Gene Simmons recently talked about how KISS’s iconic makeup helped the band achieve massive stardom, sharing his thoughts in an interview featured on The Rich Reporter.
The discussion centered on whether KISS could have achieved the same level of commercial success without their signature look. When asked by Brian Breach, “How you guys transcended pop culture? Initially [when] you started you didn’t come out wearing the makeup and everything you had on, do you think you would have sold as much as much merch?” Simmons offered a honest response.
“No,” Simmons said. “What’s Clark Kent without Superman? I mean, he’s kind of run-of-the-mill.”
Simmons went on to talk about the band’s humble beginnings and the unexpected nature of their success.
“We knew nothing, by the way,” Simmons continued. “We were unaccomplished, no resume, no experience. We didn’t know what we were doing. We were just kids playing in the mud, you know. But somehow—science calls it a singularity—every once in a while, something happens and you hit on something.”
He then described the moment the band’s now-legendary personas came together.
“The only credit we can take is that we, all of a sudden, looked at each other in our rat-infested loft and go, ‘Uh-oh. You look kind of cool,'” Simmons said. “Because all of us came up with our own makeup by ourselves in front of… It was a fire trap, there wasn’t even a window there. But we rehearsed there and put this thing called KISS together. And within a year and a half—before MTV, before digital, before anything—we were headlining Anaheim Stadium.”
Despite the band’s rapid rise, Simmons noted that early fame did not come with financial reward.
“It bears noting, however, that at that point, I was making $85 a week,” Simmons said. “But you didn’t care about it. You had fame, and chicks, and you didn’t have to work for a living, and you know, this kind of rock and roll gypsy going from city to city. There’s no job like that. Especially pre-AIDS, (laughs) when you could wake up next to somebody whose name you never bothered to learn.”
Simmons’s account of the loft where KISS’s personas took shape offers a clearer picture of just how unplanned the group’s transformation really was.
That loft, located at 10 East 23rd Street in New York City, is where KISS first began experimenting with face paint in the early 1970s. The members bought cheap makeup and mirrors and applied the designs themselves, with no professional guidance and no grand plan behind it. Simmons has described the process as something that unfolded almost by accident rather than a calculated branding decision.
The band’s early makeup supplies came from a Woolworth’s store. There was no marketing team behind the look, only four musicians experimenting in a rundown space with whatever materials they could find.
Simmons has been consistent in saying that no single member can claim credit for the concept. “Nobody who was ever in KISS can ever lay claim to saying, ‘I’ve got a brilliant idea, everybody should put on makeup,'” he has said.
The payoff for that experimentation came quickly. By August 20, 1976, KISS headlined Anaheim Stadium during their Destroyer tour. The show drew more than 42,000 fans, the band’s largest audience to that point.
