Kiss and Make-Up (41 page)

We were touring the world but not having a good time doing it. The chemicals had started to handicap Ace even more and he had a girlfriend who seemed to tolerate willingly this lifestyle. Peter, too, succumbed to his inner demons. He went back to being the Moaner, the nickname given to him by a former road manager.

We still had a few tricks up our sleeves, though, or at least I did. I called Hugh Hefner, who is a friend of mine, and told him I was in discussions with
Penthouse
for a KISS cover and that I wanted to let him know about it because we were close to a deal. He told me to forget
Penthouse
and he would put the group on the cover of
Playboy
if we had an angle. I suggested “The Girls of KISS.” The photos and article would be about the female KISS fans who delight in going to our shows, showing us their breasts, and throwing their undies and bras onstage. He loved it. Under the wonderful guidance of Marilyn Grabowski, the word went out and about thirty beautiful
girls came, undressed, and put on their KISS makeup. We had the kind of photo session guys can only dream of.

When
Playboy
appeared on the stands in March 1999, I was on the cover alone with four girls. The band, especially Ace and Peter, believed it was another one of my schemes. They had expected and demanded to be on the cover.

When
Playboy
was about to come out, KISS had the coveted spot on the Superbowl telecast seen around the world by a billion people. Five hundred and fifty girls in KISS makeup joined us as we lip-synched “Rock and Roll All Nite.” Our fireworks and rockets were extra-charged, since the sky was the limit, and we showed the Superbowl and the world how it should be done. We were the openers. After KISS, Cher sang the national anthem. We saw each other later that night and reminisced about the great times we had had. She had just come off the biggest single in her career and was feeling great.

While we were at the Superbowl, I arranged to meet with Linda and Vince McMahon, the owners and creators of the World Wrestling Federation. I pitched them the idea of a KISS wrestler called the Demon (“I’ve been to hell and back”). I told them that we could follow it up with the Starchild, who was too pretty for his own good but could kick butt, and so on. Then we could introduce female versions of KISS, Lady Demon, Wildchild, and so on, and then KISS kids. While I was negotiating the licensing and merchandising slices we wanted on the back end, I was also talking to World Championship Wrestling, the rival wrestling outfit. In the end I took the better of the two deals and went with WCW. It was a win-win situation for us because KISS retained all licensing and merchandising rights: WCW did all the work and we reaped all the rewards.

The debut event for the Demon came as we were at our wit’s end by the end of the tour and about to call it quits. We flew to Las Vegas to play one song, “God of Thunder,” at the MGM Grand for the debut and made an enormous amount of money. It seemed like it should have been the easiest thing in the world, but with Ace and Peter nothing was ever easy. The misery of it was like pulling teeth.

Paul and I talked and finally decided to go out and do one more tour and then call it a day. This wasn’t such a crazy thought. The comeback, which began in 1996, was always a five-year plan—emotionally for me and Paul, and by contract for Ace and Peter. By the end of 1999, it was becoming very clear that, physically, neither Ace nor Peter could endure too much more. And Paul and I didn’t know how much more of them we could stand.

We really didn’t have much more to prove, either. By 1999 KISS had scaled the heights. We had been on the cover of
Forbes
magazine, had broken every box office record, and stood proudly right behind the Beatles in the number of gold record awards by a group. We had gotten our own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We were wax figures in the Hollywood Wax Museum. We had done what we had always dreamed of doing. And although I had been very frugal all my life, I was now, for the first time, loosening the purse strings.

Times had certainly changed. I had bought a car. I had bought property. I had cautiously dug my roots into the ground. I had two gorgeous kids who looked up to me. I was living with a living doll. But one thing hadn’t changed—I still wasn’t married. I had taken flack for that from friends, usually women. But it was the only way I knew to feel safe. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of simply living my life by society’s or anyone else’s rules.

As I said earlier, I really wanted my kids to have both of their parents’ names. I did not want Shannon to take on my last name; I find it insulting to women that they would agree to throw away their last names and assume their husbands’. Like property. “This is my car, this is my wife.” I wanted none of that. I wanted Shannon to be her own person, decide her own destiny, and go after every whim and desire she ever had, without having to check with “the man.”

As much as I was trying to fight the conventional nuclear family, here I was, crazy about the mother of my kids. As of this writing, we have been together for eighteen years. We have yet to raise a hand or our voices to each other. We often wonder if there is something wrong with us. We never fight, about anything.

So I let my guard down further and dug my roots deeper. I
decided to build a 16,500-square-foot home, with enough room for everyone and my work. It would have four levels on two acres with trees, a tennis court, and a waterfall. Building it would take three years. In the meantime, we had a farewell tour to complete.

The farewell tour kicked off in Phoenix, Arizona, on March 11, 2000. The stage set was a bigger, bolder version of the reunion tour, with three huge screens and two huge KISS logos. It was an over-the-top version of what we had been doing for twenty-five years. We opened with a film about the band, then moved right into “Shout It Out Loud.” The set was a strong mix of greatest hits and new material, the songs fans wanted to hear. I’m not sure if anyone believed that it was really a farewell performance. People were crying in the audience, but maybe it wasn’t because they were never going to see us again—maybe it was because Ace and Peter were playing so badly. As the tour went on, it became clear to me that the decision to make this tour the last one was not only smart but maybe inevitable. Musically, it was the worst we had ever been. But the amount of fan worship was tremendous. Many of the fans were celebrities. Russell Crowe came out to Austin, Texas. L.L. Cool J flew out to see us.

The farewell tour also found KISS solidifying its marketing deals—in fact, we took the opportunity to push our corporate connections to a new level. To my mind, one of the most interesting things about the band was the fact that we were never afraid to admit that we were in the rock and roll business. From the beginning, from 1973, I was less interested in respect, which can be here today and gone tomorrow, than in brand. Did people have enough interest in what we did to go out there and buy something associated with us? From the beginning Paul was always more interested in credibility. I knew that credibility was fleeting. You can argue from now until the end of time whether something or someone is respected, but one thing you can’t argue with is sales.

I think fans sometimes sided with Paul. Some of them perceived our obsession with marketing ourselves as characters to be sort of
juvenile. Way before anyone else was doing this, we stuck questionnaires in our albums. We wanted to know where the fans lived and what magazines they read. If we were going to take out an ad in a magazine, we didn’t want to take it out in the wrong one. One way to find out which magazines people read is to ask them. My awareness of these practices went back to my childhood, to my own days as a pop-culture fanatic. Since I loved Superman, I would certainly watch the TV show and buy not only the comic books but anything that Superman endorsed. The same held true for Disney. Disney is not just the theme park and cartoons—it is anything you can imagine, from pillows to pajamas to videos. Mickey Mouse started out as a cartoon, then became a part of America. Whether Mickey Mouse is respected or not is such a small issue. When you’re too big to argue with, you make your own rules. Is Elvis credible or not? Who cares? The question is moot. You may think Santa Claus doesn’t have any credibility. But at a certain time of the year, he rules. That’s what I wanted for KISS: to make such a big impact that authenticity or credibility would be beside the point.

At around this time, Pepsi approached us with an idea for a broad music-based TV marketing campaign that would use artists from all different kinds of music: from country to rock and everything in between. The commercials would star Hallie Eisenberg, a child actress, and include a country segment, where she sang with a country singer, a soul segment where she sang with Aretha Franklin, and so on. Pepsi approached us at the end of 1999 and at the beginning of the so-called farewell tour. While we were in Phoenix, we filmed it. Not only did VH1 come down and shoot the beginning of the farewell tour, but the day before, we spent about ten hours on the same stage filming the commercial.

They only showed it a few times, and then as a corporate decision Pepsi started to show the country version of the commercial instead. The problem was that when the Pepsi people did a test with their own focus group, it was 90 percent for us and only 10 for country. So they came back and started to play the commercial again. At the same time, ABC decided to use “Rock and Roll All Nite” as the theme music for its fall schedule.

The Pepsi deal was only the most recent in a long line of corporate associations. The very first one was for a KISS Honda bike, kind of a Japanese Harley-Davidson. Many corporations around the country were scared of an association with us. We have no illusions about our corporate identity—we’re like any other corporation. Some rock bands are delusional. They say they’re a people’s band, but even they don’t perform for free. Whether you have long hair or razor blades in your eyeballs, you’re a corporation. KISS broke all the rules and ended up on the cover of
Playboy
and
Fortune.
We’ve never made any bones about the fact that the American dream is about not only fame but also riches. Money does make you a happier person. It’s not everything, but it’s better to have more money than less. Americans by and large feel a little awkward talking about money or showing it off when they have it. That’s why the richest men in the country walk around in jeans. When a band that has sold millions of records walks onstage in jeans, it’s every bit as much a costume as KISS’s costumes. Each outfit is carefully designed to elicit a certain reaction.

I’m here to tell you it’s all good. We don’t hide behind that mask. We worked hard. Bands have come out and said that we’re corporate while they have integrity, and they can point fingers, but the IRS makes no distinction. When you make money, it’s called earned income. As a rock band, you are a business, and you have to seize every opportunity to promote your product.

In the winter of 2001, as we were getting ready to embark on the Japanese and Australian leg of our farewell tour, Peter demanded a new deal. But we had a contract with him and weren’t willing to meet these new terms. Peter held his ground and told us that we could take it or leave it. We left it. At the end of the day, Peter Criss is still the very same guy who, even before our first show at the Diplomat Hotel in 1973—a show where we scratched and clawed to get people there—was ready to quit the band. Why? Because he was disappointed that his best friend, Jerry Nolan, had a record contract. In 1980, on our first Australian tour, we played to stadiums
full of people. Peter missed that tour. And here we were, going back to Japan and Australia in March 2001, kicking off at Tokyo Stadium, and Peter would miss that tour as well. Eric Singer rejoined KISS in the catman makeup.

Amazingly, during this final tour, I witnessed at least one miracle—an amazing change in the behavior of Ace Frehley. Maybe it’s because he had a new girlfriend, who seemed wonderful. Maybe it’s because he was finally growing up a bit. Whatever the reason, I’d never seen Ace more responsible. He showed up on time, played his instrument, and helped out. Perhaps it was because Peter was not there and Eric Singer, the sweetest guy in the world, was. The company you keep matters. But through Japan and Australia, Ace was a joy to work with.