The rock classic Kiss’ Paul Stanley called a “perfect song”

One might assume that Kiss were a tragedy at their leather-clad, metal-studded and rigorously marketed heart. That, at some point, they were a “real” rock ‘n’ roll band, whatever that is. A bunch of crazy kids from New York with a dream to make stadium-sized pop-metal dressed like The Borg’s gimp division for the art and the spectacle. Then, once success came, the art left them, and the commerce arrived, leading to Kiss as a branding exercise first and a rock band, like seventh?

The truth is simultaneously more cut-throat and interesting than that. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley have been fairly open about the fact that Kiss wasn’t exactly an art project. Sure, they were packing a Broadway spectacular’s worth of pyrotechnics, grease paint and tongues into backroom rock clubs, and that’s A) rad as hammers and B) ridiculously ambitious. However, they were doing so with the intention of getting noticed and becoming rock stars first.

Had record companies not come a-calling, chequebooks flapping in front of their singed faces, there’s absolutely no way the band would have continued as a cult act. They were careerists at heart, as if the presence of Kiss-branded caskets, lottery tickets and “air guitar strings” (seriously) didn’t give it away. However, that didn’t mean that they didn’t care about the actual music itself; quite the opposite, in fact.

Which makes sense. Let’s put our capitalist hats on for just a moment. If you’re selling a rock band, then the live show can only draw so many eyeballs. Once the punters have seen Gene Simmons fly across the stage spitting blood once, the vast majority of the audience will only come back if they know they’ve got a ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ or a ‘Strutter’ to look forward to afterwards. No matter the bells and whistles, great rock songs make great rock bands, and Kiss were well aware of this.

Who inspired Kiss to write great songs?

In a way, their music is also an interesting mix of art and commerce. While their fearsome image might have convinced some that their sound was just as violent and out there, the absolute opposite was true. After all, while the 1970s would have been an ideal time to combine Black Sabbath heaviness, Alice Cooper shock tactics and Emerson, Lake & Palmer sci-fi scale, the likelihood of anything that weird making anyone a buck is pretty slim.

No, Kiss may have looked like a prog Rocky Horror Picture Show, but they sounded like Cheap Trick. Radio-friendly, party-starting pop rock with all the malice and aggression of a golden retriever puppy and just as much going on between the ears. The 1970s were a banner decade for this kind of hard rock, and Kiss were paying close attention to all the bands doing it first, as Paul Stanley talked about in an interview with Guitar World.

In the interview, he said, “I was always a big fan of Free, and ‘All Right Now’ really meant a lot to me—it was a perfect song. ‘Hotter than Hell’ was basically me rewriting that song. There’s nothing wrong with stealing, as long as you do it right—and make sure that you’re stealing a diamond, not a piece of glass.”

In true Kiss fashion, he goes on to justify this level of kleptomania in the same interview.

“All bands start off being fairly derivative, and copying others is the first step toward developing your own style,” he says. A level of cut-throat savviness fitting for a band happy to charge their fans over $12,000 for the privilege of being their roadie, but one difficult to argue with the logic of. Typical Kiss, then. A band who knows their worth precisely, for better and (mostly) for worse.

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