Looking back on Kiss‘ career, their fanbase was certainly amongst the most diehard and dedicated of any popular music artist past or present. But especially early on in their career, when fans began attending concerts dressed in the same facial make-up design of their favorite Kiss member, and some even replicating their costumes…which must have proven to be quite a nuisance while taking the subway or bus to and from the performance.
During an interview with Q104 New York, Kiss singer and bassist Gene Simmons discussed the early years of the band. And in particular, how the name of their fan club, the Kiss Army, can be traced back to sometime in 1975, and a Kiss fanatic by the name of Bill Starkey.
“There was a guy in Terre Haute, Indiana, as a matter of fact. And in the early days, radio didn’t play Kiss because we didn’t do John Denver kind of namby-pamby stuff. Okay, John Denver fans don’t write for me. I like him too, he’s fine. We just didn’t do the ‘la de dah’ kinds of songs. We liked to turn the guitars up and have fun, and radio wouldn’t play us.”
“So this one guy, Starkey, his name was not Ringo, called the radio station, which was a small building outside of town, ‘Play, Kiss!’ ‘I’m sorry, kid, we don’t play that song.’ And he threatened him. He said, ‘If you don’t play Kiss by 5 pm tomorrow, the Kiss Army will surround your building’ and everything.”
The station failed to call Starkey’s bluff. Soon, local media got involved, which brought further publicity to the then-still-up-and-coming Kiss.
“Of course, they did not. So what happened? The cover of the newspaper, ‘The Kiss Army Invades WXYZ [WVTS], whatever.’ That’s where the name came from. And by the way, afterwards, they played Kiss. Because they knew that we knew what their home address was, and when they weren’t home, we might set their pets on fire. There’s that. That was a decent joke, you could have laughed at that.”