If you try to talk down to KISS, be prepared to be burned.
Recently Dee Snider of Twisted Sister appeared on Eddie Truck‘s show where he expressed his opinion on the current lineup of KISS and how he isn’t too fond of them now that guitarist Ace Freely and drummer Peter Criss have departed from the band. He went so far as to call KISS’ current lineup “an insult,” and he continued with, “I don’t see how people could accept this. Tommy Thayer? I’m sorry. It’s insulting. Not only did he play in a tribute band of KISS, he’s imitating Ace in his entire act!”
Snider went on to express his outrage when KISS went so far as to mimic Frehley’s look and stage moves for the song “Shock Me.” “Oh my God – that’s disgraceful. When KISS replaced Ace and Peter, and they brought in guys [Eric Carr and Vinnie Vincent] who had their own makeup and their own thing, that was acceptable. That was awesome. They were their own characters.”
Well Snider’s opinion didn’t sit too well with KISS frontman Paul Stanley, who responded to Snider’s comments while on Chris Jericho‘s podcast, saying, “Let me put it in the simplest terms. In this case, this guy is a wannabe, has always been a wannabe and desperately wants attention and to be taken seriously and that will never happen because he’s obviously clueless that he and his whole band are a bunch of buffoons.”
Stanley went on to describe his relationship with the other members of the band as “not friends,” but elaborates, “I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense. I mean that we were very different people with different interests and separate lives. We didn’t socialize outside of being on tour and even then it was minimal. It was… we had some fun times but mainly being on tour was about playing and getting laid. And frankly I didn’t want the other guys around for the second part of that. But we were a gang. We felt a kinship. We felt special. We were KISS.”