KISS frontman Paul Stanley discussed his involvement in his son Evan Stanley’s musical endeavors in an interview with The 100 with Josh Adam Meyers.

The interview addressed Stanley’s parenting style regarding his children’s musical pursuits. He specifically responded to whether he gives advice or maintains a hands-off approach.

“With this, I’m stepping back. But I’m always there for an opinion if asked for,” Stanley said.

Stanley shared insights about his relationship with his son Evan and their musical discussions.

“Evan, I’ll say, one of the amazing qualities about him is he’s always been tell me, ‘What do you think? How can this be better?’” he continued. “I’ve always prefaced what I tell him, ‘This is just my opinion for better or worse.’ And to not be defensive, puts you in a position to absorb and learn a whole lot more.”

Evan Stanley currently collaborates with Gene Simmons’ son Nick Simmons on their musical project.

Paul Stanley maintains a supportive yet hands-off approach. The musical collaboration between the KISS sons has captured significant industry attention.

A report from AXS TV revealed that Evan and Nick have recorded 10 new songs. Their music takes a distinct direction from their fathers’ hard rock legacy.

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Paul Stanley’s art at Butler Institute of Art offered these limited edition signed catalog books for a show in September 2023.  

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From a scrappy school cover band to rock ‘n’ roll legend: the hilarious story of a young Matt Cameron’s 1975 cease and desist letter finally wraps up with some good vibes and laughs.

Back in the ’70s, a super young Matt Cameron – future drummer for Soundgarden and Pearl Jam – was jamming in a KISS cover band right in his San Diego neighborhood. Alongside two buddies, they played school parties and local gigs, rocking homemade costumes and DIY pyrotechnics to mimic the legendary New York rockers.

They straight-up called themselves KISS. And yep, that’s exactly what got them into some legal hot water.

After catching a real KISS soundcheck and meeting Paul Stanley in ’75, a few months later Matt and his crew got hit with a cease and desist letter from Aucoin Management, the agency running the real band back then. Signed by manager Bill Aucoin himself, it ordered these kids to immediately stop using the name “KISS.”

Shocked and kinda bummed, the young band switched their name to KISS (Imitation) and kept rocking on, holding tight to their love for their idols.

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Limited to only 500 copies on Black Vinyl! Order now at KISSArmyWarehouse.com!

Tracklist

KISS rocker Gene Simmons is set to be celebrated at Operation Smile’s annual Smile Fiesta gala.

Simmons will be honored with the Universal Smile Award.

Also being honored at the gala is actor Harrison Ford, who’ll receive the Dr. Randy Sherman Visionary Award, named after the late founder of Operation Smile’s Southern California chapter.

Operation Smile, founded in 1982, is a nonprofit that provides cleft lip and palate repair surgeries to children worldwide. Since 2022, the organization’s services have been available at 38 smile centers around the world.

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“If there weren’t brave people like you – I wouldn’t be here, and neither would my mother,” Gene Simmons told Harold “Hal” Urban, who participated in liberating Mauthausen in May 1945.

An extraordinary moment of historical significance and personal gratitude unfolded Monday evening in Washington when Gene Simmons, the 75-year-old frontman of legendary rock band KISS, encountered Harold “Hal” Urban, a 100-year-old World War II veteran who participated in liberating the concentration camp where Simmons’ mother was imprisoned as a teenager.

Their meeting during the American Memorial Day parade marked the first time the two men had met, despite their lives being forever connected by the events of May 1945. Urban, still wearing his original military jacket from the liberation, represented one of the American heroes who helped end the Holocaust’s systematic murder of European Jewry.

When Simmons approached Urban during the parade, the rock star’s usual theatrical persona gave way to raw emotion. Without his characteristic Kiss makeup, Simmons clasped Urban’s hand and delivered words that encapsulated decades of unspoken gratitude, “If there weren’t brave people like you – I wouldn’t be here, and neither would my mother. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Urban’s memories of liberating Mauthausen remain vivid and traumatic even at age 100. He described the overwhelming stench of burning human remains, emaciated prisoners stumbling in confusion and terror, and the psychological trauma that proved more devastating than conventional combat. His unit buried approximately 500 corpses within 24 hours of the camp’s liberation – a grim testament to the Nazi regime’s systematic extermination efforts.

While Urban cannot definitively recall meeting Flora Klein, Simmons’ mother, during those chaotic liberation days, both were present at Mauthausen when American forces arrived. Klein was just 14 years old, one of thousands of Jewish prisoners whose survival depended entirely on the Allied advance reaching them before the Nazi machinery of death could complete its work.

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In late March 2025, it was announced that Kiss would be “storming Vegas.” People weren’t sure what that meant at first, other than some version, or perhaps a partial version of Kiss, probably with founders and forever holdovers, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, performing at the event.

Soon after Kiss Army Storms Vegas was announced, onlookers found out that it was, in fact, true and that Stanley and Simmons would be performing. But not only that, but that they’d be doing so without their trademark kabuki makeup. And as is always the case when Kiss does anything, the rumors began to swirl, and the reactions began to swell. Such is life within the world of Kiss.

In recent weeks, Simmons has made it clear in interviews that, no, Kiss won’t necessarily be performing a whole set. And no, this is not Kiss doubling back on their promise to get off the road, an era which ended on December 2, 2023, at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

And now, in conversation with Guitar Player, Kiss’s Starchild, electric guitar player Paul Stanley, has weighed in, clarifying, with outright simplicity, what Kiss’s forthcoming Vegas shindig actually is. “Let’s just call it a Kiss Kruise,” Stanley says. “But landlocked in Vegas.”

Within that context, the idea of Stanley, Simmons, and company, climbing up onstage as Kiss, without makeup, isn’t a state-of-the-art idea. Historically, Kiss Kruise’s, throughout their 12-year existence, as per the name, have always featured performances by Kiss, without makeup.

They’ve also always featured a roster of bands and artists, ranging from Kiss alumni, such as Bruce Kulick, who will be in Vegas come November, current members of the band, like Tommy Thayer, who will be with Stanley and Simmons in Vegas, and Ace Frehley, who, much to the chagrin of the Kiss Army, will not.

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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.”

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Very cool and hard to find poster.  Bruce signed this for us in a private signing in Evansville, IN in April 2022.   He signed these in blue paint pen.  Comes with our Certificate of Authenticity. Measures 24 x 30 inches.

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I don’t want to blow your mind or anything, but Kiss didn’t break out because of their albums. It’s not that the music is woeful or anything, it’s perfectly serviceable power-pop with a little bit of hard rock frisk to it. There were countless bands playing similar sorts of party-time rock ‘n’ roll when they formed in 1973 and continued to do so for the entire decade. No, if you know the slightest thing about Kiss, you know that it was their live shows that really marked them out as something different.

Because if you’re not an obsessed Kiss-a-holic, what you may not realise is that the comic book villain getups, Earth-rattling pyrotechnics and extended solos didn’t come with success. The platonic ideal of Kiss is of the band in front of a packed out arena with Gene Simmons flying into the audience on a harness, shooting sparks from his nipples. However, the genuinely cool thing about Kiss is that they didn’t wait until they were in arenas to do that cool stuff.

They were absolutely a part of the band from the very beginning. It’s probably the most genuinely exciting thing about the whole band, the fact that for years, they were able to cram a demented Broadway nightmare’s worth of special effects into the bars and clubs of New York. Needless to say, it got them a die-hard local following. The one thing it didn’t translate to was any success on the radio.

Which kind of makes sense. Spectacle is one of the things that radio can’t provide, and at the time, taking away Kiss’s spectacle was like taking away Tyson Fury’s boxing. They’re literally not capable of anything else. However, you don’t take an act like Kiss into rock clubs in the 1970s without ambition. The band was dead set on being the biggest in the world, so if something needed to change about them to achieve that ambition, they were going to do it.

How did Kiss get their music on the radio?

Mainly because, as you can probably imagine, Kiss was an expensive band to run. It may have been ludicrously exciting to see a band set up pyro machines in venues only a little bigger than a bar, but there’s a reason why most save those stunts for arenas. If Kiss wanted a future, they needed a radio hit, and none of their early albums were translating to radio.

However, as drummer Peter Criss explained to the documentary series Metal Evolution, they eventually figured out that the secret lay not in adjusting their sound for radio consumption, but putting their live show on the radio. He says: “We were so frustrated that we could not get our sound on vinyl. We had a lot of other bands, all these English bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who… they did do live albums and they sounded phenomenal. Why can’t we do this?”

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“This week, we crack open one of the most explosive, chaotic, and mysterious chapters in rock history — the story of Vinnie Vincent. The man who not only saved KISS at their most desperate hour, but also became the unpredictable fuse that blew the band apart from within. From his arrival during the Creatures Of The Night era, shredding solos like a man possessed, to reshaping KISS’ sound with Lick It Up, Vincent was both a savior and a storm.

As the Egyptian Ankh Warrior, his glam-metal reinvention electrified fans — but behind the scenes, ego clashes, lawsuits, and demands for control turned his tenure into legend. He was fired, rehired, fired again, and vanished into a fog of lawsuits, missed comebacks, and urban myths. His Vinnie Vincent Invasion cranked glam metal into overdrive, but imploded in spectacular fashion. While his bandmates struck gold with Slaughter, Vincent became rock’s most infamous enigma — brilliant, volatile, and impossible to pin down. This is the untold story of the guitar genius who rebuilt KISS, then walked away from everything — and left the world wondering what really happened.”

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WASHINGTON (7NEWS) — Gene Simmons of legendary rock band, KISS, joined Good Morning Washington to share how he is participating in this years National Memorial Day Parade. He is honoring his mother, who was placed in an internment camp in Hungary during World War II.

Gene shared the importance of honoring those who have fought for our country, and how we can continue the fight.

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