Credit: Far Out / Tilly Antoine
Sun 16 August 2026 19:00, UK
Creative freedom, that’s the reason Gene Simmons gave when asked about the makeup. Not marketing, not memorability, but creative freedom.
When Paul Stanley and Simmons were both talking about their time in Kiss and going back through the years in a bid to justify some of their decisions along the way, when they were talking about the choice to paint their faces, they likened themselves to The Beatles. Stanley said The Beatles looked like such a unit nobody else could have set foot in that band, and so they wanted to make sure they looked like a unit as well. Meanwhile, Simmons said he felt the glam rock face paint gave them more creative freedom.
“We also took pride in having the same freedom The Beatles had,” he said, “Their philosophy was, ‘No matter what kind of music we do, it’s still The Beatles’. That’s what was amazing about them… The Beatles were not trapped in that way. They could do music hall, psychedelia, anything, and they did. Yet somehow it always sounded like The Beatles.”
Considering how much Gene Simmons enjoyed the band’s creative wings, they didn’t change their sound a whole lot. They very much stayed within the realm of stadium rock for the majority of their careers; however, there are some instances when you can see this creativity in action (somewhat). On certain albums, such as Dynasty and tracks like ‘Sure Know Something’, while you would still class this as a rock song, there were also quite obvious elements of funk and disco in there too.
However, the result of the freedom you can see Kiss had was in their makeup and their longevity, coming through in the form of chopping and changing different band members while still presenting some kind of unified front. This was really helpful when the band had some creative friction, as they could go off and make solo albums while still looking as though they were one.
Credit: Far Out / Casablanca Records
They all released solo albums on the same day, all still with their faces painted on the covers, making such records look like spin-offs rather than actual deviation. If Spider-Man goes on a solo adventure without The Avengers, he’s still an Avenger, right?
Paul Stanley wasn’t a fan of this approach. “I didn’t have a choice,” he said, “The idea was to present group unity, which is kind of interesting, because the solo albums came out of the band being on the verge of splitting up. In the long run, it was putting a Band-Aid on a serious wound.”
He was right, too. Kiss was just buying time; soon, band members would leave, and new blood would be brought in to don the iconic facepaint. Alive II marked a difficult period for Kiss, as Ace Frehley had clearly had enough of being in the group. He only contributed one song to the album, ‘Rocket Ride’, a track which, despite being made in pure isolation, wound up being one of the most successful.
He wanted to make sure his vision was seen through to the end, and so he didn’t let any of the band help out with the track, even locking Simmons out of the recording studio while he laid down the bassline, unsure that the latter would be able to play it in the first place; in fact, he had lost confidence in all of his bandmates.
Maybe he had a point. When Frehley left the band, they replaced him with another guitarist, keeping that holy unified front intact, but they never played ‘Rocket Ride’ live despite it being one of the biggest from the new album.
Why is that? Resentment towards Frehley, opting to rely on bigger tracks from their discography? Or maybe because the music Frehley laid down simply couldn’t be recreated. Simmons has never commented on it himself, but it could well be the case that he was locked out of that recording booth for a reason, as this was one bassline he simply couldn’t lay down.
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