Me, Inc. Read online

  Within six months, in the fall of 1973, we were recording our first album for Casablanca Records with producers Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise at the legendary Manhattan studio Bell Sound, right down the street from Studio 54. We were young. We were inexperienced. And we simply couldn’t believe what was happening to us.

  Between the two jobs I had at the time, I was clearing close to $300 per week, a large sum at the time. When I quit my jobs so I could devote my full-time attention to KISS, I went from $300 a week to the $75 weekly salary that the band now paid me. That’s what we all got at the beginning, although within a few months our salary was raised to $85—and that was before taxes.

  But it didn’t matter. We were doing what we loved. We were in a band. And we believed in what we were doing.

  If I didn’t have the cushion of my savings from all those other odd jobs, I might have continued working and not have been able to put my full focus into getting KISS to the next level. “Don’t quit your day job” is often good advice, unless you can afford to do otherwise.

  The story of KISS has been told and retold in books, movies, and documentaries. So I won’t go into all of that here. Instead, I will return to my earlier observations about my apparent lack of formal qualifications for any of the business endeavors that I have pursued, beginning with music.

  The field of popular music is populated mostly by unqualified people. They never went to school to learn what they do. In fact, they barely understand what they do, or how they do it. They just do it.

  I can’t read or write music, but I have written hundreds of songs.

  I have never had music lessons. I have never had a music teacher show me how to play guitar or bass or keyboards or drums, although I dabble in all of them well enough to be able to write songs and record demos.

  And I’m hardly alone in my lack of musical qualifications. In fact, I’m in some very good company, including many of music’s most iconic figures.

  Elvis Presley couldn’t read or write music. The Beatles never learned to read or write music, and never took lessons to learn to play their instruments. They simply taught themselves.

  You can go down the list. Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters, Green Day. Many of them are self-taught—many of them never took formal lessons, yet they have no problem writing and playing their songs. It’s like learning to speak a new language, but never learning to read or write it.

  My point is that, in whatever field one chooses, it’s up to you to educate yourself to become an effective entrepreneur. And you can’t use a lack of formal training as an excuse not to pursue the success that you desire.

  I noticed early on that this thing that I had entered was never just called music. It was always called the music business. And show business. And the movie business.

  Intrinsically, everything is a business.

  Everything has, or should have, a balance sheet.

  Everything has, or should have, a budget.

  Everything has, or should try to have, a profit motive.

  Work. Religion. Rock bands.

  And YOU.

  YOU are the business.

  YOU should have a budget.

  YOU should have a balance sheet.

  YOU should have a profit motive.

  I did then.

  And I do now.

  8

  Learning About Branding and the Music Business

  “I am the brand.”

  GENE SIMMONS

  (you’re damn right I just quoted myself)

  From the get-go, KISS understood that we were a business but there was still a lot to learn. Bill Aucoin and our lawyers helped us to learn about all sorts of new business areas that we’d never contemplated before.

  Like trademarks. In order to protect our face-paint designs and our logos and our songs, we needed to trademark and copyright them. Trademark and copyright are slightly different legal terms, and they do slightly different things legally. But they’re both designed to prevent others from stealing or copying your creations.

  Copyrighting a song was standard practice at the time but trademarking our specific look was a whole other matter. No one had ever done something like this before. We were able to trademark our faces, and the way the makeup was designed on those faces. Before KISS, the creators of comic-book and cartoon characters could trademark what their creations looked like. But it was rare to make such a specific attempt to trademark what was, essentially, a living human being’s stage identity. KISS manager Bill Aucoin made us aware of the possibility of trademarking our actual faces. It took about a year and it was registered in 1977 with the Library of Congress. It’s worth noting, Jimmy Fallon can’t trademark his face—it’s just a face. But KISS’s faces are more than faces: they are symbols that have spanned four decades—and will likely survive our passing. It was the single biggest decision we ever made—because we incorporated a design into our faces, our faces became part of the design, and were therefore subject to trademark law. And these symbols have endured.

  The lawyers explained “streams of income,” that is, areas that pay you money. Royalties that the band would earn from our record sales. Money that we would receive for playing live concerts. Writing and publishing royalties generated by radio airplay of the songs we wrote and published, as well as their use in TV, films, and other media.

  It became clear to Paul and myself that since we wrote almost all of the songs, we would be due more of the writer and publisher income than Ace and Peter. However, Bill Aucoin convinced us to split all monies four ways, including writer/publisher royalties. Bill was convinced that an even split would spur all four members to contribute more and work harder for the band, and to be selfless in doing whatever was needed to help make the band a success.

  It was a nice idea, but sadly the reality was different. Even though we shared our writer/publisher royalties equally with Ace and Peter, this hardly seemed to inspire them to give their all to the band. Whatever dysfunction existed with Ace and Peter seemed to get worse. Much worse. And fast.

  Respectfully, neither Ace nor Peter seemed to notice or care that Paul and I were making a gesture we didn’t have to make. So an album or two later, we renegotiated and legally changed how our writer/publisher royalties would be divided. We should have been more forthright from the very beginning, but we wanted to make everyone in the band feel equal.

  In the Who, Pete Townshend receives more money than Roger Daltrey. As well he should. He writes the songs.

  A lesson learned: get paid for what you do.

  In the midst of negotiations, formations, reassignments, and all of the above, KISS became the Gallup poll’s most popular band for three years in a row. We beat out Led Zeppelin and even the Beatles.

  Yet despite this success, we were routinely lambasted by critics for not adhering to some hypothetical code they made up called “credibility.” An interesting idea, because no one could quite figure out who came up with it, what the rules were, who decided if you had cred, and so on. It had something to do with not focusing on making money—I hope you can see that from my point of view (the little immigrant boy who discovered how good it felt to sell cactus fruit and make my own living), this still sounds like nonsense. From the outset, KISS was a different type of band. We saw our fans wanted more than just records and concerts, so we gave it to them. We hear and we obey. T-shirts. Hats. Anything they wanted, we gave it to them. Supply and demand wasn’t a shallow way to take advantage of people—it was about figuring out what people wanted, and providing it, without anyone’s permission on what was “classy” or “credible.” These people like us? These people actually want to buy things with our faces on them? I can actually make my living this way? Great.

  KISS pioneered the idea that a rock band could become a brand. And this allowed us to explore even more revenue streams and handle a lot of it ourselves so we didn’t lose money to an intermediary. We put order forms inside our albums, so fans could order T-shirts and belt b
uckles and all sorts of other items directly from us. We also made a deal with a gent named Ron Boutwell, who ran an order fulfillment warehouse in Los Angeles, from which our merchandise was shipped directly to the fans.

  We published our own fan magazine, and we weren’t shy about licensing and merchandising ourselves and our images, like no band had ever done before. Critics be damned.

  And, of course, we were criticized for it by people who had never achieved anything, had never played in a band or written songs themselves. They simply had access to a typewriter and had a column. We ignored them. Then. And now. They mean nothing. Never have. Never will.

  KISS would continue, decade after decade, going where no band had gone before. Nothing deterred us, not the critics and not even the loss of some of our founding members.

  We chose to carry on, and continued to have great success with new members who regarded being in the band as an honor and a privilege. As of this date, Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer have been in the band longer than any lineup—we are KISS reborn. And with Paul, as the brother I never had, there is nothing we can’t do. It’s almost 2015! Watch us burn rubber.

  Again, always make sure you have the right partners.

  The lesson for you? Never let anyone or anything stop YOU, in your quest for success.

  By the late seventies, KISS had become a worldwide phenomenon, and with our popularity came the flood of critics and naysayers who almost inevitably come along with success. I recall being backstage preparing for a concert in the South, when a well-intentioned but misguided preacher and his followers arrived at the concert hall’s backstage entrance. The preacher was carrying a cross on his back—no, I’m not exaggerating, he really was carrying a cross on his back. I suppose I’d be a hypocrite if I said he was being too theatrical.

  I was curious, so I opened the door. There he stood, dressed in what he presumably believed was the costume of the day for Jews in Hebron around AD 30. He pointed his finger at me and began to make accusations. I was going to hell, he said.

  I asked him, kindly, whatever happened to “Do not judge, lest ye be judged?” I asked, who are you? What have you ever done? After a fairly lengthy theological debate, in which I stubbornly and relentlessly refused to just let him go, he retreated.

  My real point here—with this story, and the critic-bashing—is that it’s important to know, if you’re going to be a success, that no one is better than you are.

  No one has the right to shake his finger in your face.

  No one is allowed to make you feel bad about yourself.

  No one is better or holier than you are.

  No one.

  9

  I Am an Entrepreneur

  “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”

  THOMAS EDISON

  inventor of the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the practical lightbulb, and pioneer of electric power

  I’m an entrepreneur. A successful one.

  But don’t let that fool you.

  I’m unqualified to be in any of my ventures.

  If I was an employer and was handed my résumé, I wouldn’t hire me.

  I’m in KISS, currently celebrating our fortieth year of World Domination. I cofounded the band with my partner Paul Stanley. (Remember the word partner. It’s going to come up a few times in this book.) KISS has broken box-office records set by Elvis and the Beatles. And we have literally thousands of licensed and merchandised products around the world that bear our name and likeness. From KISS Hello Kitty, to the KISS indoor golf course in Las Vegas, where everything glows in the dark under black light. It sits right across the street from the Hard Rock Hotel, and is always packed. You can get married there at the Hotter Than Hell Wedding Chapel, too. One of the unique events was when a nudist colony took over the place. Naked KISS golfing. What else?

  KISS has gone where no band has gone before. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down anytime soon. In fact, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. We are everywhere.

  In music licensing and merchandising, KISS is a juggernaut. There’s not another group whose reach comes even close.

  And that’s not counting the albums and the T-shirts and the concert tours.

  By some marketing estimates, the faces are the four most recognized faces on earth. I touched on this earlier—that our faces are registered trademarks. Let me prove it to you: Sweden is a monarchy. Do you know what the king and queen of Sweden look like? If you’re not from Sweden, and especially if you’re from America, there’s a good chance you do not. If you are from there, of course, you know your own monarchs. But, whether or not you are from Sweden, I would wager that you’ve seen the KISS imagery. Even if you’ve never heard a song—even if we’re just “that one band,” you’ve seen that face somewhere before. This is what creating an icon means—a cultural icon defies the boundaries of state, nation, and language, class, taste, and tradition. If it’s iconic, it is inescapable. We have made our face paint, our personas, inescapable.

  My qualifications to be in KISS? None. I had no guidelines and no reference points. I had to invent myself, out of thin air. I played in a few high school bands doing cover songs. But before KISS, I had zero experience playing in a rock band that wears makeup. “How to Become a Rock Star” and “How to Build an Iconic image” are not taught in any school. And while I have written a few hundred songs, both for KISS and for other recording artists, I can’t read or write musical notation. I can play guitar and bass and a bit of keyboards and drums, but as I said earlier, I never took lessons. My schooling in music theory? None. I am self-taught on every instrument I play, and I play completely by ear. I just do it.

  KISS released their first album in 1974—long before cell phones, computers, MTV, Twitter, and Facebook—and rocketed to the top of the music industry. Within a year and a half of our formation, we were headlining Anaheim Stadium in California.

  I have produced records for a number of other rock bands and artists. My résumé and experience as a producer before I decided to become one? None.

  I launched my own record company, Simmons Records, originally partnered with RCA/BMG, later with Sanctuary Music, and most recently with Universal Canada. My experience in starting and running a record company? None.

  I was Liza Minnelli’s manager, to start, and I went on to manage other artists.

  My experience and qualification to be a manager: None.

  I have acted in motion pictures and on TV. In movies, I’ve had costarring and character roles in Runaway with Tom Selleck, Wanted Dead or Alive with Rutger Hauer, Red Surf with George Clooney, Never Too Young to Die, The New Guy, Mike Judge’s Extract alongside Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, and Ben Affleck, and I recently finished appearing with Al Pacino in Imagined.

  I have acted on numerous TV shows, including NBC’s Third Watch and Miami Vice, and ABC’s Ugly Betty.

  My dramatic background before taking my first film role? None.

  I coproduced the New Line film Detroit Rock City with Barry Levine, and created the cartoon show My Dad the Rock Star for Nickelodeon and Mr. Romance for Oxygen. Through the Gene Simmons Company, I’ve coproduced the TV shows Gene Simmons Family Jewels, which lasted for eight seasons and 167 episodes on A&E, and Gene Simmons Rock School, which ran for two seasons on VH1. Both shows were seen around the world.

  My background in producing and creating TV shows and motion pictures before I decided to do it? None.

  I was a cofounding partner in Cool Springs Life. It’s a life equity strategy entity that loans high-net-worth individuals as much as $300 million at flat LIBOR plus a small bank fee. (LIBOR, or London Interbank Offered Rate, is the reduced interest rate that banks use when moving large chunks of money between themselves.) My partners in Cool Springs Life were Sam Watson, Rich Abramson, Simon Baitler, Bill Randolph, and Dave Carpenter, the former CEO of Transamerica, which at one point was the world’s largest insurance company.

  I designed the
Cool Springs Life logo. When our public relations company told me that they didn’t think the cable news stations would give coverage to a brand-new financial entity, I fired them and called up CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and Bloomberg myself to get my partner Sam Watson and me on television to promote it. Do it yourself.

  My prior qualifications for creating a life equity strategy? None.

  I was a cofounding partner, with David Lucatch and Rich Abramson, in Ortsbo, one of the largest universal language translators. I helped design the Ortsbo logo, and did marketing outreach (with Rich Abramson) and appeared at live events to promote it.

  My track record in the technology industry? None.

  I cofounded Simmons/Abramson Marketing with my then partner Rich Abramson. We had a grand total of one staff member, and we never had an office and therefore never paid rent. We were the marketing company for the Indy Racing League, as well as the Indianapolis 500. I created the “I Am Indy” marketing campaign and cowrote the Indy anthem of the same title with Bag, an artist who was signed to my Simmons Records label. And I forced the Indy Racing League to stop calling themselves IRL and simply call themselves IndyCar. My campaign lasted for several years, and was copied by the National Football League (“I Am the NFL”), by charities (“I Am CARE”), by radio stations (“I Am KROQ”), by clothing companies (“I Am Wolverine”), and even pet food manufacturers (“I Am IAMS”).

  My background in marketing? Well, in this instance, I would have to say that my experience with KISS gave me a grounding in marketing and spreading a brand that has served me well ever since. But I didn’t know anything about IndyCar. I just had my gut, and that seemed to be all I needed.