SDCC Roundtable: Paul Stanley and Tommy Thayer on SCOOBY-DOO! AND KISS: ROCK AND ROLL MYSTERY

Chris Salce | Nuke the Fridge

Screen Shot 2015-07-17 at 4.06.37 PMAt San Diego Comic-Con last week, exactly a week ago today, I had the privilege to interview “the best band in the land”  Kiss, for their new animated film Scooby-Doo! And Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery. In this roundtable interview, the Star Child Paul Stanley and the Spaceman Tommy Thayer discuss the film, touring, on stage injuries and what they think about musicians these days. Enjoy!

Q: What can you tell us about Kiss going into the Scooby-Doo universe?

Paul Stanley: The Scooby universe has never changed anymore than the Kiss universe has changed. What’s changed is these two worlds colliding. So, given the fact that we got to make a full-length feature, means that everything got a chance to be fully developed and taken to a degree that you certainly can’t do in a half hour. The idea of two iconic entities kind of sharing the same space, makes for something very exciting and combustable.

Q: What’s the best part about doing voiceover work as opposed to being on stage and performing?

Stanley: Well, you’re putting a voice to an animated character, even if it’s you, and there’s something very different about that because suddenly I found my voice being very different because it’s an animated piece as opposed to dramatic real life feature, so the character has more of a cartoon voice to it than perhaps mine.

Tommy Thayer: Yeah, there’s a slightly different kind of energy to it. It’s a little more high energy actually, where you push it more and the pace, you have to keep it exciting but it’s something we enjoyed doing. We did it all together, sat down with the script with the four of us in front of a mic one afternoon. We did most of it that way.

 

image: http://i0.wp.com/nukethefridge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/20150709_155136.jpg?resize=378%2C213

20150709_155136 

Q: [Directed to Paul Stanley] I’m just curious, will you be doing anymore art shows?

Stanley: I will. I took some time off because (everyone should have this problem) the art became too big that when I originally when I started painting, I painted as a way to let off steam, and it became so popular that I was working with deadlines again, and I didn’t want it to get ruined for me. So I had to stop for awhile and I’m painting again and it’s exciting. I found myself almost getting on a treadmill like a hamster wheel, you know? I’m fortunate enough that I don’t need the money. The art is something important to me that I hold dear and to kind of pollute it, didn’t feel right. I just took a break and wanted to stay true to myself.

Chris Salce: So after this film, what’s next for Kiss?

Stanley: Kiss meets the Flinstones [laughs] no, um…who knows? That’s the beauty of Kiss is that we’re not a rock band in the sense that rock is what we’re limited to. The world is full of so many opportunities and so many options that it’s hard to see what’s next. There’s always something else exciting.

Thayer: In the immediate future, we are going off to Australia and New Zealand this fall on tour. We’ve been doing a lot of international touring this year. We’ve been to Japan and South America, we just finished Europe a couple weeks ago and we got the Kiss Cruise 5 at the end of October, which is something we love doing and I know our most dedicated fans love being there too. After that, next year, sky’s the limit.

Q: Your live show is so dynamic, what is the worst injury that you’ve had on stage?

image: http://i1.wp.com/nukethefridge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/20150709_155138.jpg?resize=367%2C207

20150709_155138 

Stanley: There’s been a few. I’ve got a cracked rib on stage, which wasn’t very fun and then I had to keep doing the shows. I got hit in the face with a bottle, so I have a nice little scar and a few tours ago, one of the sparklers went off and burnt my eye.

Thayer: Luckily, we have great professional people working pyro wise, which is something Kiss is famous for also but we never had any major problems because it’s something that’s been done so professionally but maybe it was done a bit differently in the old days before I was here [smirks].

Q: What do you think of artists today that take off a day of their tour ’cause of fatigue but then you have people like Dave Grohl who breaks his leg and has his cast getting done on stage. Can you comment on that?

Stanley: In order to respect and covet the success you have, you have to earn it. And the difference between somebody who comes through it fairly easily and somebody who works their way up the ladder, makes a difference in how tough you are and what you give. We do shows with the flu, we do shows regardless. When somebody has a booboo on their foot and they need to take a week off, that’s because they didn’t come up the right way.

 

SDCC Roundtable: Gene Simmons and Eric Singer on SCOOBY-DOO! AND KISS: ROCK AND ROLL MYSTERY

Chris Salce | Nuke the FridgeScreen Shot 2015-07-17 at 4.02.57 PM

Thursday was my first day at Comic-Con in San Diego and it was a big one. One of the interviews I had that day were with none other than Kiss, for their new animated film Scooby-Doo! And Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery. Yes, you heard right. Kiss teams up with Scooby-Doo to solve a mystery! In this roundtable interview with the Demon Gene Simmons and the Catman Eric Singer, we discuss how the project came about and the secret to being successful. So here you go, you wanted the best, you got the best…

Q: Kiss and Scooby-Doo, how did this come about?

Gene Simmons: We appeared on Scooby in the seventies and now that Warners has stepped up and proudly made the most expensive Scooby movie of all time, Kiss meets Scooby-Doo really breaks the mold and because what you’ve got is rock n’ roll, Scooby stuff, there’s a mystery, as soon as you think you’ve got it figured out within the first half hour, all of a sudden, rules aside, everything changes. They’re often space monsters, sci-fi, witches, all the cool stuff fanboys love. End of story.

Q: If you could craft a unique song for a Marvel or DC comics character, who would it be?

Simmons: Dr. Doom because the character is so defined and when you understand, here’s the important part, the pathos of it, in other words, what makes this bad guy not just a one-dimensional thing. When you saw King kong, you understood that he actually loved that little girl but he loved her, he would die for her. That’s what made King Kong unique and what makes Dr. Doom unique is that this is actually damaged goods. This guy’s got his face with all kinds of acid and stuff so he’s not fighting the world, he’s fighting himself. I could have written ‘Unholy’ about him.

Q: How much control did you have over the characters and the writing itself?

Simmons: We respect and admire the Scooby mystique and the iconic nature of it so much that all we did was take care of Kiss. We take care of Kiss, they’ll take care of Scooby.

Eric Singer: They’ve got it! When they wrote the script, let’s face it, whoever did their homework, did their homework and basically got the real gist of the individual characters, physically, how the moved and basically stylistically with how they talked.

Chris Salce: You guys are obviously a really successful band, you’ve been around for years…

Simmons: And good looking too [smirks]

Chris Salce: [Laughs] yes, and everybody knows who Kiss is. How did you guys become such successful businessmen? You have a football team, TV shows, tons of merchandise all over the place and now Scooby-Doo.

Simmons: There’s no excuse because all the information mankind has ever put together is really available for free [picks up phone], so when a guy walks up and says ‘Yeah man what’s up?’ that’s not society’s fault, that’s his fault for not taking the time to learn language skills, people skills and all the information you want is right at your fingertips for free!

Singer: Yeah it’s called the internet!

Simmons: What you do before was the library and I used to go to the library everyday. Read. Seek and you shall find. I didn’t create that and you didn’t either so, in my new book, [smirks] ‘Me Incorporated,‘ it actually goes in there! It’s your responsibility, you can always make more money. I guarantee you tomorrow, if you cut out all the bulls*** money you spend on today, you’ll make twice as much money tomorrow. Cigarettes, bars, going on vacation, you don’t need to do all that stuff. That’s the first step, lean and mean.

Q: What’s the next team up that you would like to do?

Simmons: I would like to team up with God.

Q: Why God?

Simmons: He’s cool!