NEED TO KNOW
Paul Stanley thinks certain KISS songs should be for adults only.
During an interview on Sunday, Nov. 16 at the KISS Kruise in Las Vegas, the lead vocalist and guitarist reflected on some of the iconic rock band’s rarer tracks — and how differently they are perceived now.
“It’s really funny because some of those songs, some of our songs are not really age-appropriate anymore,” Stanley, 73, said. “I couldn’t imagine writing a song today.”
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Stanley then pointed out the lyrics of the 1976 song “Take Me,” “Put your hand in my pocket / Grab onto my rocket.”
“Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there,” he said of the lyric.
Drummer Eric Singer then joked that when Gene Simmons sings the line now, he says, “Put your hand in my pocket and find that little blue pill and then grab a hold of my rocket,” seemingly referring to the erectile dysfunction medication Viagra.
Simmons, 76, then put a spin on a line from KISS’s 1984 track “Burn Bitch Burn,” saying “I’m going to put my log in the fireplace.” (The original line is, “I wanna put my log in your fireplace.”)
Singer, 67, then called Simmons “a modern day Socrates.”
“I don’t care. I love me,” the co-lead vocalist and bassist replied.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Simmons opened up about what he would have done differently in the past when it came to KISS.
“If I have any regrets, my hand to God, it’s that I sometimes — and I think we all go through this sometimes — wish we were smarter and better at trying to help Ace [Frehley] and Peter [Criss] have better lives,” he said.
Simmons noted that he and his bandmates were “guilty” of not addressing issues to avoid arguments.
“Let’s just continue doing the tour because you want to get through it for selfish reasons because it’s working, and the chicks, and the money, and you don’t want to ruin anything,” he said. “Meantime, somebody who might be your brother is ruining their life by bad decisions.”
Simmons wished he would have taken more of a “tough love” approach with the people he cared about in the past.
