Any band that’s been around the block long enough is always going to have a few copycat bands nipping at their heels.
Nirvana always had to deal with people trying to put some existential angst into their lyrics after they hit it big, and while every rock and roll fan felt that disco was among one of the worst things in the world, that didn’t stop everyone from Rod Stewart to The Rolling Stones jumping on the bandwagon for a little bit. For a while, Kiss always felt exempt from that rule, but Paul Stanley knew that there were some musical kindred spirits out in the world who gained his respect.
But, really, how the hell is someone supposed to outdo Kiss? Sure, people have tried to add some theatricality to their shows wherever possible, but when you have a guitarist who shoots rockets, a bass player who breathes fire and spits blood, and a singer who looks like the circus equivalent of what a rock star should be, you win the live show game every single time. Then again, Stanley was also about the songs more than anything else.
He knew that the theatrics would be good to get people enticed, but the reason why people stuck around was because of the hooks that they packed into their material. Stanley wasn’t going to try to rewrite Lennon and McCartney by any stretch, but it’s hard for anyone to turn the dial on the radio the minute that a song like ‘Detroit Rock City’ comes on, complete with one of the greatest riffs ever conceived.
And that also applied to stepping out of one’s comfort zone as well. Kiss never claimed to have one set genre, and for anyone perusing their back catalogue, you can smell faint whiffs of everything from hard rock to heavy metal to disco to power-pop to, yes, even disco in a handful of places. Not all of them were as successful as their traditional rock albums, but if you had to classify the band in one genre, it would be closest to glam rock.
Their version of glamour was nowhere near the kind of androgyny of something like The New York Dolls, but Stanley knew that what they were doing was more in line with what he saw out of Slade, saying, “In many ways, Slade was the English counterpart to us. They wrote these great anthems. Live, they were simple, but, boy, did they put their boot up your ass!” But that rudimentary approach to rock and roll is the reason why Kiss and Slade have held up for so long.
And when looking at Noddy Holder’s sense of theatrics, it’s not like he didn’t have the same kind of flair that Kiss had in the beginning. Songs like ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’ and ‘How Does It Feel’ were great tunes on their own, but by wearing outlandish outfits and that reflective hat that he was known for, Holder was also going to give kids a show to remember as well as an excellent soundtrack for them.
But Stanley didn’t want to keep playing simple music, either. The theatrics were one thing, but he also catered to a lot of the biggest names in British blues as well, saying, “In the early days of Humble Pie, Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton created a sound like one big guitar. That was a part of the template for what I wanted to do. I’ve always wanted Kiss to be like one big guitar, which means that the other guitarist and I play different inversions.”
Throughout Kiss’s career, it’s not hard to see those in action, either. As much as the band remained eclectic during their studio run, there were always those same tropes that kept them dipping their toes back into the blues. Gene Simmons’s growl may have been unique for his time, but when looking at Stanley’s influences, you could hear him trying to channel that same holler that Marriott did so effortlessly or work out riffs with the same bluesy suspended sound that everyone from Frampton to Keith Richards did whenever they made a record.
There was already a seductive power to the band’s name, but the KISS principle is also how the band visualised their songwriting: Keep It Simple, Stupid. None of the glam icons claimed to be the greatest musicians in the world, but if they could squeeze every bit of emotion out of their guitars, that was more than enough to sustain an entire arena show until the end of time.
However, as much as some artists can get bogged down in taking themselves too seriously, Stanley was a firm believer in giving their audiences a good time. Not every song had to be an anthem by any stretch of the imagination, but if those three minutes of music made any kid feel something they hadn’t felt before, that was more than enough for them.
