Me, Inc. (6 page)

All of these artists invented themselves. From head to toe, inside and out.

So I decided that if I was going to be in a band, I could increase my chances of success by choosing someone like Paul Stanley, who could be my partner. He was just as passionate about pop culture and success as I was. He was willing to create himself. We were both willing to become chameleons and do whatever it took to
become
the image that best worked for us in the marketplace that we wanted to be in. Top to bottom.

Look like a rock star, act like a rock star, and if you're lucky, you might get to
be
a rock star. Fake it till you make it.

When I taught sixth grade in Spanish Harlem, I was known as Mr. Klein. And that was an appropriate name for that job; it sounded like a teacher's name. But Klein was never going to work in a rock band. It simply didn't
sound
very rock and roll.

Gene Simmons wasn't perfect, but it was better than Chaim Witz, and since 1971, I have been Gene Simmons.

So far, so good.

7

KISS

O
n February 21, 1974, the first KISS album was released. That's forty years from this writing! What a crazy trip it's been.

But, by the summer of 1972, it looked like Wicked Lester wasn't going to work, even though we had a recording contract with Epic Records. So Paul Stanley and I regrouped and started again. We walked out of our Epic Records contract. We disbanded Wicked Lester! This time, we would put together the band we never saw onstage, the band that
we
wanted to be. This time, we would make sure we had the right lineup. This time, we would make sure we had the right songs.

We did it the right way.

We self-funded the band. We had no other partners. There were no investors. There was only us. Mostly, there was only Paul and myself.

This time we were going to do it for real.

Go big, or go home.

But we had no manager. We had no record label for our new band. We had no lawyers. We had no one to advise us or guide us.

So I began religiously reading the music-industry trade publications
Billboard
,
Cashbox
, and
Record World
. Every week, I would see what the charts reported on what was selling and what was not. Every week, I learned which band was playing at which concert venue and how they did financially. Every week, I would learn about different music industry figures, who they were, what they did, and how they did it.

It was another type of education you were not going to get in school. And it's worth noting that what I was doing, although I probably wasn't familiar with the phrase at the time, was my own “due diligence,” meaning that I educated myself.

As I've discussed, I always had a job or two, and was always saving money. So by mid-1972, when I was twenty-two years old, I had been able to save $23,000, which was a hefty sum in those days (still is for most twenty-two-year-olds). This is also part of due diligence—to educate oneself, and feed oneself, is one's own responsibility.

Paul owned a beat-up old Mustang, but more often than not, we both used the subway and buses for transportation. We ate hot dogs at the corner of Twenty-Third Street and Broadway. We never went shopping for clothes. We hardly spent any money at all.

But when it was time to get a loft to serve as our band's rehearsal space and base of operations, we didn't hesitate. The rent was two hundred dollars a month. In 1972, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss both joined our new band, which we were still calling Wicked Lester.

Peter was married and didn't work beyond pursing life as a professional musician. He was fortunate to have a wife, Lydia, who supported them both and was devoted to his quest to become a successful drummer in a band. That left rent monies for Paul and myself to cover. Sometimes Paul couldn't come up with his end, so it was up to me to make sure the rent was paid every month.

The band needed amplifiers. Paul and I bought them.

We needed a sound system. Paul and I bought a Peavey 27-input soundboard and sound speakers, and had friends build the sound system cabinets. It was cheaper. Paul and I paid for all of it. We didn't have roadies, so friends of Ace and Peter would usually help out.

Again, a good move. Invest in yourself. If you can afford it, don't borrow. Pay for it yourself.

By Christmas 1972, we rechristened ourselves KISS. Paul thought of the name. It was Ace who drew the band's first logo. Paul would later refine the logo, and that's the version we use on everything to this day.

I hit the phones and got us a few small clubs to play at and Paul had to go out and rent some milk trucks so we could haul the equipment to and from our shows.

Despite some early omens from Ace and Peter, we were young and thought of it all as a great adventure.

This brings us back to what I've been telling you about the importance of finding the right partners. You can't do it all yourself, and neither could any of us. Each of us on our own could only go so far. Together, we would go all the way.

By early 1973, it was time to put together a press package to proclaim KISS's birth and to invite the music industry to our coming-out concert at the Diplomat Hotel's Crystal Room. We were second on the bill. The Brats, a popular local band, were the headliners. Third on the bill was a band called Luger.

I wrote up a contract for all the bands to sign. I wasn't a lawyer and had no legal training. Why I thought it would be legally binding (it was) or why I thought the other bands would sign (they did) is beyond me. The contract said that each band would go on at a certain time and be off the stage by a certain time. Luger would go on at 8:30 p.m. and be off by 9:15. KISS would go on at 9:30 and be off by 10:30. The Brats, who were headlining, wouldn't hit the stage until 11 p.m.

All well and good.

I was still working at the Puerto Rican Interagency Council offices, and had the run of all the office equipment after hours. So when it was time to assemble our press package, I commandeered the typewriters, manila envelopes, and stamps and put together a big mailing to all the record labels, managers, music magazines, and music professionals whose addresses I could find in the year-end issues of
Billboard
,
Cashbox
, and
Record World
.

We made sure that none of the other bands' names were on the invites that I sent to music industry people. The press release only mentioned
Heavy Metal Masters “KISS”
and our set time, 9:30–10:30. The media and music managers who showed up were undoubtedly impressed when they saw the large room filled with fans. Most of them were probably there to see the Brats, but that fact would never be known to the industry people who attended the show.

A friend of Peter's who worked at a printing shop did us a favor and allowed us to reproduce posters advertising our show, which Paul and I posted on the sides of buildings around Manhattan to help build word of mouth. And Paul and Peter arranged to create black T-shirts with the KISS logo in glitter, and Peter's sisters wore them at the front of the stage, screaming for us.

Then, KISS hit the stage and tore it up. Afterward we were left with a half hour to meet and greet the music industry people and then get them out of there before the actual headliner hit the stage and our little ruse was exposed. The point: create your own hype. Whether you're in a band, or you're a mere salesman—make them believe in you. Make them believe they are the last to the party and it's started without them. You don't have to lie, but you do have to craft an image that makes people want what you have.

I met with Bill Aucoin right after our show at the Diplomat Hotel, and he and I sat down to quickly chat. I arranged for a girl I had been “seeing” to sit on my lap as we spoke, to give the illusion of rock star grandeur I so admired in my heroes. And the die was cast. It worked like a charm. Bill immediately wanted to be involved. At the time, he was then producing and directing a TV show called
Flipside
, which interviewed John Lennon and other music personalities in the studio. He also produced a TV game show called
Supermarket Sweep
.

Aucoin agreed to become our manager. Contracts were drawn up, and KISS needed a lawyer. We hired Stan Snadowsky, a lawyer and music promoter who booked shows at the Bitter End, a club in Greenwich Village. He would always let us come into the club to see acts (the following year, Snadowsky would become co-owner of a new club, the Bottom Line, which would become a fixture of the New York music scene for three decades). Aucoin needed a lawyer as well, but didn't have funds to pay for his side, so I loaned him the money to pay his lawyer. I also paid all the KISS legal fees. All of my frugality was paying off—literally. With the substantial amount of money I'd saved, I was able to cover a lot of these early expenses that helped launch our career. No one else in the band had access to cash—and even our new manager was short on funds—so it was left up to me.

Within six months, in the fall of 1973, we were recording our first album for Casablanca Records with producers Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise at the legendary Manhattan studio Bell Sound, right down the street from Studio 54. We were young. We were inexperienced. And we simply couldn't believe what was happening to us.

Between the two jobs I had at the time, I was clearing close to $300 per week, a large sum at the time. When I quit my jobs so I could devote my full-time attention to KISS, I went from $300 a week to the $75 weekly salary that the band now paid me. That's what we all got at the beginning, although within a few months our salary was raised to $85—and that was before taxes.

But it didn't matter. We were doing what we loved. We were in a band. And we believed in what we were doing.

If I didn't have the cushion of my savings from all those other odd jobs, I might have continued working and not have been able to put my full focus into getting KISS to the next level. “Don't quit your day job” is often good advice, unless you can afford to do otherwise.

The story of KISS has been told and retold in books, movies, and documentaries. So I won't go into all of that here. Instead, I will return to my earlier observations about my apparent lack of formal qualifications for any of the business endeavors that I have pursued, beginning with music.

The field of popular music is populated mostly by unqualified people. They never went to school to learn what they do. In fact, they barely understand what they do, or how they do it.
They just do it
.

I can't read or write music, but I have written hundreds of songs.

I have never had music lessons. I have never had a music teacher show me how to play guitar or bass or keyboards or drums, although I dabble in all of them well enough to be able to write songs and record demos.

And I'm hardly alone in my lack of musical qualifications. In fact, I'm in some very good company, including many of music's most iconic figures.

Elvis Presley couldn't read or write music. The Beatles never learned to read or write music, and never took lessons to learn to play their instruments. They simply taught themselves.

You can go down the list. Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters, Green Day. Many of them are self-taught—many of them never took formal lessons, yet they have no problem writing and playing their songs. It's like learning to speak a new language, but never learning to read or write it.

My point is that, in whatever field one chooses, it's up to
you
to educate yourself to become an effective entrepreneur. And you can't use a lack of formal training as an excuse not to pursue the success that you desire.

I noticed early on that this thing that I had entered was never just called music. It was always called the music
business
. And show
business
. And the movie
business
.

Intrinsically,
everything
is a business.

Everything has, or should have, a balance sheet.

Everything has, or should have, a budget.

Everything has, or should try to have, a profit motive.

Work. Religion. Rock bands.

And YOU.

YOU are the business.

YOU should have a budget.

YOU should have a balance sheet.

YOU should have a profit motive.

I did then.

And I do now.

8

Learning About Branding and the Music Business

“I am the brand.”

GENE SIMMONS

(you're damn right I just quoted myself)

F
rom the get-go, KISS understood that we were a business but there was still a lot to learn. Bill Aucoin and our lawyers helped us to learn about all sorts of new business areas that we'd never contemplated before.

Like trademarks. In order to protect our face-paint designs and our logos and our songs, we needed to trademark and copyright them. Trademark and copyright are slightly different legal terms, and they do slightly different things legally. But they're both designed to prevent others from stealing or copying your creations.

Copyrighting a song was standard practice at the time but trademarking our specific look was a whole other matter. No one had ever done something like this before. We were able to trademark our
faces
, and the way the makeup was designed on those faces. Before KISS, the creators of comic-book and cartoon characters could trademark what their creations looked like. But it was rare to make such a specific attempt to trademark what was, essentially, a living human being's stage identity. KISS manager Bill Aucoin made us aware of the possibility of trademarking our actual faces. It took about a year and it was registered in 1977 with the Library of Congress. It's worth noting, Jimmy Fallon can't trademark his face—it's just a face. But KISS's faces are more than faces: they are symbols that have spanned four decades—and will likely survive our passing. It was the single biggest decision we ever made—because we incorporated a design into our faces, our faces became part of the design, and were therefore subject to trademark law. And these symbols have endured.