Sound Cloud

In the 10-minute audio clip above, KISS frontman Paul Stanley discusses the writing and narration of his memoir, “Face The Music: A Life Exposed”. This episode also includes an excerpt from the prologue.

“People say I was brave to write such a revealing book, but I wrote it because I needed to personally reflect on my own life,” Stanley said. “I know everyone will see themselves somewhere in this book, and where my story might take them is why I’m sharing it.”

Well known for his onstage persona, the “Starchild”, Paul Stanley has written a memoir with a gripping blend of personal revelations and gritty war stories about the highs and lows both inside and outside of KISS. Born with a condition called microtia (an ear deformity rendering him deaf on the right side), Stanley‘s traumatic childhood experiences produced an inner drive to succeed in the most unlikely of places: music. Taking readers through the series of events that led to the founding of KISS, the personal relationships that helped shape his life, and the turbulent dynamics among his bandmates over the past forty years, this book leaves no one unscathed — including Stanley himself.

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Miriam Coleman | Rolling Stone

Gene Simmons once had to talk Eddie Van Halen out of leaving his namesake band and joining up with Kiss, potentially altering the course of rock n’ roll history. In a recent interview withGuitar World, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee confirmed the rumor that around the time of Kiss’ 1982 album,Creatures of the Night, the virtuoso guitarist was “very serious” about making the change.

 Kiss’ Long Road to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Photos

“He was so unhappy about how he and [David Lee] Roth were – or weren’t – getting along. He couldn’t stand him. And drugs were rampant,” Simmons said. According to the Kiss founder, Van Halen took him out to lunch at a diner across the street from New York’s record plant studio, with Vinnie Vincent (who ended up joining the band shortly afterwards) tagging along. “Eddie said, ‘I want to join Kiss. I don’t want to fight anymore with Roth. I’m sick and tired of it,'” Simmons recalled. “But I told him, ‘Eddie, there’s not enough room. You need to be in a band where you can direct the music. You’re not going to be happy in Kiss.’ I talked him out of it. It didn’t fit.”

Simmons also admits that he was going through his own identity issues with the band in the early Eighties, and that Paul Stanley was left to take on a lot of the heavy lifting in Kiss as Simmons pursued an acting career in Hollywood.

“It was starting to affect the band. It was not rock and roll,” he said, noting that former guitarist Ace Frehley was among the bandmates rightfully complaining about his extracurricular ambitions. “But maybe I just wanted to be appreciated outside of Kiss. My life in Kiss is like being a girl with huge tits. All anyone talks about is the makeup, or ‘Let me see your tongue.’ Sometimes you want to say, ‘Can’t you just focus your eyes up here so that we can have a conversation?'”

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