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Music at Thomas Edison
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Extra Credit 1 One word: KISS. Humble beginnings -- that’s what we like to hear, and Paul Stanley certainly had those. He was born in Queens, New
York in 1952, and soon after KISS was formed in 1973, he took up a job as a cabbie to help fund the band’s expenses.
Prior to his gig with KISS, Paul Stanley worked in a factory and a deli. He founded his first band, The Post War Baby Boom,
when he was 15, before joining Rainbow, then Uncle Joe, and, last but not least, Wicked Lester, in which he met Gene Simmons.
Along the way, Paul Stanley has dated numerous celebrities, pillaged numerous cities and rose to the top of his industry.
He’s been married twice (his second and current wife is Erin Sutton), he’s a proud and glowing father and he’s
a successful painter. His critically acclaimed painting career emerged as a result of the divorce from his first wife in 2000
-- all this from a largely self-taught guitarist from Queens who failed art at the Manhattan School of Music and Art. Yeah, I’m expecting a daughter in January. If you’re not prepared to surrender the center of the universe,
don’t do it. Actually, it looks like we’ll be going in the studio shortly to do the first new KISS album in 10 years. It’s
going to be very much a vintage, classic, ‘70s KISS album without much regard to what’s happened since then; it’s
back to the roots. Maybe I just do my outside interests more quietly than others; it doesn’t mean less successfully. There’s a
difference between standing up and telling people what you’re planning to do and standing up and going and accomplishing
something. I tend to fly a bit under the radar. Certainly, doing a solo album 28 years after the first one, there was some
time between them, but I wanted to protect KISS and make sure that there was a KISS. Doing my art came out of something very solitary and something that I had no intention of showing anybody, and yet once
people saw pieces in my house, it became really clear that there was a great demand for my art. Again, it all stems from the
foundation, being: I want to please myself. Perhaps the art connects so much with other people because it truly is connected
to me in the best way; I’m not second guessing what someone else wants to see, I’m trying to do something I like. It’s really not about promoting, it’s about doing. Promoting is just the end product of creating. You want
people to know what you’re doing if you want to be successful at it, and if people enjoy what you’re doing, you
certainly want them to know. I’d have to say that I’ve been devoting a lot of my time to art, although when I
was on tour with KISS I never picked up a paint brush or thought about it. Alive/35 has been the celebration of 35 years since KISS Alive! We did 30 shows in Europe in seven weeks; it was
the biggest most successful KISS tour in Europe, ever. We played the entire KISS Alive! album and we also did about
six encores of all kinds of other great classics. It was very invigorating and very reassuring to us that the KISS Army is
more than alive and well; it’s vibrant and vicious. We played to about 400,000 people, and we’ll pick up where
we left off [in] the middle of next year, summer/fall, and to the States and Europe. Oh my God. I think the most momentous occasion and moment for me was probably in Dayton, Ohio, or Toledo when I realized
that we were virtually selling out every show and that was something new for us. And I realized, looking out at a crowd before
going on, that we were going to be everything that we planned; we were going to be as big as we designed it and as big as
we fought for. I think Destroyer is a great album and I think KISS Alive! is a very important album. I love KISS
Alive! because it’s the album that broke us on a much bigger scale; it’s the album that made us superstars. It wasn’t to respect the fans; it was a misstep if anything. The idea that we should dilute the four icons, which
are world-known (not by name, but by character) and come up with like "Frog Man" or "Turtle Boy" was a big misstep. Those
iconic figures are known worldwide; you show anybody in the world a photo of KISS and they’ll tell you it’s KISS.
So, it just sold everybody short to think that when somebody left the band that they should take those characters with them.
In a sense, we all created each others’ characters because it was the four of us together and the synergy between the
four of us that made those characters. Could we have done it on our own? I don’t think so. It was all of us together
that came up with it. It’s kind of gotten distorted into something that it really isn’t. The idea that some guys are going to take
our place and we’re going to go home is never going to happen. Really, what it was and remains is the idea that Gene
and I have created and nurtured something for 35 years… [and] as successful and consistent as we’ve been kind
of makes people wonder what it would be like if we put together another band and gave [them] that experience. It’s much
closer to that. Today I did a workout that would probably give most people a heart attack. My physical injuries (what a lot of them have
been) really come from the amount of punishment I [do to] my body. That’s just par for the course. My workout is pretty
exhaustive and exhausting; I do a lot of hill-climbing, a lot of abdominal work and crunches, upper body weights, lower body
stretching and weights -- it’s a lot of light weights and lots of reps, a lot of floor stuff and core exercises. My advice to anybody who wants to succeed is: Stop listening to advice. The most important thing is to assess yourself
as honestly as possible and then pursue something that you feel you can do. Only a fool would attempt something that they
weren’t reasonably sure they could attain; that’s a dangerous waste of time and life. So, if you listen
to people who tell you what’s impossible, they’re usually the ones who failed. My advice is always: Don’t
listen to advice. You have all the support and knowledge you need inside. Integrity. Thank god the world is full of beautiful women. I love women. As an artist and as a man, the aesthetics of women, the physicality
of them -- they’re all pretty stunning. |
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