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Superlatives<\/a><\/p>\n \n A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe people who don\u2019t like you will never like you, and if you pursue them, all you\u2019re going to do is lose the people that do like you.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s hard to edit me,\u201d Paul Stanley says as an introduction of sorts. \u201cI\u2019m not a ham. I\u2019m the whole pig.\u201d As the front man of Kiss, the ultimate people\u2019s band, Stanley has been dressed to kill as the Starchild since the group\u2019s 1974 debut album; he, along with bassist Gene Simmons<\/a>, have served as Kiss\u2019s two constant members throughout its history. The band retired from touring in 2023 and will now find infinite life as<\/a> digital avatars, proving that their spirit of rock and roll will never fully die, regardless of whether some critics would\u2019ve liked to have seen such a fate.<\/p>\n Stanley and Simmons, representing Kiss, are among this year\u2019s inductees for an honor that caught them a bit by surprise: the Songwriters Hall of Fame. (The sonic potpourri of the 2026 class also includes<\/a> Kenny Loggins, Alanis Morissette, and Taylor Swift.) While Stanley stressed several times in our conversation that the band wasn\u2019t making \u201chigh art,\u201d he still knew there was a wide mountain range for their titillating, energetic, and shameless approach to music. If you\u2019re unable to remain in control of your faculties when \u201cI Was Made for Loving You\u201d or \u201cLick It Up\u201d starts blasting on the nearby TouchTunes, congrats on living a less fun lifestyle than everyone else \u2014 but you should know that all those hits were created with a lot more integrity than you may expect.<\/p>\n \u201cIt kind of goes back to: Anyone can write a song, but that doesn\u2019t make you a songwriter,\u201d Stanley says of the craft. \u201cIt was always, This is what our album is about. I think that was my main strength. If we were making a cake, Gene would talk about the frosting and the dressing on the outside. And I would go, \u2018But we have to have a cake.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard not to go with \u201cRock and Roll All Nite.\u201d That song is really the template for a lot of songs that came after it, whether ours or other people\u2019s, because it\u2019s an anthem. When I started writing it, there were no \u201canthems,\u201d per se. Our record-company president sat us down and very fortuitously told us that we needed an anthem and we had no idea what that meant. His examples were Sly and the Family Stone\u2019s \u201cI Want to Take You Higher\u201d and \u201cDance to the Music.\u201d I saw Sly and the Family Stone when their first album came out and they were opening for Jimi Hendrix, so I understood what the directive was. I went back to the hotel, sat down with my guitar, and thought about it for a minute. And I went \u2014 I swear \u2014 \u201cI want to rock and roll all night and party every day.\u201d It wasn\u2019t \u201cwe,\u201d it was always \u201cI,\u201d because what empowers you is \u201cI.\u201d From there I went to Gene\u2019s room. He had a song called \u201cDrive Me Wild\u201d that he was working on at the time, and we took my chorus and put it with his verse and that became \u201cRock and Roll All Nite.\u201d<\/p>\n Partying didn\u2019t mean pointed hats and fly whistles. It also wasn\u2019t a drug-fueled social event. It was getting together with people and having a great time. So although it wouldn\u2019t necessarily be my favorite song, its legacy is undeniable. We\u2019ve closed our shows for 50 years with that song because it encapsulates our ethos. There were so many bands who came up with their own versions of \u201cLet\u2019s get together and rock\u201d kind of songs after ours, and I would have to assume credit for a lot of that without pointing fingers and the idea of, Hey, look who I influenced. That\u2019s for me to know, but certainly not for me to announce. That\u2019s too much self-aggrandizing for me.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always dealt with perception becoming reality. I was an unpopular, zhlubby little kid who was deaf in one ear and created an alter ego of sorts to cope with that. Some of the songs were \u201cYou want me\u201d songs. Often it\u2019s parenthesis. You want me, you need me, you\u2019re after me. \u201cC\u2019mon and Love Me\u201d was one of those songs that touted, built, and fortified that persona. A lot of my songs were in that realm. You create something and if you do it well enough or long enough, it becomes true. I reveled in it. It doesn\u2019t suck becoming Superman.<\/p>\n Honestly, we were not dealing with high art. We were writing musical food for the masses, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s disposable. Pretty much everything we wrote together was crafted. I\u2019ve always believed that your best game of tennis is when you play with somebody equally as good, if not better, and that\u2019s what you have with Carole King, Cynthia Weil, Jeff Barry, Elli Greenwich, Lennon and McCartney, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Lerner and Loewe. So we were at our strongest together. We brought something to each other\u2019s work \u2014 a spark \u2014 that wasn\u2019t there as individuals. I tend to craft things more and Gene is more impulsive to push it out. For each album we would do, if I knew that I had five slots on the album, I would write five songs and they would be tailored and designed to fill a certain niche, and also serve a certain purpose to give the album an identity, whether it was opening with \u201cDetroit Rock City\u201d or \u201cLove Gun.\u201d<\/p>\n Alive! was such a turning point for us. We already had three albums out. We did three albums in 18 months, which is pretty much unheard of for rock bands, because we really wanted success. The idea for Alive! wasn\u2019t to have a live album in the sense that at the end of a song you heard people clapping. We wanted you to be in the crowd and have a sense of empowerment. We wanted you to hear the noise of people next to you between songs, because technology doesn\u2019t really allow for multisensory overload.<\/p>\n \u201cRock and Roll All Nite\u201d was the song that broke out. It had been on an earlier album, Dressed to Kill, but this was the real crossover moment when people were singing it as an anthem. I think the entire album showed the power and commitment of us as a band. Nothing could stop us, not because we were the best necessarily. Maybe there\u2019s na\u00efvet\u00e9 involved. Before that album came out, we were building a following as a live band, but our albums weren\u2019t selling because they didn\u2019t sound like we sounded live. So the perception of the band was perhaps bigger than we actually were. I remember doing an interview and somebody said, \u201cSo how does it feel to be rich and famous?\u201d I said, \u201cWell, I can tell you how it feels to be famous.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure we ever wrote a song like that. The middle finger came from us flaunting and celebrating who we were. We sang about self-empowerment, enjoying life, and not taking shit from anybody \u2014 those are the cores of a lot of our songs without having to say it. The middle finger is just living your life your way and maybe setting an example for others. Admittedly, I don\u2019t think that advice is usually well taken. It\u2019s kind of like parenting. I think people respond more to what they see you do than what they hear you say, and our big middle finger was success. Our middle finger was going against the people who didn\u2019t like us and going against the naysayers and winning. That\u2019s very hard for people who don\u2019t like you to understand. The Kiss Army, if you want to call it that, was a tribe much closer than some bands where the demographic is narrow and the last thing you want to see is your dad or little brother there. Whereas with us, it\u2019s always been inclusive and everybody has always felt a part of this family.<\/p>\n The roots of \u201cCalling Dr. Love\u201d were from a Three Stooges episode where they\u2019re in a hospital and on the intercom. They\u2019re saying \u201cCalling Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard.\u201d Gene thought someone named \u201cDr. Love\u201d was just hilarious. At times, Gene\u2019s songwriting can be so campy, but he can get away with it. Obviously at some point when you don\u2019t have the persona, the bandwidth is much narrower. But within the scope of being the demon and that character, \u201cCalling Dr. Love\u201d is lascivious but also humorous. I think he gets away with it because Kiss is timeless. Part of what has been our strength over the years is looking the same onstage. The idea of being omnipotent, of being ageless, is incredibly powerful. When somebody comes to see the band live and goes, \u201cMy God, they look like when I saw them in 1975,\u201d that\u2019s something other bands can never have. So in that way, we\u2019re timeless superheroes \u2014 Batman with a guitar and Superman with a Marshall amplifier.<\/p>\n I go back to our Kiss Unplugged album, where the songs had to stand on their own without makeup, bombast, and eight-inch platform heels. \u201cSure Know Something\u201d is a really well-written song that transcends Kiss\u2019s many signature songs. I wouldn\u2019t minimize or negate that one by saying it was for the masses. For me, it\u2019s just hard to say what\u2019s a \u201cserious, credible song.\u201d They all are. I thought that Kiss Unplugged made it more obvious that we have a lot of great songs that will stand the test of time, are timeless, and could just as easily be done by someone else. This isn\u2019t on the official Unplugged album, but I originally wrote \u201cHard Luck Woman<\/a>\u201d with the idea of, This would be great for Rod Stewart. Let\u2019s write our own \u201cMandolin Wind.\u201d I\u2019ve written songs using other artists or songs as templates.<\/p>\n The motivation for Kiss Unplugged was we were doing Kiss conventions. A much smaller group of people would come to a hotel ballroom or venue, and there would be displays of Kiss history, costumes, outfits, guitars \u2014 and then we would do a Q&A and play an unplugged set. Those sets were always pretty damn good. MTV approached us with the idea of doing an Unplugged, and the format appealed to us because it goes back to something I\u2019ve always believed: If you can\u2019t play a song on a piano or guitar, it\u2019s not a good song. If you have to say, Imagine this with a synthesizer in the background, that\u2019s all window dressing. You don\u2019t have the structure.<\/p>\n And at the same time as Unplugged, we were thinking about reuniting with the original two members, Peter and Ace. It was part of the dating process. The time to find out you don\u2019t want to be in bed with somebody isn\u2019t when you\u2019re in bed with them. You want to date and have dinner. So Unplugged was a chance for us to put the feelers out, and we wanted to showcase how good the band was. Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer were consummate players, and we worked our asses off to be really, really good at playing acoustic guitars versus electric guitars.<\/p>\n \n Stanley, with and without makeup, performing over the decades. Clockwise from left: <\/strong>Photo: Gary Gershoff\/Getty ImagesPhoto: John Atashian\/Getty ImagesPhoto: Kevin Mazur\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n \n Stanley, with and without makeup, performing over the decades. From top: <\/strong>Photo: Gary Gershoff\/Getty ImagesPhoto: Kevin Mazur\/Getty ImagesPhoto: John A… more When Kiss was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a decade ago, I said in my speech that we were being inducted for the same reasons that we were kept out. The hierarchy at the organization had very little to do with the public, and the public\u2019s beliefs should be in there. It was really a backroom boys\u2019 club. There were people who I won\u2019t give the attention to by naming, but they\u2019re gone<\/a>. Anyway, I\u2019m a pretty tough critic. It very rarely comes down to what others think of what I do. If I think the show sucked or if I wasn\u2019t up to par, it doesn\u2019t matter what anyone else thinks, because you go home and you\u2019ve got to like who you see in the mirror. If you\u2019re going to believe all the good stuff that people write, you\u2019re going to have to believe the bad stuff.<\/p>\n You can get caught up in a vicious cycle like that. The people who don\u2019t like you will never like you, and if you pursue them, all you\u2019re going to do is lose the people that do like you. Certainly, there were decades of scathing reviews and dismissals by so-called critics who ultimately had to go, \u201cThis is good.\u201d Time is ultimately what gives something credibility. So, yeah, I\u2019ve never given much credence to reading reviews because some of them are also fodder for therapy. When people have such deep hatred directed towards you, it\u2019s not really about you. Go work that out, because who hurt you? Who beat you? We\u2019re just a band.<\/p>\n This may sound corny, but I\u2019ve never, ever found playing any of those songs a chore. They made me what I am, and I love them all dearly. When I would go see a band and they were bored and would rearrange a heavy rock song and do it as a reggae tune, I was terribly disappointed and felt minimized. I paid to hear the song that I loved the way I loved it. The idea of going up on stage with a sold-out audience and showing disrespect by fulfilling some need in me, or boredom, is unimaginable. Play it the way people know it, the way it became famous, and show the respect you had for it when you wrote it. You\u2019re only deviating because you\u2019re bored, and that\u2019s irrelevant as far as I\u2019m concerned. The worst I can say is if you win the lottery, you shouldn\u2019t complain about taxes.<\/p>\n That would be me saying, \u201cLook how I influenced somebody,\u201d and I don\u2019t go there. We\u2019ve always had great support acts, because we love all types of rock music, whether it was Tom Petty, Bob Seger \u2014 who got his first gold album with us \u2014 AC\/DC, Rush, Judas Priest, Bon Jovi, and Motley Cr\u00fce. The list goes on and on. We wanted to make sure we not only championed bands that we loved, but gave them a chance onstage. There should be someone every night in a concert who justifies being the headliner, and if that happens because you sabotage or limit any other musicians, then you don\u2019t deserve to be the headliner. So we\u2019ve always practiced what we preached. We would go out there and make sure you had everything you needed and talk to you if you wanted some advice. A lot of bands would be on the side of the stage because you learn more by watching. I didn\u2019t invent anything; I was just inspired by so many people.<\/p>\n The North Star. Because it guides you.<\/p>\n
\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
\n Stanley, with and without makeup, performing over the decades. From top: <\/strong>Photo: Gary Gershoff\/Getty ImagesPhoto: Kevin Mazur\/Getty ImagesPhoto: John Atashian\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n