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| THIS guy! |
Like millions of folks my age, I spent a large part of my childhood giving you money. After all, those albums, singles, posters, t-shirts, lunch boxes, halloween costumes, and rub-on tattoos weren't going to pay for themselves. But when I read your recent interview with son Nick in the pages of Esquire, the one where you declared rock dead and accused illegal downloading of being the murderer, I could no longer, ahem, hold my tongue.
Mind you, I completely agree with you that rock is dead. It's no longer even debatable at this point as the body's not even close to being warm and no amount of Fabreze is gonna make that smell go away.
As for who killed rock & roll, however, all the evidence points directly at you, Mr. Simmons.
You just couldn't be happy raking in all those millions and millions of dollars back in the '70s. When your fan base hit puberty and moved on to other things, you couldn't just ride off into the sunset like a normal band. Even as founding members Ace and Peter were tossed from the wagon to lighten the load, it never dawned on you to just stop the wagon and let your accomplishments speak for themselves.
Oh, but that would have meant walking away from all that cash!
No way someone who still remembers being poor could walk away from all that cash, right? If there is even one more dollar to be rung out of the Kiss Army coffers, by all means, you're just the man to do it - even if it means making other guys wear Peter and Ace's make-up. If you had it your way, KISS franchises would be popping up like Blue Man Groups and there'd be more attention paid to getting the pyro right than the music.
After all, the music has always been secondary to the spectacle. When audiences started to wise up after being faced with the prospect of buying yet another version of "Rock & Roll All Night", you were forced to choose between making better music or coming up with more outlandish special effects.
When you chose the latter, you thrust a dagger into the heart of rock & roll.
Mind you, it has taken some thirty years for it to finally die, during which time you've profited immensely, but now that the heart of rock and roll has finally stopped beating (sorry Huey), the only right thing left to do is bury the remains.
In a KISS Kasket.