Hire Gene Simmons for Your Event

In 1957, when he was nine years old, his mother emigrated to New York City after his father, Feri Witz, abandoned the family in Israel. She also changed her son’s name to Gene Klein, in order to make it sound more American.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, Simmons became dissatisfied with Wicked Lester’s sound and image. He and Stanley quit Wicked Lester and began looking around for some new musicians to play with. Eventually they teamed up with drummer Peter Criscuola and leader guitarist Paul Frehley (later dubbed Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, respectively) – and so the band which would later become known as the rock legend Kiss finally came together in 1973.

Gene soon created an on-stage persona which he nicknamed “The Demon” – and took to the stage wearing stylised armour and spiky platform boots, with his face vividly painted like a clown in striking black and white patterns, which have at times been likened to Japanese Kabuki stage make-up.

Determined to capitalise on their newfound success, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley bombarded the leading media and television producers of the day with invitations to their shows, and soon succeeded in persuading top Madison Avenue producer Bill Aucoin to become their manager.

Aucoin landed a deal with the newly created label Casablanca Records soon after signing the band, and their debut album, ‘Kiss’, was released in February 1974. Two further albums followed in rapid succession, and reinforced the band’s success with their growing army of new fans.

As Gene Simmons might put it, “the rest is KISSstory”…. Since that first album was released in 1974, the band have sold over 80 million records, and played over 2,000 shows.

The survival of the band is due in no small part to Simmons’s impressive business acumen, and shrewd sense of trends and timing. The key to the reason why Kiss remained so active throughout the 1980s and ’90s lies simply in their ability to generate renewed public interest and attention whenever their record sales started to fall.

In addition to his multimedia career, Gene Simmons is also renowned for being one of the most colourful, outspoken and controversial personalities in show business today. He is well known for his tough stance on drug-taking, for which he has zero tolerance. Gene claims that he himself has never smoked or taken drugs, and he is a strict teetotaller. He has also made it a condition for anyone joining his record label, $immons Records, that they do not take drugs either – the legal implication of this clause being that if any of his artists were arrested for using drugs, they could also be sued by him for breach of contract!

Working in conjunction with his long-time business partner Rich Abramson, under the name of Simmons Abramson Marketing, they have secured Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola commercials featuring Kiss. In addition, Kiss Coca Cola put Gene’s face on their drinks bottles in France. He is impressively adept at public relations, with the result that there are now Kiss Holiday Inn commercials, Kiss Canon cameras on sale in Japan, Kiss Visa cards, and even a U.S. postage stamp bearing Gene Simmons’ face! KISS has been described as the “juggernaut of merchandising”, with over 2,500 licenses granted throughout the world.

During the 00s, Gene Simmons has continued to be phenomenally active as a businessman and media personality. He created his own line of clothing, called “Dragonfly”, and has also turned his attention to writing and publishing, as well as promoting his second solo album, ‘Asshole’, his first solo venture in over a quarter of a century. He started his own publishing company, Simmons Books, which published his LA Times best-seller, ‘Sex. Money, KISS’, and Simmons Audio Visual, which released his ‘Speaking in Tongues’ Lecture Tour of Australia. He has also published his own magazine, ‘Gene Simmons Tongue’.

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