Keith Spera | The Times-Piayune

Danny Bourque

Want to know the back story of why KISS won’t perform during the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on April 10? Read Brian Hiatt’s 7,600-word, comprehensive cover story on the band/soap opera in the current issue of Rolling Stone.

Founding bassist Gene Simmons and singer/guitarist Paul Stanley, who have ruled the KISS empire for 40 years, have made clear they won’t play because the Hall of Fame will only induct the band’s four original members. That undercuts the legitimacy – and marketability – of the current roster, which features guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer. Hall of Fame officials, meanwhile, have made clear that, in their opinion, only the original four should be inducted.

For Thayer and Singer to perform at the induction without actually being inducted would be awkward. And Stanley and Simmons wouldn’t play without them.

Hiatt’s remarkably intimate and honest portrayal, respectful but goosed with the occasional snarky aside, makes clear why.

For four decades, Simmons and Stanley have been the sober, hyper-ambitious professionals who have run the band like a business, and lucratively so. Frehley and Criss long ago partied themselves out of the empire.

KISS was long snubbed by both Rolling Stone and the Hall of Fame. The band was eligible for induction 15 years ago, but wasn’t voted in until this year. And despite massive sales, scandalous behavior and a vast, loyal legion of fans, Rolling Stone declined to put KISS on the cover until now.

And even then, the magazine used a 1975 portrait of the original lineup on the cover. The main image accompanying the story is a shot taken atop the Empire State Building in 1976.

For his epic story — he even had enough material for a sidebar of noteworthy “leftover” quotes — Hiatt spent time with all four original members while reporting his story, laying bare the rifts, bitter feelings and divergent perceptions of reality that stand in the way of a full-on reunion.

Stanley seems like the most well-adjusted of the principals involved. Frehley is clearly damaged. Criss is vulnerable. And Simmons comes across as a lonely, largely friendless and joyless figure, despite the fact that, in KISS’s heyday, he was apparently very rarely alone.

Hiatt’s story recounts Simmons’ claim that he’s slept with close to 5,000 women. That is the equivalent of meeting, seducing and closing the deal with a different woman every single night for 13 years.

That figure seems a bit high, even if he ended up with more than one on some nights. Didn’t he stay home some nights? Or get the flu? Or just want to watch TV alone?

And presumably, they were periods of monogamy with girlfriends Cher and Diana Ross, as well as with longtime paramour Shannon Tweed, whom he started dating in 1983 and finally married in 2011.

Maybe his relationships didn’t count when KISS was on tour. When Simmons called me from an Orlando hotel room during the band’s 2000 “farewell” tour, he made sure I knew he wasn’t alone in his hotel room – and put the woman on the phone to prove it.

Was she another number in his tally, or a prop to maintain the legend? Probably whatever was better for business.

Simmons, Stanley, Thayer and Singer won’t perform at the Hall of Fame induction, but will the next night, April 11, on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” Take that, Hall of Fame.

And they’ll spend much of the summer on a co-headlining amphitheater tour with Def Leppard. Simmons told Hiatt that he envisions only two or three more KISS tours. At age 64, he’s closing in on 70, and says the physical demands of touring, especially in his weighty demon costume, will eventually be too much.

Especially with all those hotel room visitors.