Kiss‘ Paul Stanley admitted that Gene Simmons left him feeling “resentful and hurt” when his bandmate began pursuing extracurricular projects in the ’80s, leaving Stanley to pick up the musical slack.
The singer and guitarist reflected on the schism in a new episode of The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan, which you can watch below.
“I felt betrayed. No secret,” Stanley said of Kiss’ mid-’80s period, when Simmons delved into film and television. The Demon appeared in the 1984 thriller Runaway and the 1987 action film Wanted: Dead or Alive, as well as a 1985 episode of Miami Vice. Stanley, meanwhile, essentially became a one-man band on Kiss’ 1984 album Animalize.
Paul Stanley: Gene Simmons Was ‘Abandoning Ship’ in the ’80s
“I felt that he was leaving me to do the heavy work but continued to get paid, so trying to have the best of both worlds,” Stanley said. “Go off and do your own thing and have the success, at any level that there was success, and the monetary compensation, which I’m not sharing in, but you’re abandoning ship and you’re still my partner.”
Stanley continued: “I felt very resentful and hurt. I wouldn’t at that time have said I was hurt. I would say I was angry. But I was hurt. Gene’s my brother. He’s been with me since I was 17. So that was really difficult.”
READ MORE: Top 20 ’80s Kiss Songs
Despite the hurt feelings, Stanley was determined to keep Kiss up and running at all costs. “But again, it was, ‘Well, screw it. I’m not gonna let this band fall apart,'” he said. “If it’s my band in that sense, then so be it. If I gotta be in the middle in a video, then let’s do that. But yeah, I felt that he was selling the band short. The quality of the writing was not good. I thought he wasn’t playing fair.”
Stanley and Simmons both addressed this wilderness period in their respective memoirs, Face the Music and Kiss and Make-Up. “I started to get lost,” Simmons explained. “I didn’t know how I was supposed to act, because the no-makeup version of the band was an entirely new idea. Paul was in his prime. He was very comfortable being who he was.”
It was just one of many storms Kiss weathered over the course of their 50-year career. The rockers ended their most recent farewell tour in December 2023 and will perform unmasked at the Kiss Army Storms Vegas event in November.
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Gallery Credit: UCR Staff
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