Gene Simmons is Doing Some Writing For New Kiss Album If ….
Gene Simmons has confirmed that “some writing” has been going on for a possible new KISS studio album but has once again said that he is “not incentivized” to release another KISS disc unless there are some major changes in the way music is consumed.
KISS‘s last studio effort, 2012’s “Monster”, sold 56,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 3 on The Billboard 200 chart.
The band’s previous LP, “Sonic Boom”, opened with 108,000 units back in October 2009 to enter the chart at No. 2. This marked the KISS‘s highest-charting LP ever.
Asked by Michael Cavacini if KISS is going to record another studio album or not, Simmons said: “There’s some writing going on. Not too long ago I wrote a song called ‘Your Wish Is My Command’. It sounds anthemic, like something that might have come off ‘Love Gun’, maybe. But I’m not incentivized. The idea that you work your ass off and then someone with freckles on their face decides they want to download your music and file share — that’s not what I work for. How’d you like to be a plumber, come over somebody’s house and work all day to fix their plumbing and then when it’s time to get paid they say, ‘No, I just wanted to say thank you.’ No.”
He continued: “I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, you have enough money.’ That’s what I need: an eighteen-year-old kid telling me when enough is enough. It doesn’t affect me at all. And it doesn’t affect THE [ROLLING] STONES or U2 — a lot of the bands that do well. There’s only a handful, actually. The saddest thing of all is that the next great bands, with the talent and the charisma and all that stuff, will never have the chance that we did — because there’s no music industry. There’s no way for them to pay the rent. They’re going to have to give away their music, practically, for free.”
Simmons added: “It almost makes you say, ‘You know what, I’ll get a day job.’ The saddest part of all is that it’s not aliens from another planet, it’s not another country that invaded us and did that. No, no, no. Your next-door neighbor, the fans, are killing new music. They’re killing the bands that want to create music for them. That’s who’s killing it. You’re killing it, by not paying for it. Imagine how long a supermarket would stay in business if everybody went in, took the food and went away and didn’t pay for it. [It] wouldn’t last very long at all.”
Gene‘s comments were echoed by KISS frontman Paul Stanley, who last year said about the prospect of the band making a new album: “Well, it’s a very conflicted subject. In one sense, there’s no reason to put out any new music. Because the delivery systems that are available don’t pay. We’re in a situation now where artists have to take what they can get, as opposed to what they deserve. For me, it’s more of a moral issue than anything else, because I don’t have to worry about paying the rent, but what about new bands?”
Stanley previously that “it’s only worth [making a new studio album] if, artistically, you wanna do it. Every time we finish an album, I kind of go, ‘Well, that’s it.’ Whenever we’ve done an album… When we did ‘Sonic Boom’, it was because the band was so good that I just thought to not capture the band and do new material would be a shame. But once we did ‘Sonic Boom’, I said, ‘Well, we’ve made the point.’ And then, a few years later, it was, like, ‘Wow, why don’t we dig deeper and get a little closer to the roots and the people that we loved and kind of do something else,’ so we did that, and then I said, ‘We’re done.’ But lately I’ve been thinking, yeah, we should do another.”
