Me, Inc. Read online

  After my workday ended at the Puerto Rican Interagency Council, I would take the subway downtown to Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street to a deli, where I manned the checkout counter. I would work there until 10 or 11 p.m., for two dollars per hour. I could also eat as much as I wanted, and could even take out food with me.

  Then, around 11 p.m., I would take the subway uptown a few blocks to 10 East Twenty-Third Street, where Paul Stanley and I were starting to rehearse with Wicked Lester. We’d play until one or two in the morning. It wasn’t a particularly glamorous section of New York. And it’s not much to look at now. But all we knew in 1972 was that there was a second-floor loft, with no windows and one door, and it was cheap. Paul and I arranged to rent the rehearsal loft for the grand sum of two hundred dollars a month. The elevator hardly ever worked and we were forced to climb the stairs and haul our amplifiers. But it’s where the seeds of our success were sown. And we worked at it relentlessly.

  Each night, after we’d finish rehearsing, I’d head out to my mother’s new home in Bayside, Queens. Bayside was far from Manhattan and I would have to take the subway to the last stop in Queens, then hop on a bus and take that to the last stop in Flushing, which took an hour and twenty minutes. Eventually, I moved my bed and a TV set into our rehearsal space in Manhattan, aka “the Loft.” That way, we could rehearse as late as we wanted to and I could still be up at 7:30 a.m. and at work at the Puerto Rican Interagency Council by 8:45 a.m.

  They say “never put all your eggs in one basket.” On Wall Street, they say “spread the risk.” It’s kind of the same thing. And, though I wasn’t trained in this area, I seemed instinctively to know certain precepts of good business practice. I wanted to try for a career in the music industry, otherwise known as forming a rock band. But there was no guarantee it would work. In fact, statistics should have been enough to tell me the cards were stacked against me. So I worked at two jobs at the same time I was trying to put together the band. I worked at the Puerto Rican InterAgency Council, as assistant to the Director. And then after 5:00 p.m., I would take the New York subway system down to Fourteenth Street and work at a delicatessen, as the checkout person (the person you paid, before you left). I also was allowed to eat there and take food with me, as well as being paid. By the time KISS started, I had amassed $23,000, because though I wanted to pursue a passion, I refused to gamble with my livelihood. The gamble would have paid off, as it turns out—I would soon have to quit my various jobs, because our new band would start taking up more of my time. Within a year and a half, we would be playing Anaheim Stadium in California. But that doesn’t mean it would have been wise to put all my hopes in one area, sink or swim. The lesson I learned while working two additional jobs alongside the band was one I would implement later, even after the band—and it was a lesson that would save me, time and time again. Spread the risk. Play to win.

  6

  Who Am I?

  “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right!”

  HENRY FORD

  industrialist, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and developer of the modern assembly line

  I invented myself.

  At birth, I was given the name Chaim Witz. Witz (pronounced Vitz) was my father’s last name.

  To most Americans, my given first name, Chaim, sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball. That’s because the Hebrew guttural “ch” sound (probably the most common sound in the Hebrew language) is unknown in English and in most Romance/Latin-derived languages—except perhaps German, which has its own, slightly less guttural “ch” sound.

  At any rate, it didn’t take me long after our arrival in America to realize that my Hebrew name simply didn’t work here. No one knew how to spell or pronounce it, for the same reason that people in Western society also have a hard time spelling or pronouncing the name of the Jewish holiday Chanukah, the Festival of Lights.

  So, I decided to change my name.

  That’s right.

  Just like that.

  If I ask you what your name is, chances are you’ll tell me. But I’m here to tell you it’s not your name. You had nothing to do with choosing it. It was likely chosen for you before you were even born.

  I decided I would have my own name. One that I would give myself.

  Few things in life are choices. You can’t pick where you’re from. You can’t pick the color of your skin. You can’t pick if you’re born male or female. So I decided that I would reinvent myself and I started with choosing my own name.

  I picked Gene, probably because of Gene Barry, the 1950s and ’60s actor who starred on TV in Bat Masterson and Burke’s Law and in the sci-fi movie War of the Worlds. I thought Gene Barry was cool, so I became Gene.

  When my mother divorced my father, she went back to her maiden name, Klein, in keeping with Jewish tradition. So when I left yeshiva and entered public school in the fifth grade, I became Gene Klein. I no longer needed to keep spelling or pronouncing my name whenever I introduced myself. My new name made me feel less like an outsider, less foreign.

  However, while I liked the sound of Gene Klein a lot more than the sound of Chaim Witz, it still didn’t resonate all the way for me.

  I was Gene Klein from grade five through college graduation, up until the time I met Paul Stanley in 1972. Paul also had a different name at the time, and he changed it to Paul Stanley. Smart.

  When it looked like I was going to be in a rock band, it became crystal clear to me that Jewish-sounding names simply didn’t resonate for the masses in America, or in the rest of the world for that matter.

  I’m not here to say whether it’s right or wrong, or whether it shouldn’t matter what your name sounds like or if it’s easy to spell. But it does matter, whether you like it or not.

  I didn’t take it personally. I recognized the facts. I realized that Robert Zimmerman had turned himself into Bob Dylan. That Marc Bolan from T. Rex had been born Mark Feld. And that Leslie West from Mountain had originally been known as Leslie Weinstein. They all reinvented themselves, changing their names, and their images along the way.

  It was clear I needed to finish creating myself. Honestly, I can’t remember where the name Simmons came from but it sounded American to me, and I wanted to be American.

  So, in 1971, I became Gene Simmons. I remember it clearly. After a night of rehearsing with our new band, Paul and I were riding the subway back to our homes in Queens. (Neither of us could afford our own homes at the time; Paul lived with his parents and I lived with my mother.) It was past midnight and I remember telling Paul that I was going to change my name to Gene Simmons.

  And just like that, I reinvented myself.

  I also didn’t look like I was in a rock band. Rock bands looked like they came from England, and were mostly white. I’m not here to give you the socioeconomic reasons; I’m just telling you that that’s the way it was. And that’s the way it still is, for the most part. In life and in business, it’s always important to recognize what the predominant pattern is. That’s just good market research. Remember, we’re not just talking about recording artists; I’m talking about rock stars.

  In the modern rock era (from 1962 onward), the vast majority of rock stars were young and white. There were virtually no African-American rock stars. There are barely any still, depending on how you define “rock star.” One of the few exceptions was Jimi Hendrix, although it bears noting both his bandmates were white and British.

  There were never any Asian rock stars with the same worldwide appeal—not from India, Japan, China, or anywhere in Asia. There were never any Hasidic rock stars. And aside from perhaps Janis Joplin, there were never female rock stars of the magnitude of the Beatles and Elvis.

  The few Jewish rock stars there were changed their names and/or downplayed the fact that they were born Jewish. They understood the masses didn’t care, and that waving the Jewish flag was a turnoff. The masses just wanted rock stars.

  We’re talking rock here, mind you. Not pop o
r disco or new wave or any other form of music. R-O-C-K.

  You needed to be a band. You needed to write songs and play your own instruments. You needed to have guitars, bass, and drums. And you needed to be young, white (there, I said it) men. I’m not here to make a value judgment on this fact—it might be a terrible result of whitewashing media, or some awful, unfair acts of subtle racism in pop culture. Whatever the cause—I wanted to succeed. If they wouldn’t bow to me as I was, I would become something else. I would beat them at their own game.

  R&B, meanwhile, was black. The Temptations, the O’Jays, and many others, all gloriously black.

  The Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, and the rest of the rock stars at the time were all young white males and had a certain aesthetic. I didn’t have that look. I wasn’t quite “white.” Not in the way the Brits were. So I did the best with what I had. I grew my hair. I learned to straighten it and blow-dry it, and used lots of hair spray. I still do. I started wearing loud clothes and taught myself how to write songs and how to play guitar and bass.

  In 2012 Jimmy Page had come to check out KISS when we played London, England. And a year or so afterward, I had to be in New York on business. Jimmy, who happened to be in New York and was ever the gentleman, came over to say hello. The man who single-handedly came up with more classic riffs than all the other bands combined. The Riff Meister of them all.

  I didn’t know anything about marketing, and had never heard the term. But I instinctively knew what worked and what didn’t work, without asking others. Either you do market research, or you have a gut instinct. I had, and continue to have, “gut instinct.” My gut has served me well and has made me a good living.

  Rock stars didn’t just look like rock stars. Their names sounded like rock stars. Mick. Jimi. Yeah, “that rocks.” There was something intangibly cool about those names.

  All of these artists invented themselves. From head to toe, inside and out.

  So I decided that if I was going to be in a band, I could increase my chances of success by choosing someone like Paul Stanley, who could be my partner. He was just as passionate about pop culture and success as I was. He was willing to create himself. We were both willing to become chameleons and do whatever it took to become the image that best worked for us in the marketplace that we wanted to be in. Top to bottom.

  Look like a rock star, act like a rock star, and if you’re lucky, you might get to be a rock star. Fake it till you make it.

  When I taught sixth grade in Spanish Harlem, I was known as Mr. Klein. And that was an appropriate name for that job; it sounded like a teacher’s name. But Klein was never going to work in a rock band. It simply didn’t sound very rock and roll.

  Gene Simmons wasn’t perfect, but it was better than Chaim Witz, and since 1971, I have been Gene Simmons.

  So far, so good.

  7

  KISS

  On February 21, 1974, the first KISS album was released. That’s forty years from this writing! What a crazy trip it’s been.

  But, by the summer of 1972, it looked like Wicked Lester wasn’t going to work, even though we had a recording contract with Epic Records. So Paul Stanley and I regrouped and started again. We walked out of our Epic Records contract. We disbanded Wicked Lester! This time, we would put together the band we never saw onstage, the band that we wanted to be. This time, we would make sure we had the right lineup. This time, we would make sure we had the right songs.

  We did it the right way.

  We self-funded the band. We had no other partners. There were no investors. There was only us. Mostly, there was only Paul and myself.

  This time we were going to do it for real.

  Go big, or go home.

  But we had no manager. We had no record label for our new band. We had no lawyers. We had no one to advise us or guide us.

  So I began religiously reading the music-industry trade publications Billboard, Cashbox, and Record World. Every week, I would see what the charts reported on what was selling and what was not. Every week, I learned which band was playing at which concert venue and how they did financially. Every week, I would learn about different music industry figures, who they were, what they did, and how they did it.

  It was another type of education you were not going to get in school. And it’s worth noting that what I was doing, although I probably wasn’t familiar with the phrase at the time, was my own “due diligence,” meaning that I educated myself.

  As I’ve discussed, I always had a job or two, and was always saving money. So by mid-1972, when I was twenty-two years old, I had been able to save $23,000, which was a hefty sum in those days (still is for most twenty-two-year-olds). This is also part of due diligence—to educate oneself, and feed oneself, is one’s own responsibility.

  Paul owned a beat-up old Mustang, but more often than not, we both used the subway and buses for transportation. We ate hot dogs at the corner of Twenty-Third Street and Broadway. We never went shopping for clothes. We hardly spent any money at all.

  But when it was time to get a loft to serve as our band’s rehearsal space and base of operations, we didn’t hesitate. The rent was two hundred dollars a month. In 1972, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss both joined our new band, which we were still calling Wicked Lester.

  Peter was married and didn’t work beyond pursing life as a professional musician. He was fortunate to have a wife, Lydia, who supported them both and was devoted to his quest to become a successful drummer in a band. That left rent monies for Paul and myself to cover. Sometimes Paul couldn’t come up with his end, so it was up to me to make sure the rent was paid every month.

  The band needed amplifiers. Paul and I bought them.

  We needed a sound system. Paul and I bought a Peavey 27-input soundboard and sound speakers, and had friends build the sound system cabinets. It was cheaper. Paul and I paid for all of it. We didn’t have roadies, so friends of Ace and Peter would usually help out.

  Again, a good move. Invest in yourself. If you can afford it, don’t borrow. Pay for it yourself.

  By Christmas 1972, we rechristened ourselves KISS. Paul thought of the name. It was Ace who drew the band’s first logo. Paul would later refine the logo, and that’s the version we use on everything to this day.

  I hit the phones and got us a few small clubs to play at and Paul had to go out and rent some milk trucks so we could haul the equipment to and from our shows.

  Despite some early omens from Ace and Peter, we were young and thought of it all as a great adventure.

  This brings us back to what I’ve been telling you about the importance of finding the right partners. You can’t do it all yourself, and neither could any of us. Each of us on our own could only go so far. Together, we would go all the way.

  By early 1973, it was time to put together a press package to proclaim KISS’s birth and to invite the music industry to our coming-out concert at the Diplomat Hotel’s Crystal Room. We were second on the bill. The Brats, a popular local band, were the headliners. Third on the bill was a band called Luger.

  I wrote up a contract for all the bands to sign. I wasn’t a lawyer and had no legal training. Why I thought it would be legally binding (it was) or why I thought the other bands would sign (they did) is beyond me. The contract said that each band would go on at a certain time and be off the stage by a certain time. Luger would go on at 8:30 p.m. and be off by 9:15. KISS would go on at 9:30 and be off by 10:30. The Brats, who were headlining, wouldn’t hit the stage until 11 p.m.

  All well and good.

  I was still working at the Puerto Rican Interagency Council offices, and had the run of all the office equipment after hours. So when it was time to assemble our press package, I commandeered the typewriters, manila envelopes, and stamps and put together a big mailing to all the record labels, managers, music magazines, and music professionals whose addresses I could find in the year-end issues of Billboard, Cashbox, and Record World.

  We made sure that none of the other bands�
�� names were on the invites that I sent to music industry people. The press release only mentioned Heavy Metal Masters “KISS” and our set time, 9:30–10:30. The media and music managers who showed up were undoubtedly impressed when they saw the large room filled with fans. Most of them were probably there to see the Brats, but that fact would never be known to the industry people who attended the show.

  A friend of Peter’s who worked at a printing shop did us a favor and allowed us to reproduce posters advertising our show, which Paul and I posted on the sides of buildings around Manhattan to help build word of mouth. And Paul and Peter arranged to create black T-shirts with the KISS logo in glitter, and Peter’s sisters wore them at the front of the stage, screaming for us.

  Then, KISS hit the stage and tore it up. Afterward we were left with a half hour to meet and greet the music industry people and then get them out of there before the actual headliner hit the stage and our little ruse was exposed. The point: create your own hype. Whether you’re in a band, or you’re a mere salesman—make them believe in you. Make them believe they are the last to the party and it’s started without them. You don’t have to lie, but you do have to craft an image that makes people want what you have.

  I met with Bill Aucoin right after our show at the Diplomat Hotel, and he and I sat down to quickly chat. I arranged for a girl I had been “seeing” to sit on my lap as we spoke, to give the illusion of rock star grandeur I so admired in my heroes. And the die was cast. It worked like a charm. Bill immediately wanted to be involved. At the time, he was then producing and directing a TV show called Flipside, which interviewed John Lennon and other music personalities in the studio. He also produced a TV game show called Supermarket Sweep.

  Aucoin agreed to become our manager. Contracts were drawn up, and KISS needed a lawyer. We hired Stan Snadowsky, a lawyer and music promoter who booked shows at the Bitter End, a club in Greenwich Village. He would always let us come into the club to see acts (the following year, Snadowsky would become co-owner of a new club, the Bottom Line, which would become a fixture of the New York music scene for three decades). Aucoin needed a lawyer as well, but didn’t have funds to pay for his side, so I loaned him the money to pay his lawyer. I also paid all the KISS legal fees. All of my frugality was paying off—literally. With the substantial amount of money I’d saved, I was able to cover a lot of these early expenses that helped launch our career. No one else in the band had access to cash—and even our new manager was short on funds—so it was left up to me.