On Power Page 2

  I was starting to think about money and girls, and I wanted both. I started working at all sorts of odd jobs after school and on weekends. I delivered newspapers door-to-door. I probably made $15 per week on my newspaper route, and by the end of the year, I had saved about $600. I had never seen so much money. Then another kid in the neighborhood who also had a paper route decided that he’d rather go to the playground and play softball than deliver papers, so I took over his route in addition to mine. I also worked at a butcher’s shop, scrubbing the fat and drying blood off the chopping block daily. I also brought up big pieces of meat from the rat-infested storage area in the basement. Eventually, I was clearing about $25 per week, times fifty weeks, and had saved about $1,000 (a lot back then).

  And then in 1964, at age fourteen, I witnessed the Beatles. And I had a vision. Things all started to make sense. I wanted to be in a band. To make money. To get girls. To be accepted. This was the beginning of a phase in my life I like to call A.B. (After the Beatles), when I was in various bands, which we’ll get to later. But I didn’t quit my day job, as the saying goes. I continued working and saving money. I continued to do well in school. And I stayed away from smoking, drinking, and, later, doing drugs. Everyone seemed to be indulging in these things in the sixties, but they simply had no appeal for me. They still don’t. I couldn’t imagine disappointing my mother after the hard life she had led. She’d fought so hard to keep me safe. How could I endanger myself or embarrass her after all that? I promised myself that I would succeed and make my mother’s life easier. I didn’t want her to work. I wanted to buy her a house. I wanted to give her all the things she’d never had. I was intent on making all of this happen.

  In high school, I was drawn to Junior Achievement, an activity where local captains of industry took the time to teach teenagers about how capitalism works. The things I learned in Junior Achievement have served me well to this day. I would urge you to get the young people in your life into Junior Achievement or the equivalent in your community. Unfortunately, the school system doesn’t teach kids what a mortgage is or how taxes and businesses work. While students learn basic mathematics and various historical facts, very little of what they learn in school equips them with the practical tools they’ll need to enter adulthood and the workforce. Junior Achievement taught me how a business works, from raising capital, to selling shares of stock, to marketing a product, buying insurance, and hoping to see a profit after all costs. Oh yes, and then there are the corporate and personal taxes on profits. Young people need to go through this sort of training to prepare for the real world. Knowing that Columbus discovered America in 1492 (which is, of course, incorrect; he discovered nothing since Indians had been here for more than twelve thousand years) will mean nothing when you go out for your first job.

  After school hours, when I wasn’t attending Junior Achievement classes down at the YMCA, I would hit the library and voraciously devour books—all kinds of books. I was also in the acting society (Masque & Bauble) and the school choir. And then I noticed that all the girls were registered in the typing class, so I enrolled. I learned to type very fast (close to 100 words per minute), and I also got a few dates in there. Little did I know that my typing abilities would eventually open doors for me.

  After high school, I understood that the next step was to go to college. So I took out a loan and enrolled in a community college in upstate New York, eventually graduating with a bachelor of arts in education. While I was in college, I also played with a rock band, worked as a floor manager in a warehouse and as a lifeguard at the Pines Hotel, and had my own typing service where students paid me fifty cents for every double-spaced page I typed up. All at the same time. Once I graduated with my degree, I was hired by a temp agency called Kelly Girl Service (eventually changed to Kelly Services), a company that major corporations turned to when they needed additional manpower. My typing skills got me in, and that opened the door to working a temp job at a legal firm called Williamson & Williamson on Wall Street—the night shift—from 8:00 P.M. till 7:00 A.M. Then I was hired for a temp position at Glamour magazine and in short order was offered a spot at Vogue, where I found myself working for a time as man Friday to the iconic managing editor of the magazine, Kate Lloyd.

  In my twenties, I was always employed. Hard work was in my DNA, ingrained from the time I was a boy, seeing my mother get up at the crack of dawn every day to go to work. After Vogue, I got a job as assistant to the director of the Puerto Rican Interagency Council (a government-funded research and demonstration project). After work, I’d go to my second job as a checkout guy at a New York City deli. Then, for a short stint, I actually put my education degree to use and taught sixth grade in Spanish Harlem.

  At this point, the year was 1973 and I had just turned twenty-three. I was in New York City, in the right place at the right time, and then I found the right thing: KISS. In the next chapter, I’ll tell you more about exactly how KISS started. But for now I want you to focus on the fact that in the early years of KISS, I was still living at my mother’s house, because I wanted to save on rent, and I didn’t care what anyone had to say about that.

  I also did not own a car until I turned thirty-four.

  I hardly bought anything. I simply didn’t need things. I had no interest in clothing or gadgets.

  Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS).

  I had also amassed $23,000, after taxes, which meant I had actually earned and saved quite a bit more. I was almost there.

  Let me also take a moment to tell you about some decisions I made about my personal life at the time. This may not endear me to some readers, but let’s be honest: there is little that a young man has to offer when he is just starting out on his journey. He hasn’t yet made his fortune. He is ill equipped to settle down—and that’s being kind. Ladies, you may think that the six-foot-tall guy you are looking at is a man, but if he is between twenty and thirty years of age, what you’re really seeing is a fourteen-year-old trapped in a man’s body whose decisions are being dictated by his testosterone. In other words, he’s not ready for a relationship—no steady girlfriend, no marriage. It’s not his fault. It’s just the way he’s built. I recognized this about myself, and when I was in my twenties, I decided that I didn’t want a serious relationship. I didn’t want anything or anyone to get in the way of my dreams.

  The fact is that everything and everyone in your life takes time, effort, and money, in some sense. When you are romantically involved with someone, you have to spend time and money on him or her. When I was young, I had as much company as I wanted, but I didn’t let that take time away from my devotion to myself. My dreams. My aspirations. I talked a lot about this in my previous book Me, Inc. But it bears repeating. Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true,” but I recommend going much further. Devote everything you have in your early years to yourself. Don’t take vacations. Save all that you can. Work hard. All the time. You’ll thank me later.

  So there I was, with my money saved, committed to achieving my dreams. All that was left was the final step in my transformation. In 1973, I was still Gene Klein, but that name simply doesn’t work when you’re a member of a rock band. I’m not going to spend time lecturing you on what’s “cool.” But I will say that when you see successful pop culture figures, whether actors, entertainers, or musicians, you notice that they’re a bit different from the rest of us, and they have different-sounding names. Can you imagine a proud mother and father looking down at their new baby and saying, “I know what we’re going to call our child . . . the Edge.” Or Sting. Or Bono. Or Gaga. It doesn’t happen. Our parents want the best for us, but this is not the way that they are thinking when we are first born. So it’s up to you to create yourself. You like your name? Keep it. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us will like it. You like the way you look? Terrific. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us will. And so on.

  You can reinvent yourself—if you have the desire.

  And I did. I decided I would name m
yself Gene Simmons.

  Just like that.

  There are many things in life that you can’t control. You’re born a certain race, to a certain family and background, for example. And you’ve got no say in those things. But many other things in life are conscious choices: What name do you want to call yourself? What religion would you like to practice? Where do you want to live? What career do you want to pursue? You can even change your gender, if you like and if you have the funds for the procedure. When it comes to your birth name, don’t kid yourself. Your name has never really been yours. You had nothing to do with it. Your parents chose it for you, probably before you were born. Or maybe right there on the spot, as you were being born. And if it’s not working for you, you can change it.

  In America, the bastion of free thought and free choice, you can be anything you want to be. And every choice you make for and about yourself will either give you more power (and therefore money) or less. Even the name I chose for myself was chosen specifically to achieve power. This is how much I care about power, and this is how much, I argue, that you should care about it as well.

  That is who I am.

  If you want to become like me, read on.

  2

  A BRIEF KISSTORY

  As I’ve mentioned, when I was fourteen, I first saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. And while watching, I had what is commonly referred to as a “spiritual experience.” In 1964, the population of the United States was about 191.9 million, and a good chunk of the American population—73 million men, women, and children—were also watching. Overnight, all anyone in America could talk about, or think about, was the Beatles. An event like this doesn’t happen often, and a band like the Beatles may never happen again.

  Their performance affected me in ways I wouldn’t understand until years later. Being from another country and a different culture, I wanted desperately to fit in. I felt like an outsider. I still do, I suppose. But right there, in plain sight, were four guys with funny haircuts who clearly didn’t look, walk, talk, or sound American. At the time, I remember thinking they looked a little feminine, smaller than most Americans, with finer, gentler features. And since they all had the same mop-top haircut and outfits, they looked like they all came from the same Beatle mother. And right then and there, the Beatles validated for me the idea that you could be different and still be accepted. I saw the entire audience screaming at the top of their lungs. I particularly noticed girls in droves, who were going out of their minds for these guys. And I thought, for the first time, perhaps I should be doing this. Perhaps I should put my weirdness onstage, get a band together, and try to be the Beatles.

  I clearly recall dreaming about the idea. I dreamed I was the fifth Beatle. I’m sure others had that fantasy as well. In my dream, I remember walking down to Thirty-Fourth Avenue and Eighty-Second Street in Jackson Heights, Queens (where we were living at the time), with my Beatles haircut and the other guys in the band, on the way to the elevated subway. We walked right by the record store where I’d first bought Chubby Checker’s Twistin’ Round the World record. And then girls started chasing us. We quickly ran up the stairs to the subway platform, bought train tokens, and hopped on the train.

  The difference between dreamers (we all dream, after all) and doers is—you guessed it—some of us actually do something about it. And I did. In short order, I put together a band with my schoolmates Seth Dogramajian and Danny Haber. I named us the Lynx, for some reason. I sang, Seth strummed an acoustic guitar, and Danny played a second guitar and sang harmonies. Beatles songs, Everly Brothers, and so on. We got an offer to play a concert in the school cafeteria, and when the school principal introduced us, he said, “Here are the Missing Links.” From then on, we were known as the Missing Links.

  Other bands quickly followed. The next one I joined was first known as the Long Island Sounds, with bandmates Stephen Coronel, Alan Graf, Stan Singer, and Seth Dogramajian. And then we became the Lovebag (yep, that means exactly what you think it means). We played high school dances and country clubs around Queens, where we all lived. Surprisingly, we made good money, even at our level, and the biggest surprise of all: there were actually more girls interested in us, just because we were onstage. The girls were even interested in yours truly. Time went on. I graduated from college and worked various jobs, and eventually formed a new band called Wicked Lester with Paul Stanley, Brooke Ostrander, Stephen Coronel, and Tony Zarrella. We got an Epic Records deal very fast. But Paul and I literally walked out of our record deal and the band, because we simply didn’t believe it could go all the way.

  We were in the right place at the right time. But we didn’t believe we had the right “thing.” So we started all over again and, before long, put a new band together called KISS, with Paul Stanley, Peter Criss, Ace Frehley, and myself. In retrospect, we clearly had no idea what we were doing. The importance of luck and timing is evident here. Sometimes you have to make the leap, even if you don’t know what’s on the other side. It’s not a strategy, per se; it’s just a part of life. You cannot know the future. You can only hone your instincts and try to trust them. We had no manager or mentor. But somehow, we seemed to be making the right calls every step of the way.

  Paul thought of the name. Ace drew the very first version of our logo, and then Paul redrew the logo with a ruler, to even out the spacing and the lines. And that was the same KISS logo we still use today. Paul and I bankrolled rehearsals, truck rentals, and early band equipment purchases. While I was working as the assistant to the director of the Puerto Rican Interagency Council, I used the office facilities to put together our very first media kit. I wrote the first draft. Paul rewrote some of it. And we took a band photo. All along I had been reading the music trade magazines—Record World, Billboard, Cash Box—and I bought every year-end issue and copied down the addresses of every record company and manager listed in the back, making sure all those people got one of our media kits. They say the best way to hit a bull’s-eye is to use a machine gun. You’ll miss quite a bit. But you will also eventually hit the bull’s-eye.

  Paul and I booked ourselves a show in the grand ballroom of the Hotel Diplomat in midtown Manhattan. We would always get popular local bands to open for us (though truth be told, they could pull more tickets than we could). I would type up contracts with each group that outlined when they would go onstage and how much they were to be paid. At that grand ballroom show, a band called the Planets opened for us. We were the headliner (though we shouldn’t have been), and we were also the promoter and the bank. We grossed about $750, and after all expenses, including paying the Planets $105, we made a profit of a few hundred dollars. By the end of the night, TV producer Bill Aucoin offered to become our manager. Shortly thereafter, Aucoin introduced us to Neil Bogart (former Buddha Records president), who was starting a new label called Casablanca Records. We became the very first band to sign with Casablanca, which would soon become a prominent disco label, representing Donna Summer, the Village People, and many more. But KISS was the first.

  We started touring in 1974 in a station wagon, taking turns driving and sleeping in the back. We opened up for headliners who kicked us off tours for getting too many encores. We were on a $75-a-week salary. We wound up in San Francisco completely broke, with just enough money to buy Heinz beans and frozen frankfurters so we could have something to eat. But we kept at it. Day after day. Week after week. And amazingly, it started to work. KISS became so big, in such a short time, that even without a hit single we were headlining Anaheim Stadium in California within a year and a half of signing our record deal. The bands opening for us had been around for at least a decade or more. We started making money. We were shocked to see our licensing and merchandising take off in a big way. We wouldn’t let anything or anyone stop us from reaching the top, even when that meant getting rid of problems within the band itself. And the rest, as they say, is history.

  For those of you out there reading this, it’s worth noting that life choices are import
ant. I won’t mince words about it. KISS has made me a rich man. People feel awkward talking about the money they’ve made, but if someone wins $100 million in the lottery, he has no problem running down the street, announcing the good news to everyone he meets. I, on the other hand, worked every day of my adult life for the money I’ve made, and I’m proud of it.

  Because I worked for it.

  And you can do it too.

  3

  THE CASE FOR POWER

  It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of prey . . . the lambs say among themselves, “Those birds of prey are evil, and he who is as far removed from being a bird of prey . . . is he not good?”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

  You’ve stuck with me this far, and I thank you. I didn’t want to start off the book by lecturing you. But now let’s get serious. It’s getting late. It’s later in your life than you think. But it’s never too late to get started.

  There is a persistent fallacy in our society, based on an old, musty way of thinking:

  Power corrupts.

  This idea has worked its way into our cultural narrative in a way few other things have. Watch any children’s movie from the past few decades (think rich old Cruella de Vil or the various “evil” queens from fables and folklore) and you’ll know what I mean. It’s the same with classics like Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol—you know and hate him: the rich and powerful Scrooge. A pattern emerges, and all of these villains have something in common:

  They are rich and powerful.

  Often, they are Machiavellian in their use of power, a term we’ll get into later. But basically, they are relentless, they manipulate to get what they want, and they are ruthless in pursuit of their goals. This trope is found so often in children’s stories, and the message we’re sending our younger generations is clear: