An Interview With Gene Simmons

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L.G.: How old are you, Gene? 58, 59?

G.S.: Yeah. By the way, only white people talk like that. You never hear a black person say to B.B. King, "Aren't you 80? Isn't it time to stop?" White people are fucked!

L.G.: So you think I'm white, do you?

G.S: Well, the biggest stars in the world are over 60-McCartney and the Stones, those are the bands you want to go see. There isn't a 20-year-old band that can sell out a stadium.

L.G: Now are you really partaking of the full-dress rock star's life at age 58 or 59? Or are you just telling me you're doing that for marketing purposes, since you're a genius marketer?

G.S.: Nobody's a genius. We're all trying to figure out how to make the next buck. Think what you will. I mean, when you lead your life, you live your life. And whether somebody thinks it's a good story or not, who cares? You ask me a question and I answer it, and then you make of it what you will.

L.G.: So tell me a little bit about what you've learned about business. You sort of learned the hard way, did you not?

G.S.: Business has never been easy, and the delusion that musicians and writers and artists and people like that, who aspire to this thing called show, actually never really paid much attention. In the spirit of full disclosure before the fact, and truth in advertising, it is actually called the music business and show business. It's not called music or show—it really isn't. And it isn't called film, it's called the film business. You know? And art, it really is the art business. They call it the art "world," they don't want to use the word business, and words like inspiration and all that stuff is nonsense. The classic musicians and artists of the past, during the Renaissance period, these were commercial artists. These were commercial writers. Chamber music was based on the premise that the lord of the manor walked up to the guy, and said, "I want a three-minute piano concerto, put it in my chamber, there's going to be just a few guests and royalty"—that's why it's called chamber music, by the way. And that's why Mozart sometimes had three-minute piano concertos. You know why? Because that's what he was paid to do. [What] they were all paid for, and that includes the Sistine Chapel. The pope shows up and says, "I don't like that." They're commercial artists.

L.G.: Absolutely, I take your point. But what I wanted to get from you was, in the early part of your career up until perhaps the '90s, you were in a situation where the series of people who were managing Kiss and managing your business affairs and investing your money were doing a wretched job. Was there a point back in the '90s when perhaps you had only $6 million in assets or something like that, and you learned a lot about business the hard way? I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

G.S.: Well, sure. But it's fair to say that whatever numbers people think are the real numbers aren't anywhere near that—but I'm not here to dispel anybody's rumors either up or down about assets I have. Those are sort of private issues. I'm responding to the $6 million thing, which is a very funny number. That's okay. My mother eats more for lunch than that amount of money. But the point is that I will always be at the top of my list in terms of priorities. People who work for you, and with you, don't always have you at the top of their lists. Now, if and when they do, and if they have the goods to deliver, then it works. And, like any job, you have to understand that everybody—managers, agents, everybody else—works for you, not the other way around. And if at any point, they don't do what you think they should be doing—you fire them. Nothing personal. It's not called "friends," it's called business. And so people have been let go a number of times, and will continue to be, I'm sure, in the future.

L.G.: Right, but did you have a wake-up call at some point and say "Look, I, Gene Simmons, have got to get my arms around all this and control it myself and not leave it to people who don't have my best interest at heart"? Was there a point when you realized that?

G.S.: That's a really good point, and it's a good caution for anybody about anything. The more you know about the structure, the infrastructure of the process, the dynamics, who's in it, why, the agendas, and so on, the more you'll be able to make cognitive and astute decisions about your life. And every decision you make either increases your assets or decreases them-whether or not you're in mutual funds or whether or not you'd go down a dark alley or go down a well-lit alley. All those decisions have repercussions up or down. You're right. The more you know, the more astute your decisions might be.

L.G.: I was just wondering if there was a certain time when you said "Aha! I have to do this!" 

G.S.: Well, it's a learning curve. In real life, nothing happens like switching on a light bulb. Those are sort of poetic notions. In the real business world and the real world—politics, religion, and so on—it's a learning curve. You learn a little bit and you learn some more, learn some more, and you've got to keep in the race. And once you stop, technology and the business model overtakes you and leaves you behind. So I used to be a sixth-grade teacher, and I used to teach kids math and English and literature. It was in Spanish Harlem. I think it was P.S. 75. The year was 1972, I think. So I used to teach math to kids—and my daughter, Sophie, comes up to me and shows me math problems, and, I have to tell you, I don't have a clue what she's talking about.

L.G.: Same here.

G.S.: Yeah. And what that means is, we didn't pay attention to the evolution of mathematics, so it bypassed us. And it's no different in math, it's no different in business, it's no different in anything. You know, if you blinked and you opened your eyes all of the sudden, the world became a digital and virtual world. I mean, it happened right away.

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