Why Gene Simmons is Back Performing Live: ‘I Couldn’t Stay Away’

The make-up may be off, but Gene Simmons is back on stage again.

The Kiss co-founder’s Gene Simmons Band is following-up a run of 2024 dates with 26 more this spring, starting April 3 at the House of Blues Anaheim and running through May 24 in Houston, then regrouping for an appearance at the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally on Aug. 3 in South Dakota.

Even Simmons seems surprised with what’s transpired — especially after Kiss took its final bows on Dec. 2, 2023 at Madison Square Garden in New York.

“I tried to stay away from being on stage, but it’s too much fun,” Simmons tells UCR via Zoom from one of his two homes in Malibu, Calif. “I thought I was gonna take a few years off after the band I was in for 50 years decided to call it quits. I have other stuff — a restaurant chain, a movie company, a lot of stuff. But I couldn’t stay away. Last April we got an offer — ‘Hey, why don’t you put a band together and come and headline the Sao Paulo (Summer Breeze Open Air) Festival?’ I said, ‘What? Do you mean in a stadium?’ ‘Yeah, a stadium.’ “Wow…OK.’

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“We did this before; when Kiss took some time off I put together a band of usual suspects. We have a ball. Most importantly the fans and the band are having the time of our lives — that’s what this band is about.”

While the shows so far have primarily featured Kiss favorites with dashes of Simmons solo material, there’s a looseness he finds welcome. The Simmons band has thrown in a variety of covers, from Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades,” Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” and the Van Halen’s “House of Pain” (in the original arrangement Simmons produced for the band’s demo tape) to the Beatles’ “And Your Bird Can Sing.”

Watch the Gene Simmons Band Play ‘Ace of Spades’

“The shows are almost never alike,” Simmons adds. “We toss around songs; if somebody in the band says, ‘Hey, why don’t you do [Cream’s] ‘Sunshine of Your Love?’ we look at each other and go, ‘What key?’ and there you go. We’re like a commando unit; there’s no manager, no road crew, no trucks not buses, nothing. No big PR campaign. We fly commercial or we’ll get an SUV and travel from city to city. The promoters provide the backline, the amplifiers and drums; we just come with a guitar and a guitar pick. It’s really fun.”

And, Simmons notes, it’s a “completely different experience” than tramping around in eight-inch platform boots during a Kiss extravaganza.

“I’ve been there, done that,” he says. “Half a century of that is plenty of time, and I firmly believe — and Paul (Stanley) believes the same thing — you take something as far as it can go and finish on top. This is more like if your favorite band comes to your house and sets up in the garage and opens the garage door and the whole town comes informally and hangs out. We have conversations and bring kids up on stage, teenage musicians. It’s just about having a good time.”

Simmons adds that he’s continuing to write songs, though no release plans are in place. Meanwhile he and Stanley are moving forward with the Kiss avatars that were unveiled at the band’s final show. Pophouse, which purchased the Kiss copyrights and brand for a reported $300 million, is continuing to develop that show, which Simmons predicts will be out during “the next two years;” he, Stanley, drummer Eric Singer and guitarist Tommy Thayer filmed their motion-capture performances at George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic studio in San Francisco last year.”

“Pophouse is very impressive, very forward thinking,” Simmons says. “They’re futurists. And the bottom line is the future is here, whether you like it or not. And we’ve always tried to do that.”

While Simmons has been involved in these endeavors and Stanley has continued his painting and Soul Station band, their sons have been making news together. Nick Simmons and Evan Stanley — whose band Amber Wild opened for Kiss during the final leg of the End of the Road farewell tour — have been working on music together and sharing photos of themselves in the studio. This follows an online video in December of the two performing Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.”

“We, me and Paul, have nothing to do with it,” Simmons says. “Evan has his own band. Nick’s music and songs have already been in Ozark and Prodigal Son. In science and nature there’s something called a singularity; nobody plans it, it just happens. There was no guarantee that Evan and Nick would even get along, but they do. They hang out. They started strumming guitars…so they started writing their own songs. All of a sudden record companies are meeting with them. But they’re not following in anybody’s footsteps. It has nothing to do with Kiss. They’re feeling is, ‘We like doing this. You’ve got opinions, we’re not really interested. This is what we’re doing.'”