing the makeup.

I’ve heard that statement. You know why I think he said that? To somehow make people accept [current drummer] Eric [Singer] and Tommy, because that would put them in the mindset of, “Oh, eventually Gene is going to be replaced and also Paul, so it’ll be four different guys.” That’s not going to fly, and I know it. So, I think that was just a psychological ploy, if you want to call it that. But I mean, I love Eric and I love Tommy. Tommy used to be my tour manager. I don’t think a lot of people are aware of that. Before he joined KISS to take my place, he was our tour manager. I used to send him out to get sandwiches. Next thing you know, he’s wearing my makeup and playing my solos. Go figure. You can’t write this stuff. If somebody came to a [movie] producer with a story about a famous rock band and they said, “Yeah, the lead guitarist left who was loved, appreciated, and a huge part of the band, and then they hired the road manager,” a producer would say, “Are you crazy? Nobody’s going to believe that!” Right?

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

I’m not sure if I’m really in the world. They say in 2012, with that particle projector in Switzerland, the world ended and then it rebooted. So, for a microsecond, we all died [in 2012] and now we’re in a different reality. We’re in a matrix.

That makes sense in a lot of ways, actually.

So, maybe in the alternate universe, I’m still in the band or something else changed. Who cares? I just live life day-by-day and I don’t worry about the past. And I really don’t worry much about the future.

Well, I definitely think the KISS Army would like you back, if not for the full farewell tour, then for maybe a specific show, like a homecoming date, a New York date. Something where we see the original four back together.

Look, anything can happen. There’s probably five or six different ways a tour could happen. I mean, for all I know, they might want to involve Bruce and Bob Kulick. Unfortunately, Mark St. John passed away. Eric Singer passed away…

You mean Eric Carr?

I mean Eric Carr. Oh, Eric, forgive me!

It’s OK.

Eric [Singer] is a really good friend. When I was working with Eric during the arena tour [in 2001], me and Eric were like buddy-buddy, and we would go out to clubs and jam with bands. I have a great working relationship with Eric. And me and Paul and Gene are fine at this juncture. So, anything can happen. The sky’s the limit. I think the fans need to speak up. Speak up, fans! Speak up! Go on the internet and tell Paul and Gene what to do, because you pay their salary. It’s true.

So, you mentioned your solo record that came out 40 years ago, when all of the four KISS solo members did solo albums…

Right. We all went off on our own, got a producer, and each put out a solo record.

From what I recall, history has been kindest to yours, and was kindest at that time too. Your solo record was not only the top-selling among all four, but also the most critically acclaimed. And that must’ve been a proud moment for you, but I’m wondering if it caused any division in the band at the time.

Well, really to this day, I don’t even think Gene will acknowledge it. But that’s OK. They have a problem. They have big egos, and they’ll be the first ones to admit it. I have a big ego, but not quite as big as Gene’s. Gene likes to talk about three people: me, myself, and I. But as far as the solo albums, we all went off and did it. I was lucky enough to get Eddie Kramer to produce my record, who had worked with KISS before, who I felt comfortable with, so my creative juices flowed. That’s why that album came out so good. And his assistant was the one that came up with the idea to do “New York Groove” [a song written by Russ Ballard and originally recorded by glam band Hello in 1975]. … That was my biggest hit, and I was against doing it. Eddie just talked me into it. Go figure.

I don’t profess to be any kind of genius musically. I never even took a guitar lesson, really. And yet, every day I get guitar players coming up to me going, “Man, if it wasn’t for you, I never would’ve picked up a guitar!” And I go, “Well, thank you. That’s a nice compliment.” But I kind of feel guilty, because I didn’t even know how to… I did an instructional video in 2009, and they had a guy off camera, who said, “Hey, play this complicated solo that you do.” And then they said, “OK, explain to the viewers because this is an instructional video. Explain to them what it is.” I didn’t know what to say! I didn’t know the musical terms, so they had to pause the camera! Then this guy would tell me what it is: “You’re playing a major run going into a minor run…” And it was a complete nightmare. I’ll never do another, unless I do it on my own and just do it silly and make jokes and say, “Look, I dunno what I’m doing. I just do it.”

You do it well! So, going back to the four solo records, that was a risky move. I can’t imagine a huge rock band right now deciding to put out full solo records, all at once, kind of competing with each other. I guess that’s a testament to just how big KISS were at the time, that you could get away with that.

Well, think about history. What other group besides KISS had four recognizable characters?

The Beatles.

OK, that all sang lead, besides the Beatles, and had four recognizable members. Clearly, there was an audience for Peter, Paul, Gene. Everybody had their favorite. There’s not that many groups in history like KISS. We were one of the few groups in the world that could have pulled that off. Because when you think of bands… and I’m guilty of it myself, about a lot of my favorite groups. I don’t know the names of every guy in the band. I’ll know the lead singer’s name or the lead guitar player’s name, which are usually the two most popular guys in the band. But the rest? What’s the drummer’s name? I don’t know. Sorry, drummers!

By the way, what was the second-biggest-selling of those four albums? Yours was the number one. Do you know what the ranking was, in terms of sales?

I don’t know, actually. If you go on the internet, you’ll get 10 different answers. … Probably Gene was No. 2. It’s a tossup between Paul and Gene. I mean, Paul had some good songs. Paul’s a great pop writer. He writes some great pop songs. Gene’s the guy that writes those gritty riff songs, like “God of Thunder” and “Christine Sixteen.” [Editor’s note: “God of Thunder” was actually written by Stanley.] And I love playing guitar solos on those songs, because why did I think I had a hat on? I told you; I’m in a matrix here. One minute, I’m here. One minute I’m there. I think we all are.

So, right after the four solo releases, you guys did KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park. I know for a while you kind of disavowed it, or weren’t thrilled with it or proud of it. But it has become a cult classic. The obvious question is, why did you decide to make a TV movie? How’d that come about?

Because Hanna Barbera offered us a lot of money, and my manager thought it was a great idea and he sold it to us. If you talk to Paul and Gene about the movie, they both hate it. As far as I’m concerned, I think it’s campy and funny. And if you’re a KISS fan, you’re going to enjoy the film. I was loaded through half of the movie, so I didn’t even know what was going on half the time. But luckily I had cue cards, and I was pretty good at hiding it. I didn’t drink too much when I knew I had an important scene. And one of the guys on the set was a cocaine dealer. I’m not going to mention any names, but he used to keep cocaine in his hat and come to my trailer. So, if I drank too much back in those days, I’d do a little cocaine. I’m not going to lie, because I’ve been sober 12 years. We’re only as sick as our secrets. So, back in those days, yeah, I’d do a little coke if I drank too much, which would give me a little pick-me-up. And then I’d be ready for the scene.

Can you describe the plot of this film, as best you can?

The plot? I have no idea what that movie’s about! I know there were four alternative KISS robots that this evil scientist made, and that it was shot at Magic Mountain incidentally, and he had a secret workshop there, and we ended up having a fight with them. And my stuntman was Black, but he happened to be the best guy. He was the guy that did the good flips when we had the fight. It was a lot of fun doing that. And Peter’s man was a real famous stuntman, Billy Joe something. He’d done a lot of stunts and was one of the most famous stuntmen in Hollywood. I’m not sure who Paul’s guy was or Gene’s, but my guy was Black and he definitely did that gymnastic shit. Remember the part where he does the flips? I could have never pulled that off. Thank God for him.

But did you fight your stuntman? There was one scene where the real KISS fights the fake KISS, I recall.

Yeah, yeah. It was fake punching and stuff. We practiced. Nobody got hurt.

When the four KISS members fight the robotic cats, is that you or your stuntman?

Fight the cats?

Well, they’re cats or wolves. They’re some kind of furries. I’m not making this up, am I? How can you make this up?

You can’t.

So, that was your stuntman?

I wasn’t present in the Den of Horrors with the Frankenstein and stuff. That was my stuntman. You want to hear the story behind why I wasn’t there?

Yep!

I threw a fit with the producer.

Why?

Well, I’ll tell you what happened. We were staying at the Chateau Marmont, and we’d have to drive every morning to Magic Mountain to shoot. And what would happen is they’d wake me up at 7 o’clock. Of course, I had been partying the night before, so I’m not in a good mood. So, they drive us out there. We each have our own trailers. I put on the makeup. I’m in makeup by 10 o’clock, and I’m supposed to do a scene. I’m all ready to rock. And I get a knock on the door and the producer goes, “We’re going to do some closeups of Gene. We don’t need you until after lunch” — which means I could have slept another six hours. And that happened more than once. So, at that point, between all my drug-induced insanity, I just said bye.

And I jumped in a Mercedes and took off, and my bodyguard was following me in another car. And I’m a good driver, by the way, even though I’ve had a half a dozen accidents. He was following me, so I was looking at the timing, the lights, and I got to an intersection where this light was ready to turn red and I took off — made a left, a right, a left, a right, a left, a right, a left, a right. And I lost them. Then I stopped at a deli and got a six-pack of beer, and then I went over to the Tutankhamun exhibit [at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art]. I’m really into Egyptian history; I think aliens had a lot to do with the building of the pyramids and a lot of the technology. But to make a long story short, I’m standing outside after a couple of beers and I’m going, “Oh shit, I wish I could get in here.” It was sold-out for months. Some woman walks over to me and she goes, “Would you like a ticket? She gave me a ticket. I went in and walked through the whole exhibit.

And people didn’t know it was you, obviously.

No, nobody knew what we looked like without our makeup. So, I was walking around without makeup, and it calmed me down. Then I slowly drove back to the set, walked into the producer’s office and apologized. And we made friends, and I was fine for the rest of the picture.

Didn’t you have some beef with either the producers or the scriptwriters, because they didn’t initially include a lot of dialogue for you? They just had you saying “ack!” a bunch of times.

Whoever wrote the script didn’t give me lines because I didn’t take the phone call. Everybody in the band was supposed to get a phone call talking about what kind of a personality they were and what would they want to say, or something like that. I don’t know. I missed the call, or something happened. And I think [KISS manager] Bill Aucoin said, “Well, Ace likes to say, ‘Ack!’” So, I got the script, and everybody’s got lines except me. I walked into Bill Aucoin’s office and said, “You better rewrite this. I want some lines.” And they did.

What was your favorite line that you had in the movie?

Well, it was at the end of the day, and we were shooting indoors and Peter was having a big problem saying the word “talisman,” those things that were in the red box. It got to the point where he couldn’t say it, and I would crack up. We did 25 takes. So, finally the producer said, “Ace, you take the line!” And I did it.

See, I thought you were going to say your favorite line was, “So much for my solo!”

Give me a second,,, What were some of the lines I had? I remember when we were locked inside the bars and I think I said something like, “I’ll get us out of here!” And we disappeared and we’re transported to another place, and then we had a fight with monsters. I dunno, we had a lot of fights in that movie.

There’s at least three.

Yeah. Luckily nobody got hurt.

Did you have to do any training for these fights?

We just went over them with the guys, a very professional crew. The stuntmen were all great. I think the movie’s really entertaining and silly. You’ve got to look at it in the right light. It’s not a serious film. Paul and Gene took that movie very seriously, and I just took it as just like another silly thing. I mean, come on, we’re superheroes. We’ve got comic books out. How serious can you take KISS? I never took KISS seriously. And Paul and Gene, they were always so serious. Maybe it’s because they weren’t loaded. Neither of those guys drank. The whole rollercoaster ride of KISS to me was just like this jolly, crazy ride where I’m wearing makeup and dressed up as a superhero and playing guitar and having fun and meeting beautiful women along the way. I just never took the thing that seriously, even though we were one of the biggest groups in the world. And I still look back on it today and I go, “Wow, that was weird.”

I remember when we did the reunion tour, we sold out Tiger Stadium in Detroit in 48 minutes. It was a record. And I remember that night wearing the same costume, same makeup, and it was 15, 20 years later, I got this déjà vu. I’m going, “Am I in the ‘70s, or am I in the ‘90s?” Because everything looked the same. The makeup covers up a lot of the wrinkles and imperfections, so we looked like we did in the ‘70s, pretty much. I had trained for that. I had gone to the gym every day and got in shape. We all did. And it was just like a moment there of déjà vu: “Am I time traveling? Did I go back in time? Am I in the ‘90s? Am I in 2020? Who knows?”

We still don’t know. We might be in the matrix.

And you know what? The way I live my life, I don’t care. I don’t care if I’m living in an alternate universe, because I’m having fun. I have fun wherever I go. I have a beautiful woman. I have a beautiful home. I have a beautiful daughter. Everybody’s good. Everything’s healthy. I can pay my bills.

Sounds like a good life! I want to ask you another question about Phantom of the Park. You were talking about Peter’s lines, but wasn’t his voice dubbed in by another actor?

Yeah, what happened was after the post-production on that film, they realized that along with the problem he had with that one line, there were more [enunciation] imperfections. It was a production call, we had nothing to do with it, but they actually replaced Peter’s voice in the whole film! I would’ve been really pissed off if it was me. But I know how to speak, luckily, even though I’m from the Bronx. But you can tell that from my accent.

Was Peter pissed?

I never really talked to him about it. I’m sure he was. But to be honest with you, Peter at the time was as loaded as me, if not more. And he may not even have known for a while. I mean, the guy that they got to do the dub, his voice was pretty good. Peter may not have caught on right away. God bless him. He’s 72 and he’s still alive. He’s a breast cancer survivor. What does that mean? How many guys get breast cancer?

You don’t hear that about very much.

I’ve never heard about it. It’s sad. I mean, cancer is sad for anybody, but I would say 98 percent of breast cancer [patients] are women. I only found out about [Criss’s cancer] after the fact, or I would’ve visited him in the hospital and so on and so forth. But yeah, nobody told me anything.

Do you and Peter talk now? Are you in touch?

Yeah. I mean, most of the time when I want to talk to Peter, I have to talk to his wife. She’s like his manager. Gigi. She’s a nice lady. But I don’t even think Peter has his own cell phone, or if he does, I don’t have the number. When I do business with Paul and Gene, I call Paul.

So, you have no idea if Peter would also be open to doing any reunion stuff on KISS’s farewell tour?

Well, for the right price, I’m sure he’d do it. I mean, it’s tough to turn down a couple of million dollars. Let’s face it, our last reunion tour was how long ago? Twenty years ago?

I believe it was 22 years ago.

Wow. The first year of that reunion tour, we grossed $250 million. And that was 20 years ago. So, what would it be today? Probably double that? Half a billion? I’m there.

I’ll be there too. If you’re there. I’m there!

Everybody will be there.

Speaking of concerts, did KISS play a free concert at Magic Mountain for that Phantom scene?

Yes, we did several. We invited a whole bunch of people, and in the parking lot we set up a huge stage. It was free. We got about 3,000 or 4,000 kids there. And then as you said earlier, there was another fight scene on the stage. You said at least three fight scenes.

At least! So, when this movie came out…

When did it come out, by the way?

October 1978. We’re coming up on the 40th anniversary, which is why I’m asking you so many questions about it.

Wait a minute! It came out the same year that my solo album came out?

One month later.

God. I mean, we did so much in a short span of time.

I know, it’s crazy. So, what are your memories when you first saw Phantom?

I never really had any negative feelings about the film. I thought it was funny. I laughed at some of the scenes. I cringed at some of the scenes. But I was intelligent and smart enough to realize that it was what it was. It was just a silly rock ‘n’ roll movie that was designed for KISS fans. It wasn’t Love Story! So, I took it in that light. And to this day, I don’t have a problem with the film.

What did the fans think about it at the time? I was under the impression that there was a backlash.

That’s possible. At that time, there was no internet, so I couldn’t go on YouTube and read comments, so I was kind of out of touch. But if some of the fans didn’t like it, so be it. A lot of fans didn’t like the album The Elder…

Were you involved in that?

Yeah, I played guitar on it, and I wrote two songs.

I wasn’t sure, because that was around the time you were leaving. I wasn’t sure how much you were involved.

I left because of that album.

Can we talk about that?

This is what happened with The Elder. I picked up Bob Ezrin, the producer, at my local airport. I lived in Wilton, Connecticut. I had a seven-acre estate, and I had built a million-dollar recording studio, and I told the guys, “Let’s record up at my place!” And everything was going great for a while, and then eventually the guys said they wanted to move the location, or Bob Ezrin wanted to move the location. So, where do we go? We go up to Canada, to Bob Ezrin’s home studio. Never in a real studio. But the experience was very frustrating, except for the two songs that I wrote that I was happy with. I kept telling Paul, Gene, and Bob, and I think it was Eric [Carr] at the time: “This is the wrong album for this time. Kids are expecting a hard-rock, heavy record, and you want to give him this themed album about some weird guy who wears a hood and walks around?” What was the name of the guy? It was just some weird hermit or wizard or something. It was very loosely based on a concept. I think Gene may have thought that it would spin off into a film or something like that, but Gene’s take on reality isn’t really what it is.

I mean, Gene grew up in Israel until he was about 8. And then he moved to America and he was a Hasidic Jew for a while [editor’s note: Simmons was born in Israel to Hungarian-Jewish immigrant parents and raised in a practicing Jewish household, but was not actually Hasidic], until he broke out of that and got involved with music in college. But he has no street smarts. I was the kind of guy that grew up in the Bronx and hung out at the corner candy store. I’m a street kid; you can throw me in the middle of Compton and I’ll survive one way or the other. Gene doesn’t have that background. I mean, I love Gene, but it’s amazing how many ideas he’s brought to me and I’ve said, “Are you crazy? That would never fly!” And he doesn’t know the difference sometimes between what’s cool and what isn’t. And it’s not his fault, because he didn’t grow up watching the same TV shows that we watched, and he wasn’t involved in American culture until much later in his life. So, he’s a little out-of-it and doesn’t have those street smarts that I have and Peter had. Paul grew up in Queens, but he wasn’t involved in gangs and hanging out and getting in trouble and stealing cars and getting arrested. I’m not bragging about it; that was just the way it was. It was really up to me and Peter. And Peter was more silent than I was, but I would really exercise my ideas. And during The Elder, we had a lot of fights. I said, “This record’s not going to make it. It’s going to bomb.” And they kept saying to me, “No, just play your guitar and do this and do that.” And look what happened.

Do you think Paul and Gene were trying to take a stab at being credible, because critical acclaim had eluded KISS throughout their career, so they want to make a “serious” statement record?

You have to realize what KISS is. We’re just a comic book, superhero, rock ‘n’ roll act. Luckily, we do have talent and we do have the ability to write good catchy songs. The way we look, if we didn’t have the songs to back it up… I mean, my solo album holds up 40 years later. Why? Because I have talent. And I never even took a guitar lesson, but I did grow up in a family of four musicians. My older brother, my older sister, my mother, and father both played piano. … When I say I never took a guitar lesson, I never took a professional guitar lesson. My brother picked up folk guitar. He’s two years older than me. And of course, as soon as a friend of mine had gotten an electric guitar with a small amp, I went over his house and I already knew how to play an E-chord. I plugged into the amp and turned it on 10 and hit a E-chord, and I was in love at first sight. I knew that that was going to be my shtick. I knew what I was going to. So, that Christmas, my mom and dad got me an electric guitar, and the rest is history. But there’s a lot between the time I joined KISS and my first guitar that I’m going to talk about a lot more in my second book, which right now the working title for is No Regrets 2.

Is that “Too,” as in T-O-O, or the number two?

That’s a good question. It’s only a working title. My second choice for the title is Thanks for the Memories.

I like that one as well. To go back to The Elder, though…

Sorry, I didn’t mean to throw you off-base!

No, don’t worry! But how did that album ultimately lead to you leaving KISS?

Well, when you’re in a supergroup and you work with a bunch of people and they don’t listen to you and you turn out to be right, a light bulb goes off in your head. And you say, “Maybe I should be working with people that agree with me!” The same thing happened to me when my solo album became the most successful. I realized I was more creative away from Paul and Gene and Peter than I was with them. Peter was closer to my background, but we were four different guys with four different backgrounds. But the chemistry of the four of us and the collective thought was what made KISS great. If we were all street kids, KISS would’ve bombed, because all four of us would be getting drunk. But the fact that Paul and Gene were sober, they were taking care of business and making deals while me and Peter were loaded, that’s what made KISS work. They took interviews very seriously. I do today, because I’m sober and I know it’s a part of the business, and I actually enjoy it. And I’m having fun with you.

I’m having a great time too! You say you have no regrets, but do you ever regret that while Paul and Gene were, as you say, taking care of business, that you were off partying? Do you wish you’d been a little bit more involved in that side?

No, I don’t regret anything that I’ve done, because I realized I had to go through all the ups and downs. I ended up in jail. I don’t want to get into all the negative shit that happened to me, but I really ended up hitting bottom. But I think I had to do that to get to where I am today. And that’s why I called [my first autobiography] No Regrets. My AA sponsor says… I hate to bring up AA or anything. Some people think it’s a cult. Give me a break. It saves people’s lives. But I still talk to him today, and his words of wisdom help me out every time I get into a bind mentally. I’ll call him up and he’ll go, “Take care of yourself. If you take care of yourself, everything else around you will work out.” And then I take a deep breath, and he’s right. And what else? What was the question?

Oh, we were talking about your exit during Music From ‘The Elder’, but I think you answered the question.

Yeah, I just realized I needed to be away from those guys. But incidentally, I was doing an interview with Billboard in New York a couple of years ago, and somebody said to me, “If The Elder was never recorded and you went from your last album [with KISS] to Creatures of the Night, would you have left the band?” And when I thought about it, I said there’s probably a good chance I wouldn’t have, because with Creatures of the Night, see, they listened to me! But after I had already exited, because I’m not playing on Creatures of the Night. … There’s great songs on it. That’s the album we should have recorded at my house instead of The Elder.

But look, when Peter left the band, something really became apparent to me. See, we used to vote. Let’s say me and Peter and Paul and Gene were voting, and then there was Bill Aucon, our manager — he was the tiebreaker. So, if me and Peter wanted to do one thing a different way, and Paul and Gene wanted to do one thing a different way, Bill Aucoin always would step in and say, “I’m going to go with either Gene and Paul or Peter and Ace.” But that all disappeared. They fired Bill Aucoin. Peter was retired, asked to leave, and I realized I had lost all my power in the band. Because even if I wanted to do something, Paul and Gene could out-vote me. And that’s what happened with The Elder. I realized I have no say in this band anymore, so that’s one of the main reasons I decided to move on.

Understandable. Was that how the power dynamic always was divided within the band? Was it always Paul and Gene here, and you and Peter over there?

No, sometimes me and Gene would be against Paul and Peter, or whatever. We all gave our 2 cents, and whatever seemed to make the most sense usually won out. But that’s when you have a democratic society, which is what America is. I don’t know if the Illuminati or the White House is running the country, but who gives a crap? You hear all these crazy rumors. I don’t get into politics. But we had a democratic group, and we used to have weekly meetings. Every week we’d sit down at a table and if there was something bothering somebody, I said, “Let’s get it out.” And a lot of times I was kind of like the mediator in the group, if there was a fight amongst us. … Paul and Peter used to fight a lot, because sometimes Peter would speed up or slow down and Paul would go faster, and then Peter would throw a drumstick at him. And then at the end of the show, we’d get back in the dressing room and people were throwing things around, and I’d say, “Hey, let’s call it. We got a show tomorrow night.” And I am a Taurus. I like harmony. I don’t like confrontation, even though I’ve had tons of bar fights.

And fights with robotic cats and stunt doubles ! I know KISS enjoyed a second act I the ‘80s once they took the makeup off, but I think everyone agrees that it was the fab four, the first four, that were the core KISS. So, I really do hope that we’ll see you, Peter, Paul, and Gene together onstage again, before the farewell tour is over.

Anything can happen. The ball’s in Gene and Paul’s court. So, fans, if you want it, speak up. If you don’t, don’t. I’m OK either way. Don’t worry about me.

They want the best! They need to get the best!

I’m the best. Let’s face it.

Five years ago, a mysterious electronic duo named Sym Fera emerged seemingly out of nowhere on the State of the Art Records label. Their ethereal, evocative music was soon placed on hit television shows like Ozark, The Resident ,and Prodigal Son, inspiring fans to flock to streaming services, Shazam, and the internet to learn more about the rising group.

But most of those queries yielded dead ends. Articles and interviews in Rolling Stone, Wonderland, and Loudwire couldn’t unravel the Sym Fera mystery, and supposedly even the executives at State of the Art didn’t know who they were. But now, as Sym Fera release their Ghoulish Machine EP, they’ve decided it’s time for their big reveal: They are Vinnie Ferra (co-founder of the Beehive, a company that manages tours for pop superstars like Halsey and Madison Beer), and, perhaps more shockingly and headline-grabbingly, Nick Simmons, the son of KISS rocker Gene Simmons.

Joining Lyndsanity on Zoom with his longtime friend and musical partner Vinnie, Nick jokes that his famous father’s big, tongue-wagging mouth is “the bane of my existence,” so — while his family (including his sister Sophie Simmons, a professional pop artist in her own right) did know his Sym Fera secret — he “had to make sure they didn’t blab.” Gene subtly got the word out in other ways. “My dad’s been wearing a hat with our logo on it for four years! He just didn’t tell anybody what it was. … That hat has gone for a very wild ride that I didn’t expect it to, and didn’t want it to necessarily,” Nick laughs. “I think it’s in a picture with Flavor Flav or something. It’s not really what Vinnie and I pictured for our PR outreach.”

When it comes to PR, the surprisingly humble Nick wanted to keep Sym Fera’s announcement low-key – he actually cringes at the word “reveal,” and uses the word “cringe” a lot during our interview. He points out that the idea to keep Sym Fera’s identities under wraps for so long was actually more Vinnie’s idea, because Vinnie was trying to keep the project separate from his Beehive day job. But Nick, who turned down several record deals as a teenager, during his Gene Simmons’s Family Jewels reality TV era, because he knew he wasn’t ready and his early music would not be well-received, is aware of the expectations and skepticism that come with being a member of a famous family.

“A lot of people don’t have the luxury of just pursuing their dreams all day. They have a day job. So, I’m kind of on the side of the people who criticize the ‘nepo babies,’ personally, because they’re right in a lot of ways,” Nick admits. “It would be silly to try to diminish the fact that even just not having credit card debt in any moment in your young life is a crazy leg up. Most people are living with debt day-to-day. Most people need a day job to get by day-to-day. I get to pursue music. It’s incredibly lucky. So, all that’s left is to not be a dick about how lucky you are, and just move forward.”

In the video above and Q&A below, Nick Simmons and Vinnie Ferra discuss the long, mysterious journey of Sym Fera, why this was right time to reveal their identities, and what’s next for the duo.

LYNDSANITY: You guys have been doing this Sym Fera project for five years, but only now did you let the cat out of the bag. So, I’ll start by asking for a little history about how this came together, and why you kept your identities secret for so long.

FERRA: Well, the journey has been a long one. We’ve been making music together for a lot longer than five years, and we’ve known each other for longer than five years. We started making music together with a lot of other people, collaborating with a lot of other people… and then we wrote a song with just him and I, and we were like, “This is actually fun, more efficient.” We ended up liking the finished product better. And so, we kept going with that, and songs just kept coming out and out and out, very quickly and easily. We made so much music.

SIMMONS: We didn’t really have an idea for a “project.” We were doing it for fun.

FERRA: It was a creative outlet. And then eventually we were like, “We should put this out.” … We got to the point where we felt, “validated” is probably the wrong word for it, but we felt like it was appreciated by those that did get access to it, whether they were friends or industry folks that we knew or do syncs. And we were like, “OK, cool. We feel like what we’re doing is something we’re really proud of. Now we don’t think who we are will get in the way of the quality of the art being appreciated.”

SIMMONS: It’s not just my weird or obvious situation. Vinnie, with his company, has to be delicate. He has a lot of high-profile clients, so there’s some stigma there about being involved in your own artist project when you’re managing other people’s careers. So, he wanted to be careful and delicate about the way he handled that, because he’s a professional.

But people were guessing who you were, and starting to get wise…

SIMMONS: Yeah, I think that was part of our decision: Just post about it and get it over with. … Vinnie and I are easy cringers; we cringe easily. So, anything that seems like it feels like we’re trying too hard, we’re like, “Let’s just make stuff that we like and just do it.” So, we just decided to just post [an announcement on social media]. We weren’t trying to be mysterious or make it a thing. … In the digital age, a lot of people don’t show pictures of themselves and don’t think twice about it, but yeah, a couple people on socials, through the algorithm or whatever, did put two and two together. I got a couple of  DMs on the band account. A couple of people guessed who Vinnie was. I don’t even know how they put that together, but the band name is a play on our last names.

Did anyone guess wrong?

SIMMONS: Yes, a couple people! … Somebody was like, “Oh, I bet he’s the guy in Sleep Token.” And I was like, “No, definitely not, but they’re rad.” I’m definitely not the guy in Sleep Token.

There have been past cases of well-known artists, like Donnie Osmond or the Alarm, submitting their music anonymously to radio, as a white label or under a fake name, so that there wouldn’t be this preconception, and so programmers would give the song a chance — which they might not have if they knew who recorded it. I wonder if that mentality was at all behind hiding your identities — especially for Nick, because this isn’t a rock project, and people would probably assume you’d be in a hard rock band.

SIMMONS: Yeah, genre concerns are definitely part of it. We’re in a weirder lane than I think people expected from either of us. I mean, Vinnie is very enmeshed in a very mainstream pop world, big stadium shows and stuff, and it’s a very particular soundscape in those areas. And then of course, people expect me to be in a straight-ahead rock band. Vinnie and I have more eclectic tastes than that. We have a lot of different genre interests, and we didn’t feel like picking just one. We love artists like Beck and Bon Iver and these strange, can’t-put-your-finger-on-it-in-the-record-store lanes. So, we were like, “All right, maybe we just won’t engage with people who expect a certain thing from us.”

FERRA: The goal when we’re in the studio is, “Would we like this band and want to go see them play and buy their music?” That’s how we’ve operated for a really long time, and this is how we continue to operate. We don’t put ourselves in a box of a genre or anything else. We’re doing a collaboration right now with a friend [Dylan LeBlanc]. That music is very much in a genre that we love, and it’s completely different from the stuff we have out. But then we have songs like “No/bodies” that is very organic instrumentation: drums, bass, guitar, violin. And then we have songs like “Beg,” on which is every single instrument is electronic.

So, how many people within your circle knew you were Sym Fera? Nick, I’ve actually interviewed your sister, Sophie, who also does music that’s maybe not what would be expected of her, about this…

SIMMONS: She’s a powerhouse. She had to prove herself more than once because of that, because of what you just said.

So, did Sophie know about Sym Fera? Did your father know?

SIMMONS: We just had to make sure they didn’t blab. They definitely knew the whole time. In fact, my dad’s been wearing a hat with our logo on it for four years! He just didn’t tell anybody what it was. … That hat has gone for a very wild ride that I didn’t expect it to, and didn’t want it to necessarily. I think it’s in a picture with Flavor Flav or something. It’s not really what Vinnie and I pictured for our PR outreach, him taking that hat for a ride, but it was very sweet of him not to tell anybody. And now he’s telling everybody, of course! My sister helped me work on one of the songs, so she posted one as though it was an indie band that she’d worked with in her songwriting career; she writes for other people most of the time. And people were like, “Oh, it’s cool you’re working on an indie band, that’s great!” I begged them not to tell anybody, because I just wanted to see how people would like it on its own. We were pretty satisfied with that.

And your dad has a big mouth, which I say in the most affectionate way. He’s a talker, so it is pretty cool that he was able to keep your secret.

SIMMONS: Yeah, it’s the bane of my existence. [laughs]

I’ve interviewed a lot of second-generation artists — I literally interviewed Alexandra Richards, daughter of Keith Richards, this week — and some have told me that when they wanted to go into show business, their parents were like, “No, go to law school, go to medical school, be an accountant! This is a hard life!” And maybe some of their parents also anticipated there’d be pushback because of cries of nepotism or whatever. They were like, “Hey, kid, are you sure you really want to do this?” Nick, I wonder if you had any of those kind of conversations with your parents.

SIMMONS: No, I think they’re just like, “Do whatever makes you happy.” I don’t think they’re worried. I grew some pretty thick skin, pretty young. I think I cared a lot about pushback when I was a teenager, but you get used to it pretty quick. I don’t think I have anything to whine about. I have a great life. I don’t think I have anything to complain about. We have a lot of resources at our disposal and a lot of time to do this, so I don’t have any complaints, really. And they were just like, “You can do whatever you want to do.” They wanted me to go to college, which I did. They were like, “Don’t be an asshole and get your [good] grades, and pretty much whatever else is fine. Just be decent.” Pretty common-sense stuff.

FERRA: My dad was a musician and also built recording studios and stuff like that. In terms of the industry I work in, I grew up where everyone knew who my dad was because he was wiring and installation for a lot of the people I work with and a lot of the vendors I work with. That was really cool environment to grow up in. If I was interested in something musical, it was like, “Here you go. Here’s the instrument in your hands.” It was very nurturing.

SIMMONS: We were both very encouraged. I think a lot of people wince a lot at people being mean to me on the internet, but’s like, “Well, that’s the deal. You put yourself on the internet, and now people get to say what they think about it.” So, if everyone thinks you suck, they get to say that. You don’t have to read it all. And if you read it, you don’t have to take it that seriously. I always say if you take people criticizing you seriously, then you have to take your compliments seriously, and then you become a narcissist. So, I would say take both the compliments and the criticism with a grain of salt. I take criticism from people whose work I respect seriously, but to take it emotionally is a waste of time, I think.

You mentioned how maybe when you were younger didn’t have as thick a skin, so how did you develop that thick skin? You were on reality TV at a young age, in your teens.

SIMMONS: I’m mostly just glad I didn’t put out music around that time! Vinnie knew me around that time; we were jamming together. When you’re on a TV show, [labels are] like, “Here’s a record deal!” And I’m like, “Um, I don’t have any songs yet.” They’re like, “Don’t worry about it, we’ll figure it out.” That’s really not the way to do it, in my opinion. It’s an opportunity, but I think it would’ve been wrong. I don’t think that stuff would’ve been any good. People now are like, “Why’d you wait so long?” Well, because [my music] wasn’t any good then, and now I like it! … I mean, I wasn’t a terribly good singer. I was singing a lot in clubs and just trying to get better. But there’s these larval, formative stages where if you’re thrust into a camera situation right away, it’s very rare [that it’s good]. It takes the Billie Eilish/Lorde type of prodigy to be this sort of fully realized artist right away. Most people are more like me, where you try to mimic your heroes and you slowly but surely get better, but you suck for a long time. … I like that we got a chance to put our 10,000 hours in after [Gene Simmons’s Family Jewels], and didn’t take the easy deal that we could have taken for no reason other than they saw a chance to make a quick buck. I like it better this way. We put it out because it felt like it was good enough to put out, and no other reason.

So, there’s the relatively new term “nepo baby,” but cries of nepotism against people who grew up in the industry are nothing new. Obviously if you come from a certain background and have certain connections, you have advantages in the business, but I think it’s this fallacy that if you come from people in the industry or people who are famous, that everything is just handed to you.

SIMMONS: First of all, I want to make this clear: Vinnie is the opposite of a nepo baby. Vinnie’s the most self-made person I’m aware of. I want to make sure everyone knows that about him, because without his resources, this project would look very different. I mean, that logo behind him is his company, the Beehive, and he built it with his partner Johnny from the ground up, and now the biggest artists in the world rely on him. So, I’m riding his coattails a little bit more than anything! … But no, I think there is a lot of stuff that’s handed to you [as the son of a rock star]. I think mostly what’s handed to you is time to do what you want to do. That’s the biggest luxury of all, that you have a safety net and you’re not going to starve tomorrow. And in terms of me, my safety net is I was on a TV show for a long time and I got to earn income before I was spending on rent and stuff. It’s an incredible leg up, just right there. And your loved ones are like, “Don’t worry, you can pursue your dreams.” A lot of people don’t have the luxury of just pursuing their dreams all day. They have a day job. So, to try to diminish that or go, like, “No, I really worked really hard,” I think that it falls on deaf ears, because everybody else knows what it’s like to be a working adult. So, I’m kind of on the side of the people who criticize the nepo babies, personally, because they’re right in a lot of ways. It is very irritating when someone in my position not only wants their attention and money, but also wants them to like them! It’s obnoxious! … And to try to diminish it is obnoxious. I think that’s tone-deaf and silly. It would be silly to try to diminish the fact that even just not having credit card debt in any moment in your young life is a crazy leg up. Most people are living with debt day-to-day. Most people need a day job to get by day-to-day. I get to pursue music. It’s incredibly lucky. So, all that’s left is to not be a dick about how lucky you are and just move forward.

I appreciate that! So, I know Sym Fera have only played one official live gig, at the Lodge Room in Highland Park, and it was an invitation-only show where people had to lock away their phones…

SIMMONS: That was Vinnie’s idea. Vinnie was like, “Let’s just test this out and see if we have something here.”

FERRA: Apparently that’s an element of anxiety of mine. At least on my end, a big part we’ve kept it secret is I have a lot of insecurity around putting ourselves out there musically. I used to have a [solo] artist project I put everything into, and it didn’t go anywhere. I did it for a long time and put a lot of my blood, sweat, and tears into it. Nick is obviously a super-supportive music partner and he thinks the world of my music, and it’s always been so great to partner with someone who thinks that, but the rest of the world didn’t feel that way. So, it’s really risky putting yourself out there. I found it a lot less scary to just do it with no one knowing who I was or who we were.

SIMMONS: Honestly, people think the anonymity thing was my idea, but it was mostly Vinnie’s idea! He was like, “I just want to make this thing that is separate from me and has its own identity, and then I can make it exactly what I want it to be.” There’s a comfort in that. And I think still we both kind of miss it a little.

Well, it’s only been a few days since you revealed yourselves! You’ll get used to it.

SIMMONS: We’re both like, “Yeah, we shoulda have waited longer!”

Seriously, though, now that the announcement’s out, now that the genie out of the bottle and you can’t put it back in, how are you feeling?

FERRA: On my end, most of the people in my close circle and friends already knew, so not much has changed for me. … I think probably the biggest change is going to be for Nick, because Nick has much more significant social media presence and online presence as an individual than I do.

SIMMONS: People have been very nice, and I don’t really know how to deal with that, because negative stuff’s easier to ignore. People seem to be pretty encouraging, and they’re as weirded-out as I thought they’d be that I’m not in an AC/DC rock band gig thing. Which there’s no hate, of course — I mean, I grew up on that kind of music. There’s no hate there. My brother from another mother, Evan Stanley [son of KISS’s Paul Stanley] is in a straight-ahead rock band and he’s doing great and they are great. He just kind of led with it; he was like, “Yep, I’m doing the same thing that people want me to do, and here it is.” That was smart for him, because he’s in the genre that they’re expecting, so the right move for him was to lean into it. I’m kind of doing the exact opposite thing, so we should probably have the exact opposite strategy, of not leaning into it. But yeah, so far people have been very nice and supportive.

Speaking of different strategies, this project had its early success through film and TV syncs, which is completely different from KISS’s generation where it was about either radio or touring. That was a time when having your songs placed anywhere was considered “selling out.”

SIMMONS: Yeah, it’s funny. Within my twenties, I think, is when that changed. I remember when it was the Nirvana age, that sort of authenticity culture where if your song was in a commercial, it was like, “You’re done! We don’t respect you anymore!” And now it’s like, this is how young artists make a living. They need to make a living. Synching is a good way to do that. It’s an essential part of indie music culture, getting your songs in visual medium. Because one, I think TV is good now, or a lot of it; post-Sopranos and post Breaking Bad TV culture has upped the ante on how dramatic and weird it can get. And I think we just got over that. We realize that a lot of the people who are being helped by this are often not the Stones… a lot of these shows are breaking young, emerging bedroom-pop artists, because it suits the scene. It suits the mood. And that is kind of what happened to us. I mean, we got signed to a deal [with State of the Art Records] before they met us, and we got synched without them knowing who we were, a bunch of times. And that felt really good. These music supervisors just thought our song worked for their show. They’re not going to sabotage their own show on a song that doesn’t work just to do someone a favor, and they wouldn’t anyway. They had no idea who we are. So, it was incredibly satisfying and gratifying that we got synched and that people then Shazamed the syncs and found us and listened to us. It was just the purest form of the only reason we’re doing this. That’s kind of why we started talking about how we should just come out and do this [reveal announcement] now, because that was the evidence we wanted that maybe this is worth doing. Maybe we’re onto something here.

What do your parents think of this project, this music?

FERRA: My parents love the more organic songs. They love the stuff we’re doing with Dylan LeBlanc. They love “No/bodies” — well, my dad can’t understand what Nick is saying because he’s singing in falsetto voice! He goes, “Yeah, it’s not for me, but it sounds cool. I’m proud of you.”

SIMMONS: I can always tell when my parents don’t like something when they go specific with their praise. They’re always very supportive, but [my dad] will be like, “This is a great song,” so I go, “OK, he liked that one.” But then he’ll go, “I love the bass on that one,” and I think, “OK he hated that song.” Or he goes, “Very interesting,” and I go, “Yeah, that sucked; he hated that one.” He has a terrible poker face.

Forty Halloweens ago, members of the KISS Army across the nation gathered around their rabbit-eared TV sets for what was supposed to be the television event of the year. It was Hanna-Barbera’s KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, starring everyone’s favorite rock ’n’ roll ’70s superheroes — the Starchild, the Demon, the Space Ace, and the Catman — at the absolute height of their fame. But while the $3 million NBC production, lensed by Hitchcock protégé Gordon Hessler, was the second-biggest TV movie of the year (behind Shogun), it was initially despised by critics, fans, and even the band members themselves. And it nearly derailed KISS’s career.

The utterly bizarre fantasy caper depicted the members of KISS miming to prerecorded hits at a Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park concert; kung fu fighting with evil animatronic look-alikes, various robotic furries, and a mad scientist; and displaying such comic-book superpowers as teleportation, mind control, and shooting laser beams from their eyes. So of course it has now reached cult-classic status, just like another how-did-this-get-made holiday phenomenon released that year, The Star Wars Holiday Special. And while KISS reportedly refused to even discuss Phantom for years, the band members — especially the original Spaceman himself, Ace Frehley — now seem to have no problem talking about the infamous flick.

“If you talk to Paul [Stanley] and Gene [Simmons] about the movie, they both hate it. As far as I’m concerned, I think it’s campy, funny — and if you’re a KISS fan, you’re going to enjoy the film,” Frehley chuckles. “I never really had any negative feelings about the film. I thought it was funny. I laughed at some of the scenes, I cringed at some of the scenes, but I was intelligent and smart enough to realize that it was what it was. It was just a silly rock ’n’ roll movie that was designed for KISS fans. I mean, it wasn’t Love Story!”

“I have very mixed memories about it, because we were kind of talked into doing a film that we were told [by KISS’s manager at the time, Bill Aucoin] was going to be a cross between A Hard Day’s Night and Star Wars, and wound up being neither,” says Stanley. “The best thing I can say about that film is that people think we were kidding, and that it was campy. But we were serious! It just goes to show you when somebody is in the room with you saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s gonna be great,’ and your heart is telling you there’s something not great, that you should listen to it.”

Frehley admits that maybe the more clearheaded Stanley and Simmons were more critical of Phantom “because they weren’t loaded. Neither of those guys drank or did drugs.” The same could not be said for Frehley or KISS’s equally hard-partying drummer and original Catman, Peter Criss.

“I was loaded through half of the movie, so I didn’t even know what was going on half the time, but luckily I had cue cards and yeah, I was pretty good at hiding it,” Frehley recalls. “I didn’t drink too much when I knew I had an important scene. One of the guys on the set was a cocaine dealer. I’m not going to mention any names, but he used to keep cocaine in his hat and come to my trailer. So if I had drank too much, back in those days, I’d do a little cocaine. I’m not going to lie, because I’ve been sober 12 years; we’re only as sick as our secrets. So back in those days, yeah, I’d do a little coke if I drank too much, which would give me a little pick-me-up, and then I’d be ready for the scene.”

Frehley add that Criss was so inebriated at the time, Criss may not have even realized that his voice was retroactively dubbed in every scene with the voice of actor Michael Bell (known for playing Handy Smurf and Lazy Smurf on The Smurfs). “I gotta be honest with you: Peter at the time was as loaded as me, if not more, and he may not even have known for a while. But I mean, the guy that they got to dub his voice was pretty good.”

Frehley further explains how Criss struggled with his lines on set: “Peter was having a big problem saying the word ‘talisman.’ … and it got to the point where he couldn’t say it, and I would crack up. We did 25 takes. So finally, the producer said, ‘Ace, you take the line.’ … What happened was after the postproduction on that film, they realized that the problem he had with that one line, there was more imperfections. And it was a production call; we had nothing to do with it. But they actually replaced Peter’s voice in the whole film! I would have been really pissed off if it was me, but I know how to speak, luckily, even though I’m from the Bronx. But you can tell that from my accent.”

At first, however, the plan was for Frehley to barely speak in the movie, and only utter one odd catch phrase. “Originally it happened whoever wrote the script didn’t give me lines because I didn’t take the phone call,” Frehley laughs. “Everybody in the band was supposed to get a phone call [with screenwriters Jan Michael Sherman and Don Buday] talking about what kind of personality they were, and what would they want to say. Something like that, I don’t know. I missed the call, or something happened, and I think they said, ‘Well, you know Ace likes to ack.’ Classic. So I got the script, and everybody’s got lines except me. So I walked up to Bill Aucoin’s office, and I said, ‘You better rewrite this, because I want some lines!’ And they did.”

That was just one of several mishaps during shooting. Stanley laughs thinking about the several times that both Frehley and Criss went AWOL during filming. “I’ll tell you some funny recollections, is that Ace and Peter at that point were not that reliable in terms of staying on set. And they would leave,” he says. “And literally, we’d be onstage — and we were lip-syncing, because you play to track — and I would turn around to see Peter, and there’d be some old man on the drums in cat makeup. Or I would turn around, and there was an African-American dressed as Ace.”

The biggest snafu came when Frehley, in a state of “drug-induced insanity” and furious after he showed up for an early morning call time only to find out he “could’ve slept another six hours,” stormed off the set, grabbed a six-pack of beer, and played hooky at the King Tut exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “I was walking around without makeup, and it calmed me down,” Frehley recalls. “So then I slowly drove back to the set, walked into the producer’s office, and apologized. And we made friends, and I was fine for the rest of the picture.” As a result, the Space Ace was played by Frehley’s African-American stunt double in the “Den of Horrors” scene, and the lack of continuity was glaringly, hilariously obvious.

Forty years have passed, and Frehley has not had any alcohol or drugs of any kind since 2006. But even the most sober person would still have trouble figuring out KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park’s plot line. “The plot? I have no idea what that movie’s about,” Frehley shrugs. “But you’ve got to look at it in the right light. It’s not a serious film. Paul and Gene took that movie very seriously.”

That being said, Stanley and Simmons seem to have finally found the humor in Phantom after all these decades. For instance, Simmons jokes that he and current KISS members Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer (who will join Stanley and Simmons on next year’s “End of the Road” farewell KISS tour) like to cuddle and watch the movie on Saturday nights. And Stanley says of the experience, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. … But in hindsight, people still love it. It’s not what we expected it to be. But KISS Meets the Phantom usually brings a smile to everyone’s face.”

Frehley has really gotten the last laugh, however. “I mean, come on, we’re superheroes. We’ve got comic books out. How serious can you take KISS? I never took KISS seriously,” he says. “The whole roller coaster ride of KISS to me was just like this jolly, crazy ride where I’m wearing makeup, and dressed up as a superhero, and playing guitar, and having fun, and meeting beautiful women along the way. I just never took the thing that seriously, even though we were one of the biggest groups in the world. And I still look back on it today and I go, ‘Wow, that was weird.’”

This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

When I interviewed former KISS guitarist Ace Frehley  — who died on Oct. 16, 2025, at age 74 — back in 2018 for promote his sixth solo album, Spaceman, casual KISS fans might have been surprised to learn that Gene Simmons co-wrote two tracks on that record (“Without You I’m Nothing” and “Your Wish Is My Command,” the latter of which also featured Simmons’s bass playing), or that Simmons even gave the album its title. After all, Frehley’s squabbles with both Simmons and KISS’s other mainstay, Paul Stanley, had been well-documented over the years.

But at that time Frehley told me there was “no bad blood” between him and his ex-bandmates — he’d recently performed with Simmons in Australia and as part of Simmons’s Vault Experience, and Stanley had appeared on Frehley’s 2016 album, Origins Volume 1. This of course raised the question is Frehley, who’d successfully reunited with Simmons, Stanley, and original drummer Peter Criss in 1996, would take part in KISS’s just-announced big farewell tour.

“I knew you were gonna ask that,” Frehley chuckled, with a glint in his eye that suggested he wasn’t telling the whole story (at one point he asked me exactly when this interview would run). “OK, I have a pat answer, and it’s true: I haven’t been invited.” That didn’t mean Frehley wasn’t open to the idea, however. “For the right price,” he said, he would “absolutely” do it.

“The first year of that reunion tour, we grossed $215 million, and that was 20 years ago. So what would it be today, probably double that? Half a billion? I’m there,” he laughed.

As for whether Criss would also sign on, Frehley said he hadn’t talked to his old bandmate recently. “Most of the time when I want to talk to Peter, I have to talk to his wife. She’s like his manager, Gigi. She’s a nice lady, but I don’t even think Peter has his own cellphone, or if he does, I don’t have the number,” he shrugged. “When I do business with Paul and Gene, I call Paul and he picks up. He goes, ‘Ace Frehley, how you doing?’ Gene says the same thing. When I want to talk to Peter, or ask him a question, it’s Gigi I go through.”

Frehley added, “For the right price, I’m sure he’d do it. I mean, it’s tough to turn down a couple of million dollars.”

Frehley stressed, however, that he was “not chomping at the bit” to do another reunion tour, because he was “having so much fun with my own band and recording records at home, and producing them, and writing them, and singing them. … My career has been going up and up and up.” He explained that the real reason he’d do it, aside from that massive payday, would be for the fans.

“I know the fans want it to happen because of the comments on the internet. Ninety percent of them overwhelmingly are saying, ‘Bring Ace back.’ If Paul and Gene decide to put a deaf ear to the fans, I think it’s going to hurt their careers,” Frehley said. “But you know, those guys always have done what they’ve felt like doing, even when it was not necessarily the best move.”

Frehley may have been referring to Music From “The Elder,” KISS’s disastrous 1981 concept album that led to Frehley’s exit from the band. Frehley was outvoted by Simmons and Stanley over the album’s direction (“I said, ‘This is the wrong album for this time. Kids are expecting a hard rock record, and you want to give them this themed album about some weird guy who wears a hood?’”), and he came to the following conclusion: “When you’re in a supergroup and you work with a bunch of people and they don’t listen to you and you turn out to be right, a light bulb goes off in your head and you say, ‘Maybe I should be working with people that agree with me.’”

And so, it was decided that lead guitar on the KISS farewell tour would be handled by longtime band member Tommy Thayer, who’d been controversially wearing Frehley’s Spaceman makeup since 2002. (Simmons and Stanley hold the ownership and licensing rights to Frehley and Criss’s original makeup designs.) “Some of the fans want to kill him! I actually like Tommy. He’s a friend of mine,” said Frehley. “And I have nothing bad to say about Tommy. But the reality is, the KISS configuration at this juncture is pretty much half a copy band. You know, it’d be one thing if Tommy would have invented his own character, invented his own guitar solos. But unfortunately, he’s copying everything I do, note for note. There’s not much leeway for anybody to say what he’s doing is original. I don’t know how I could handle that, you know? I don’t think I could step into a situation, and be somebody else. It’s almost like being a robot. Poor Tommy. My heart bleeds for him!”

However, Frehley had a good sense of humor about the whole situation. “I love [current drummer] Eric [Singer], and I love Tommy,” he insisted. “Tommy used to be my tour manager! I don’t think a lot of people are aware of that. Before he joined KISS to take my place, he was our tour manager. And I used to send him out to get sandwiches. Next thing you know, he’s wearing my makeup, and playing my solos. Go figure. You know, you can’t write this stuff. If somebody came to a [movie] producer with a story about a famous rock band, and they said, ‘Yeah, the lead guitarist left, who was like loved, appreciated, and a huge sound part of the band, and they hired the road manager,’ the producer would say, “Are you crazy? Nobody is going to believe that!’”

As for Stanley’s suggestion that KISS could continue on forever with no original members — i.e., with handpicked replacement musicians wearing the makeup — Frehley said, “I’ve heard that statement. You know why I think he said that? To somehow make people accept Eric and Tommy. Because that would put them in the mindset that, ‘Oh, eventually Gene’s going to be replaced, and Paul, so it’ll be four different guys.’ That’s not gonna fly! You know it, and I know it. I think that was just a psychological ploy, if you want to call it that.”

And so, Frehley remained focused on promoting Spaceman, a record of which he was extremely  proud. “You know what people are saying? I’ve done about 50 interviews already with people that have heard it, and they said it reminds them of my ’78 solo album,” he boasted. In fact, Frehley even wanted to call the new album 40 Years Later before Simmons came up with the catchier Spaceman title.

As even casual KISS fans well know, in 1978, at the height of their fame, all four KISS members concurrently released solo records, but it was the Eddie Kramer-produced Ace Frehley that was the most successful (yielding the top 20 single “New York Groove”), and the most critically acclaimed as well. That was an epiphany for Frehley — “I realized I was more creative away from Paul and Gene and Peter than I was with them” — and no Spaceman tracks like the nostalgic “Bronx Boy,” “Rockin’ With the Boys,” and a cover of Eddie Money’s “I Wanna Go Back,” he wanted to carry on on that legacy.

Frehley joked that Simmons and Stanley have “big egos, and they’ll be the first ones to admit it. I have a big ego, but not quite as big as Gene’s. Gene likes to talk about three people: me, myself, and I.” But he did believe they would listen to the KISS Army if the fans want him back — if not for the full farewell tour, then for a specific one-off reunion concert. That might have happened at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors , at which KISS are set to be fêted, but sadly, that can’t happen now. When the show tapes on Dec. 7 and airs on CBS on Dec. 23, Frehley will become only the third person to receive this honor posthumously, following the Eagles’ Glenn Frey and Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh.

“Anything can happen. … The ball’s in Gene and Paul’s court. So fans, if you want it, speak up. If you don’t, don’t. I’m OK either way. Don’t worry about me,” Frehley said of a possible reunion in 2018. “Tell Paul and Gene what to do — because you pay their salary. It’s true.”

Nowadays, celebrities going makeup-free for the camera lens is an everyday Instagram occurrence. But 35 years ago, when greasepainted rock gods KISS bared their faces on live television, it was a shocker. On Sept. 18, 1983, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, and relatively new band members Vinnie Vincent and the late Eric Carr took it all off for a Sunday evening MTV press conference — and against all odds, the makeunder actually revitalized their flagging career.

Up until that fateful night, the ‘80s had not been kind to KISS. Within the decade’s first two years, original members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss had left the group. A previous attempt to change with the times, with the ambitious but laughably misguided 1981 concept album Music From “The Elder,” was a commercial disaster. Ten years after their formation, KISS had fallen out of favor — replaced by MTV darlings who wore makeup in an entirely different way, like Boy George and Duran Duran. Perhaps that is why MTV execs stuck KISS’s press conference in the graveyard timeslot of 11 p.m. on a Sunday night, or why the event transpired with such a surprising lack of on-camera fanfare.

Looking back at the footage now, this “really big moment” in KISStory, as host J.J. Jackson somewhat unconvincingly worded it, seems anticlimactic, even downright awkward. There were no splashy graphics, no screaming in-studio audience, no background music. As glamour shots of the band members’ previously painted faces dissolved into closeups of their new looks — their clawfooted dragon-boots, leather linebacker shoulders, and superhero visages now replaced by standard-issue Sunset Strip attire — the set was eerily silent, save for the faint hum of the studio’s electricity and Jackson’s calm, resonant voiceover. (“There’s no question MTV chose J.J. to be at the helm, as he was MTV’s anchor of rock ’n’ roll knowledge,” Jackson’s co-worker, fellow original VJ Martha Quinn, tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I adore the moment he tosses out ‘The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys,’ a reference to the Traffic album.”)

So, there was ex-”Ankh Warrior” Vincent, glazed-eyed in a red blazer that seems pulled from Loverboy’s closet; pretty-faced former “Fox” Carr, rocking some earth-toned “Hungry Like the Wolf” safari-wear; Stanley, the onetime “Starchild,” in lavender leather trousers and a popped-collar teal vest that could’ve come from the Summer 1983 Members Only capsule collection; and, finally, a less demonic “Demon,” Simmons, sporting poodle hair and an uncomfortable stare. (The usually overconfident God of Thunder later confessed in his autobiography that he was “scared stiff” during the reveal.) The brief presentation was low-key, even by primitive early-MTV standards, and was especially off-brand for a gang of “fire-breathing, blood-spitting monsters” famous for flying on wires and detonating piles of pyro at their over-the-top stadium shows.

Quinn has amusing memories of the scene. “I remember jamming into the packed MTV control room to watch the unmasking,” she tells Yahoo Entertainment. “Everybody on the staff grew up for the most part in the ’70s, and KISS was in our rock ’n’ roll DNA. It’s hard to remember now, but the reveal of what the guys in KISS looked like under their makeup was historic. It’s funny, the production was so bare bones. You can really see the low-budget early MTV — in many ways, the MTV that today is so missed.”

At the time, Simmons insisted to Jackson and MTV’s late-night viewers that “KISS [was] still KISS” and that the band felt “very, very comfortable” with their new image. “We’ve always contended from the beginning that the makeup was just sort of a stage manifestation of who we are … the makeup was just an extension of our personalities,” he said on the air. “[We still have] the same sort of energy and drive and commitment to doing everything, short of killing ourselves, to give people the best show in the world.” Stanley coolly concurred: “Nothing really changes, because we only know one way to perform. The makeup never had anything to do with the bombs or doing splits or whatever we’re doing onstage. It comes from us. Taking the makeup off doesn’t change how we feel.” (Vincent — who would leave the band a year later — and Carr said pretty much nothing.)

However, speaking to the fanzine Porkchops & Applesauce in 1995 to promote the all-star tribute album Kiss My Ass: Classic Kiss Regrooved, Simmons admitted, “Everybody hated it. It was exciting to finally see us, but people were disappointed. They didn’t want the paint to come off. But you know what? Tough. It had to happen. You want your heroes to stay the same forever, but then the consequence of that is you get bored with them.”

Despite any initial backlash, KISS’s unmasking proved to be a shrewd career move, at least in the short term. Of course, the image update did nothing to earn the respect of music critics. (“Readers of early-’80s rock magazines may recall many bizarre interviews with Paul and Gene where they were asked if it would be difficult for them to record music without the greasepaint, thereby suggesting that many reporters somehow assumed KISS wore makeup in the studio,” writer Chuck Klosterman amusingly noted in Grantland.) But KISS fit right in with the commercial metal that would soon come to dominate Headbanger’s Ball-era MTV, and their first two no-makeup albums, Lick It Up and Animalize, went platinum (something their previous three albums had failed to do).

In the mid-‘80s, they scored respectable rock hits with “Heaven’s on Fire,” “Tears Are Falling,” and “Crazy Crazy Nights,” and they featured prominently in the 1988 metal documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II (which also starred Poison, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and Faster Pussycat). Ironically, in the early ’70s, KISS had crafted their image as a response to the glam-rock scene (“The very first pictures we took when we first got together, we looked like drag queens,” Simmons joked to Porkchops & Applesauce), and now they had assimilated into the 1980s glam-metal revival by taking the makeup off.

“At the time, I felt like it was the guys in KISS, very astute businessmen, wanting to keep step with the times, with the bands they were seeing on MTV — like Van Halen, Def Leppard, and Ratt,” Quinn tells Yahoo Entertainment. “These bands were all embracing the big rock sound that KISS specialized in, all while looking like glam-but-gritty rockers. Maybe Paul and Gene wanted to shed the Starchild and Demon to show they could play that game too. Or maybe they just wanted to be recognized by their fans more often!”

By 1989, KISS were even back in the Billboard top 10 singles chart with the power ballad “Forever,” their biggest hit since 1976’s “Beth.” Of course, the fact that “Forever” was co-written by schmaltz king Michael Bolton probably didn’t restore KISS’s ’70s rock cred — but by that point, they’d at least won over plenty of new fans. “I plead completely guilty that at some point [in the ’80s], we did completely sell out, to the guys that held the checks in front of our faces,” Simmons told Porkchops & Applesauce. “I mean, once you become disgustingly well-off, it’s difficult! We started making real pop records, with synthesizers and girl singers and all that s***. … I don’t think KISS will ever regain whatever credibility we once had, but that’s OK.”

KISS soldiered on for 13 years sans makeup, and in 1991, the year of grunge, they were still big enough to have their cover of Argent’s “God Gave Rock and Roll to You” serve as the theme song for fictional history-alternating band Wyld Stallyns in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. But by the irony-obsessed mid-’90s, ’70s nostalgia and kitsch were all the rage with Generation X — as evidenced by the above-mentioned Kiss My Ass, featuring covers of makeup-era KISS material by everyone from Garth Brooks and classical Japanese musician Yoshiki to alt-rock darlings Toad the Wet Sprocket, Dinosaur Jr., and the Lemonheads. And so, around this time, there was increasing public demand for KISS to return to their old facepainted ways. However, Simmons seemed surprisingly resistant to this “sellout” idea.

“To this day, a lot of original fans say we should do the makeup again, but then they say, ‘Remember, don’t sell out!’ But the truth is, if we did that again, we would be selling out. We’d just be going to the bank and putting out more s***loads of cash into our bank accounts,” Simmons told Porkchops & Applesauce. “There are bankers lined up now who say, ‘Do it and we’ll pay for the whole tour.’ I don’t negate the idea of doing it. But only if [we] feel like it.”

As it turns out, it didn’t take very long for Simmons and Stanley to “feel like it.” After the classic lineup of Simmons, Stanley, Frehley, and Criss reunited in August 1995 (without cosmetics) for a warmly received MTV Unplugged episode, they decided to kiss and make up, so to speak, and embark on their first tour together since 1979. And once again, KISS turned to live television to break the news — with all four original members making a bizarre surprise appearance, in full costume, alongside Tupac Shakur at the 1996 Grammy Awards. (“You know how the Grammys used to be, all straight-looking folks with suits. Everybody looking tired. No surprises. We tired of that! We need something different, something new! We need to shock the people. So, let’s shock the people!” Tupac proclaimed in his upbeat Grammy introduction.)

KISS’s full-facepaint reunion tour kicked off in June 1996, less than a year after Simmons’s assertion that reapplying the makeup would be a “sellout” move. And it was a sellout — in the sense that the band’s subsequent reunion tour sold out all over the country, grossing $143.7 million and becoming the most successful KISS tour to date.

Stanley, speaking to Loudersound in 2016 about KISS’s initial decision — actually initially proposed by Stanley — to go makeup-free, explained: “[The old look] had really run its course. It was no longer the original images. We had a fox and we had an Egyptian guy [Vincent, sometimes also known as “Egyptian Warrior” or “The Wiz”]. Maybe next we’d have ‘Turtle Boy.’ It was becoming farcical. We needed to take a stand. If we were good enough and viable enough as a band, we would survive. And if not, we would meet the extinction we deserved.”

Simmons expressed a similar sentiment to Porkchops & Applesauce. “We had to take [the makeup] off. It had run its course. New members were coming into the band, and then new characters were happening. It just wasn’t convincing to us anymore. We had always adhered to the philosophy that if Peter and Ace ever left, then KISS, at least in that form, would cease to be,” he said. “And I think instinctively, we did that. Without killing ourselves, without taking the Cobain way out, we simply killed off that version of KISS and decided to do a different version.”

However, when Frehley and Criss eventually left KISS again in the early 2000s, Simmons and Stanley — instead of re-removing their makeup or coming up with new characters — opted to have replacements (and current members) Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer respectively take on Frehley’s “Space Ace” and Criss’s “Catman” personas. That decision was perhaps even more polarizing than the group’s infamous MTV press conference. (“You’ve got a lot of push-back from some of the diehards. And that’s understandable. Hey, you know, if you lived in the ’70s and KISS was your favorite band, and that’s what you grew up with, and suddenly there’s another guy wearing that makeup, I can understand how some people, it might not have appealed to them as much,” Thayer told Rolling Stone in 2014.) But the controversial move, much like the makeup removal stunt of ’83, didn’t seem to derail KISS, who are now planning a massive (and possibly final) tour in 2019.

So, it looks like the makeup is here to stay. In fact, Stanley — who along with Simmons holds the ownership and licensing rights to the four original makeup designs — even recently suggested that KISS could theoretically continue indefinitely, without any original band members. It’s a proposal that longtime KISS manager Doc McGhee has supported, insisting that a new lineup could still rock stadiums and arenas “as long as these kids walk out there and they have that makeup and they have that attitude and they have a great f***ing visual show. … That’s what KISS is. KISS is a way of life.”

This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Sitting side by side at X Japan founder Yoshiki Hayashi’s Los Angeles recording studio to discuss the new X Japan rockumentary We Are X, Yoshiki and KISS bassist/mouthpiece Gene Simmons don’t seem to have much in common. Yoshiki is sweet, serious, and slight; Gene is loud, brash, and 6’2” even sans his signature platform-footed dragon boots. But the two are in many ways kindred spirits, united by their unwavering belief in the power of rock ‘n’ roll. They’re also two of the only rock stars to ever be immortalized by Sanrio as Hello Kitty dolls — which says a great deal about Yoshiki’s international superstar status, even if the classically trained Japanese rocker still isn’t a KISS-level household name in the States.

“It’s amazing. Miracles can happen,” grins Yoshiki, seated beside Simmons and a cluster of Hello Kitty figurines at one of his deluxe studio’s many grand pianos. “I’m sitting next to Gene Simmons, and he’s talking about my band. It’s like, that’s unbelievable.”

Simmons first became a fan of X Japan when Yoshiki arranged and wrote a symphony based on KISS’s “Black Diamond,” which became the majestic closing track on KISS’s 1994 all-star tribute album, Kiss My Ass. “It was so big and so impressive that I literally couldn’t figure out where to stick it in the track[listing],” Simmons says. “After Garth Brooks? No, that’s not going to work. We had to stick it on the end, because if you start off with that, everything else will look like a popcorn fart… It had to have its own breath, because when it ends, it feels like…’and then there was light… on the seventh day…’ I mean, it felt Biblical.”

For Yoshiki, getting to pay tribute to KISS was a career highlight — in an amazing career that has included recording with Beatles producer Sir George Martin, pioneering Japan’s glam-rock “visual kei” movement, composing a classical song for the 10th anniversary of Emperor Akihito’s enthronement, performing a live duet with a hologram of himself, creating the official Hello Kitty theme song, and selling more than 30 million records with his band. Why? Because KISS was the band that introduced him to rock ‘n’ roll in the first place.

“I was only listening to classical music,” Yoshiki recalls of his boyhood. “I started playing piano when I was 4 years old — just classical piano — and my father passed away when I was 10 years old. My father used to buy me classical albums, on vinyl of course. Then, after my father passed away, I decided to go to the record shop. Then, usually I buy like Schubert, Mozart, Chopin, or something like that. Then, I just passed one section and there’s the rock ‘n’ roll section. I found the KISS — I think it was the single ‘Love Gun’ — and I was like, ‘What is this?’” Later, Yoshiki asked his mother to take him and his 5-year-old brother to a KISS concert at Tokyo’s famous Budokan arena. “That was my first KISS experience, as well as my first rock experience. It changed my life.”

Simmons makes a brief but memorable cameo in We Are X, in U.S. theaters Oct. 21, rightfully griping about X Japan’s lack of Western success due to the language barrier. “The truth is, for many bands around the world that are enormous in their own countries and do very good music, that’s something you should be listening to,” Simmons tells Yahoo Music. “There are a lot of very good bands that just don’t sing in English. Look — when you go to see opera, aren’t they singing in German or Italian? You don’t understand what the words are, but you’re amazed by the music. I understand English is the predominant form for rock and blues and classical and country, rap and jazz and all that, because it was invented in America. OK. But get over yourselves. There’s some amazing musicians and groups and personalities.”

However, X Japan’s failure to become U.S. rock stars was always the least of the band’s worries. We Are X chronicles multiple tragedies that befell them over the years, including the fragile Yoshiki’s health issues, a breakup after frontman Toshi was “brainwashed” by a cult and denounced X Japan’s music, and the suicides of two other band members. Most tragic of all: another suicide, that of Yoshiki’s father, when Yoshiki was just a little boy.

Somehow, however, Yoshiki survived, and he says he has rock ‘n’ roll to thank.