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Gene Simmons (born Chaim Witz on August 25, 1949) is an Israeli-born American hard rock bass guitarist and vocalist. He is best known as "The Demon", his blood-spitting, fire-breathing, and tongue-wagging persona in the hard rock band Kiss, an act he co-founded in the early 1970s. Simmons also contends that he has "never been high, drunk, or smoked in his life". In discussing the secrets of rock and roll glory, many past rockers often made reference to that fire inside which drove them to succeed. Gene Simmons, the outspoken, legendarily long tongued musician entrepreneur of face painted rockers KISS, however, was perhaps the first member of rock and roll history to have taken this metaphorical idea literally. Over a decades-long career of alternating musical and screen projects, “The Demon” forged a layered identity built upon the contradictions of navigating an uneasy marriage of art and commerce and a public image of carnality set against private domestic bliss. Although Gene Simmons found fame as a blood-spurting, fire-breathing, bass-playing demon with Kiss, his early years were about as far removed as you can possibly get from the notorious heavy metal band. Born August 25, 1949, and named Chaim Witz, he and his mother left Israel by the late '50s, relocating to the United States (New York City, to be exact). Witz's name was then changed to Gene Klein, as he discovered comic books and rock & roll soon after (he was even being groomed to be a rabbi at one point). As a teenager, he played bass in a number of New York-area bands (Long Island Sounds, etc.), and while in his early 20s, even tried his hand at teaching grade school. His teaching career was short-lived, as he meet another young rock & roll hopeful around this time: Stanley Eisen. Together, the duo formed their first band together, Wicked Lester, who borrowed heavily from their heroes, the Beatles, and just about any other hip musical style at the moment. The band recorded an album that never saw the light of day, but while in the band, the two first came up with the idea of putting on a real show for the audience: makeup, costumes, and a grand stage show. They eventually hooked up with two other New Yorkers, Peter Criscoula and Paul Frehley. All the members changed their names (Eisen became Paul Stanley; Criscoula to Peter Criss; Frehley to Ace Frehley; and Klein was re-christened Gene Simmons), and assumed identities relating to their personalities. Kiss then became one of the top hard rock acts of the 70s and beyond. While Kiss' fame was sky-rocketing, Simmons tried his hand at another facet of the music biz: scouting up-and-coming talent. He tried to convince Kiss' manager to sign a young California band called Mammoth in the mid-'70s, who eventually renamed themselves Van Halen. Simmons' pleas fell on deaf ears, but the event sowed the seeds for Simmons launching his own record company (albeit short-lived) in the '80s, Simmons Records, as well as briefly managing Liza Minnelli. In addition to his work with Kiss, Simmons has tried his hand at acting on the big screen with varying degrees of success; Runaway, Trick Or Treat, Wanted: Dead Or Alive, and Never Too Young to Die are just some of the films he's appeared in. Simmons is also a shrewd businessman, often credited as the main force behind turning Kiss into a mega-dollar-generating, merchandising machine (look no further than Kiss' top-grossing 1996-1997 reunion tour). With Kiss announcing their Farewell Tour in 2000, some assumed that it would be the last the public would hear from Simmons and company. But this proved hardly to be the case, as the band toured the world (off and on) for the next few years. Meanwhile, Simmons became involved in numerous projects: including penning an autobiography (2001's Kiss & Make-Up), creating his own magazine (Gene Simmons' Tongue), developing his own clothing line ("Gene Simmons' Dragonfly"), hosting the TV show Hit Men, and was in discussions for re-launching his Simmons Records label, his acting career, and starting up his own TV talk show (The Gene Simmons Show). Simmons took a break from farewell tours in 2004 and released his second solo album, ***HOLE, on the Sanctuary label. Simmons was born in Haifa, Israel, and immigrated to New York City at the age of eight, with his mother Florence Klein a Jewish Hungarian immigrant and the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust. His father Feri Witz, also Jewish, had abandoned his family years earlier. When Simmons was young, his mother's long absences while working two jobs in order to make ends meet left emotional scars which gave him a strong desire for wealth. After arriving in the U.S., he took the name Eugene Klein (later Gene Klein), Klein being his mother's maiden name. In the late-1960s, he changed his name again, to Gene Simmons. Simmons became involved with his first band, Lynx, then renamed The Missing Links, when he was a teenager. Eventually he disbanded The Missing Links to form the Long Island Sounds. While he played in these bands, he kept up odd jobs on the side to make more money, including making fanzines and buying used comic books. Simmons then attended Sullivan County Community College in Loch Sheldrake, New York. He then joined a new band, Bullfrog Beer, and the band made a demo, "Leeta"; this song was eventually released on the Kiss box set in demo form. Simmons formed the rock band Wicked Lester in the early 1970s with Stanley Harvey Eisen (now known as Paul Stanley) and recorded one album, which was never released. Dissatisfied with Wicked Lester's sound and look, Simmons and Stanley attempted to fire their band members; they were met with resistance, and they quit Wicked Lester, walking away from their record deal with Epic Records. They decided to form the ultimate rock band, and started looking for a drummer. Simmons and Stanley found an ad placed by Peter Criscuola, who was playing clubs in Brooklyn at the time; they joined and started out as a trio. Paul Frehley responded to an ad they put in the Village Voice for a lead guitar player, and soon joined them. Kiss released its self-titled debut album in February 1974. Stanley quickly took on the role of lead performer on stage, while Simmons became the driving force behind what became an extensive Kiss merchandising franchise. At the dawn of the 1980s, Simmons became the first KISS partner to vacate his New York roots for Los Angeles. By 1983, KISS was permanently based out of California and, featuring a solid new lineup, retired its make-up and platform heels to release its first paint-less album “Lick it Up” (1983). With KISS’ popularity somewhat on the wane and Simmons more and more a man without a fanged persona, he decided to indulge his taste for showmanship by jumping into the acting game, quickly landing the well-received role of Tom Selleck’s evil nemesis in the feature film “Runaway” (1984). This turn was followed by a stint as a drug dealer on the then popular NBC crime drama, “Miami Vice” (1984-1989). Simmons was also now monogamous and living with Playboy Playmate of the Year and former Hefner girlfriend, Shannon Tweed, an equally strong-willed companion capable of handling Gene’s bluster and taste for the wild life. In 1983, while Kiss's fame was waning, the members took off their trademark make-up and enjoyed a resurgence in popularity that continued into the 1990s. The band hosted their own fan conventions throughout 1995, and fan feedback about the original Kiss members reunion influenced the highly successful 1996-1997 Alive Worldwide reunion tour. In 1998, the band released Psycho Circus, its first album in almost 20 years by the original line-up. Since then, the original line-up has once again dissolved, with Tommy Thayer replacing Ace Frehley on lead guitar and Eric Singer (who performed with Kiss from 1992 up through 1996) replacing Peter Criss on drums. In a February 4, 2002 interview on the NPR radio show Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Simmons said to Gross regarding his claim to have bedded more than a thousand women: "If you want to welcome me with open arms, I'm afraid you're also going to have to welcome me with open legs" (paraphrasing The Who's hit song "You Better You Bet"). To this Gross replied, "That's a really obnoxious thing to say." Simmons refused to grant permission to NPR to make the interview available online on the station's website. However, the interview appears in print in Gross's book All I Did Was Ask, and some unauthorized transcripts are also available. A part of the interview was re-broadcast on Fresh Air on Aug 31, 2007. In 2006, however, Simmons himself was the focus of attention, thanks to the public’s fixation with reality television – a genre effectively showcased oversized personas and their bizarre lives. Simmons hoped across the pond to host a Channel Four reality series, “Gene Simmons Rock School” (2005-06), in which the veteran rocker took a dozen grade school students with no knowledge of rock music and attempted to turn them into budding rock gods. With the surprise success of “The Osbournes" (MTV, 2002-05), Simmons’ own kids, along with life partner, Tweed, were ready for the small screen treatment. Whereas the Osbourne family were a dysfunctional and sometimes fast-living bunch, the Simmons clan were the opposite, as featured weekly on the reality show, “Gene Simmons: Family Jewels” (2006- ). For such a famous womanizer, the series exposed Simmons’ dirtiest secret to date – that his was in fact a surprisingly domestic family that eschewed drugs and alcohol and extolled the values of straight ‘A’s and discipline. At heart, just a hard rockin’ mama’s boy who had lived his American dream, Simmons could count on the fact that, at least onstage, he could satisfy the fans’ blood lust for “The Demon.” In a later Fresh Air interview, satirist Al Franken related to Terry Gross his own encounter with Gene Simmons. According to Franken, he was awaiting a racquetball partner at a club when Simmons, whom Franken had not recognized, challenged him to a match, stating "I'll kick your ass," only to suffer an embarrassing loss to Franken. Simmons responded by calling for another match, and when Franken indicated that since his racquetball partner had arrived, he couldn't play Simmons again, Simmons responded by making loud "bock, bock, bock" chicken sounds. Franken then offered to play Simmons with $500 at stake, at which Simmons walked away. Franken told Gross not to blame herself for her experience with Simmons, and that Simmons' behavior at the racquetball club made him "the most awful person I've ever met." Simmons' tongue has always been an issue of both admiration and questioning. His unusually large tongue, however, is a natural trait (as he states in his autobiography), and not the effect of plastic surgery or any kind of transplant, as alluded to in several web sites. In 2004, during an interview in Melbourne, Australia, Simmons described Islam as a "vile culture" wherein women had fewer rights than dogs. He described Islam as a threat, claiming that they wanted to leave the Middle East and supplant non-Muslims in other parts of the world by force. The Muslim community took offense, with Australian Muslim of the year Susan Carland asserting that Simmons' stereotyping of Muslims was inaccurate and that she never walked behind her husband as Simmons stated all Muslim women were required to do. He later said on his website that he was talking specifically about extremist Muslims. In 2005, Simmons was sued by a former lover, Georgeann Walsh Ward, who alleged that she had been "defamed" in the VH1 documentary When Kiss Ruled the World, which she claimed portrayed her as an "unchaste woman" and implied that she had been merely a band groupie rather than a committed girlfriend of Simmons. This allegation was not unusual, as Gene Simmons defines his very identity by the degree of his flagrant promiscuity. Ward insisted that she had been involved in an "exclusive monogamous relationship" with Simmons since before Kiss was formed. The suit was settled as of June 29, 2006. Simmons currently lives in Beverly Hills, California with longtime partner and former Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed (they are not married). They have two children: a son, Nicholas (born 22 January 1989), and a daughter, Sophie (born 7 July 1992). |
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