|
My dad, a conservative business man, loved KISS. Growing up, I remember him telling my mother and I to be quiet whenever they were on the television and, if we made any kind of noise - or even moved - we would be banished from the living room until the show was over. I never became a member of the KISS Army, but I have enjoyed the band and was thrilled to garner an interview with vocalist and rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley. I have spoken with him before and he was as gracious, charming and funny as ever. KISS, Stanley, vocalist and lead guitarist Tommy Thayer, vocalist and bassist Gene Simmons and vocalist, percussionist and drummer Eric Singer, has been touring North America on its KISS/Alive 25 tour and released "Sonic Boom" (KISS Records), a two-CD and live DVD set, in October. "I was reluctant to make a new album, particularly after the last one," Stanley begins. "It wasn't a healthy or a productive situation we tried 11 years ago. You can't make an album where you're in communication more with people's lawyers than with people who were supposed to be in the studio working and you can't make an album where people are making demands of certain amounts of songs on albums or certain participation. When people are thinking more how can the band make me more famous rather than how can I make the band more famous, it doesn't work. "With that being said, Eric has been our drummer off and on for 20 years and Tommy's been in the band seven years and has been around us forever, so this has been not only a stable lineup, but we've been in the midst of the most successful world tour we've ever done and just getting amazing response from not only the fans, but suspiciously good reviews. It seemed like it would be a waste to not go in the studio and do an album that is really rooted in everything that we've been and also declare very definitively who we are and where we're going." Stanley continues, "Provided that I could produce it and see it through, I was all ready to do it. It was effortless and exciting and more fun than we've ever had in the studio." "Has your writing evolved over the years?" I ask. "It has and not always for the better." Stanley explains, "I think you can know too much and it's almost like what I wanted to do this time was deprogram, debrief and eliminate maybe some of what has been learned over the years. Just because in some ways you're a better writer technically doesn't mean that your songs are as good as or better that they were, so I wanted to get back to the essence of what we were doing and think about it a little less. "The songs were written quickly, they weren't analyzed word for word. We did it very organically in terms of writing whether it was co-writing together or the three of us getting together sitting on a sofa and writing and really tailoring each song and making sure that it fit the identity of the band at its best as opposed to everybody just writing what they feel like writing or writing that they enjoy. That's not what makes great KISS albums. I wanted to make sure that these songs embodied and really captured what the individuals in the band are and what the band collectively is. "Everybody came in with ideas and then they had to be sorted out in terms of what fit this project and what didn't" Stanley goes on. "Somebody had to make those decisions and it was me. In situations like this democracy is vastly overrated, everybody should vote, but one person ultimately makes the decision. Everybody's in the same car, somebody's got to drive." We discuss the lyrics. "We all (wrote the lyrics) on different songs and everybody contributed a line here, a line there to help. This again was about the band and it's great to have a band that thinks as a band as opposed to what's in it for me," Stanley says. "One of the other important things in a band or any situation is not necessarily to have your way, but to have it the best way. You sometimes have to check your ego at the door. The bottom line is everybody's going to come out looking great if the project or the album turns out great. I have no ownership or possessiveness of anything involved in the album, I only wanted us to make the best album possible. It doesn't always mean that my point of view is correct initially, that's why you've got to be willing to listen to everybody." So what's the secret to KISS' staying power? "You have to love what you do," Stanley answers. "You started doing it because you loved it, then if things go right you make a lot of money and then you've got to decide do you love it enough to continue. I didn't initially do this for money and I'm not doing it for money now. You have to love what you do and you have to find the challenge in it. A long time ago I stopped competing with anyone else. We don't compete with other bands, we compete with ourselves, we have a legacy, we have a history and at our finest that's what we have to live up to or exceed. The cool thing about the album and the tour, certainly when people see us, this show is far beyond anything anyone expects and our fans expect a lot." "Are you doing something extremely different in the show then?" I wonder. "If we came out in red leather with hats on it would certainly be unexpected, but it might not be better, so we're true to what we do, the only thing that changes is we get better at it and more focused," responds Stanley. "This is easily the best show we've ever done, it covers more territory musically and the band's killing it-- it couldn't be any better. "It's interesting because it's been the 'KISS/Alive 35' tour, that's how it started about 10 months ago and it's been all over the world, but at this point it's in a transitional state of morphing because obviously we've got 'Sonic Boom' and there's a lot of other things we want to cover, so it's a very, very complete and comprehensive night and we've got more artillery than a lot of third world countries." I spend a lot of time in Pasadena, so I just have to ask Stanley about his wedding with Erin Sutton at the Ritz-Carlton (now Langham), Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena in 2005. "It was just such a spectacular environment and the staff there couldn't be more helpful or more accommodating," shares Stanley. "I have to say that it is the wedding that I couldn't have hoped for anything better and it was an absolute reflection of my wife and I and our commitment and love for each other. Everybody who was there said it was the greatest wedding they were ever at. We did it in November, we're coming up on our anniversary, November 19, we were blessed, we had 90 degree weather, it couldn't have been scripted any better."
"It's very interesting because I never painted when I started with the idea of anybody seeing my work and when people came over to the house and I'd hung a piece or two, people invariably went to the paintings and said who did them? I found that really interesting and ultimately somebody got me to do a show and it was very successful," Stanley says. "At this point I average, when I'm not on tour, a show a month somewhere in the country for a Friday and a Saturday. "The interesting thing about my success is it's come so quickly that people see me developing in front of them. Once it was established that I was never going to get credibility by being a starving artist, once that went out the window, it became to be about me continuing to enjoy myself. I paint for myself because if no one else likes it I have at least one big fan." Stanley paints in acrylic, but there are some effects akin to watercolor in his work. "I tend to sometimes get a certain transparency in my colors so you seem to see through them," explains Stanley. "Sometimes because of textures that I may lay on before I put the paint on and because sometimes because they're diluted or rubbed off, you'll get a transparency because of the texture that the canvas has or that I've added to it so some of the paint will stay in certain areas and you get a sort of see-through effect. Stanley further describes his work, "There's quite a few that are abstract, some tend to be more so than others and I also do a lot of commissioned portraits at this point. I'm blessed, I only do things in life that I love, but that's probably why I've succeeded. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll to it well." In 1999, Stanley starred in a Toronto production of "The Phantom of the Opera," but he devotes most of his free time to his family now. He and his wife have a son, Colin, 3, and a daughter, Sarah, just under one year and he has a son, Evan, 15, from a previous marriage. "There's nothing better than any kind of interaction you can have with your children," Stanley tells me. "My older one, he and I will go to Guitar Center or McCabe's (Guitar Shop, Santa Monica) and we'll sit and jam. He's a terrific guitar player so it's great to do that with him. My little ones, besides hugging and kissing them, it's taking them to the beach. Again, my life couldn't be any better." KISS is planning to tour Europe next. "It's interesting to feel so reinvigorated and so charged up," Stanley says. "It's great that we're having a ball doing what we're doing and maybe in some way that affects everybody else because the response and shows have never been better and these suspiciously great reviews we're getting from the critics are also pretty interesting." I ask Stanley if he has any final thoughts and we talk about KISS' makeup, such as Thayer and Singer wearing looks created by original members rather than something of their own. "It's an interesting question and it's not asked by many people, but there is certainly a very vocal minority that has an issue with it," Stanley responds. "But the truth is that rather than listening to those people, I would rather listen to the million people who saw us in the past year. KISS really has ascended to a place that few bands have been, we are iconic and those four characters are iconic and to dilute the band by changing the image would be compromising the fans really ultimately. "It's shown by the turnouts, but also we are arguably the most recognized band in the world. You can take a picture of the band to anyone anywhere in the world and they'll tell you it's KISS, they don't necessarily know the names of the members. Wouldn't it be ridiculous to compromise what we've worked so long for and in place have Snailboy on guitar or the Porpoise on the drums? It's silly. This isn't a menagerie, this is KISS. "People don't come to see individual members, what people are coming to see is a philosophy, they're coming to see a commitment, they're coming to see something that embodies a relationship with the fans where the fans come first." Stanley continues, "KISS has always been a wakeup call to what is possible and to what fans shouldn't accept less than. There was a time when it was the widespread belief that a band was doing you a favor by showing up and we said, wait a minute, you do the band the favor by showing up and don't let anybody tell you otherwise and if you're paying a high price for a ticket, you deserve more than a multi-millionaire who just jetted in on his private jet sitting in ripped up jeans on a stool. We are here to entertain and that's what KISS does proudly and on top of it, we're a pretty lethal band." Check out KISS and their new album and current tour at www.kissonline.com Also visit my blogs at http://mickieszoo.blogspot.com and www.insidesocal.com/doodah Return to DaBelly
|
Kiss and tell with Paul Stanley
Also in 2005, Stanley began showing his paintings. He produces
portraits and contemporary modern works and has made upwards of
$3 million in sales.