{"id":240112,"date":"2025-10-25T22:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T22:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/240112\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T22:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T22:37:10","slug":"bob-dylan-feuded-with-kiss-then-he-wrote-with-gene-simmons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/240112\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Dylan feuded with Kiss. Then he wrote with Gene Simmons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Dylan hasn\u2019t been shy about picking fights with his fellow artists. Over the years he\u2019s had beefs with Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, \u201cAmerican Pie\u201d songwriter Don McLean<\/a>, and even John Lennon, who he felt had copied his musical style on at least one too many occasions.<\/p>\n

But one group in particular got his ire in the late 1970s, after the born-again Dylan began writing almost exclusively on Christian themes. From roughly 1979 to 1981, he explored evangelical Christianity in the music for his three-album “gospel trilogy,” which consists of Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love.<\/p>\n

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Around the same time, the Satanic Panic was brewing. It would come to full force in the 1980s as moral outrage over alleged cases of Satanic ritual abuse spread through the U.S. In the lead-up to it, Kiss were singled out for supposedly encouraging satanism, largely thanks to the long-standing rumor that their name \u2014 which the band spelled in all caps, like an acronym \u2014 stood for Knights in Satan\u2019s Service, something which the band denied for years.<\/p>\n

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Apparently Dylan never got the memo. While performing in Arizona in 1979, he became fed up when the unruly crowd began calling out for his more popular, secular tunes. When one of them yelled out \u201crock and roll!,\u201d the folksinger used the occasion to provide a bit of spiritual advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want rock and roll, you go down and rock and roll,\u201d he said according to the Portland Mercury. \u201cYou can go and see Kiss and you can rock and roll all the way down to the pit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Bob\n<\/p>\n

Bob Dylan performs in whiteface on the Rolling Thunder Revue, in Toronto, December 1975. (Image credit: Frank Lennon\/Toronto Star via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

What was especially odd about Dylan\u2019s remark was that he had himself claimed to take a cue from the band to paint his face white for some shows on his Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975 and 1976.<\/p>\n

In Martin Scorsese’s 2019 Netflix documentary, Rolling Thunder Revue, he said the revue\u2019s violinist, Scarlet Rivera, took him to see the group perform in Queens. But Dylan didn\u2019t meet her until 1975, by which point Kiss were famous and no longer playing clubs. Most likely it was all a fabrication made in jest.<\/p>\n

All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

Whatever the case, Dylan\u2019s acknowledgement of the group certainly pleased its bass guitar<\/a> player, Gene Simmons. A longtime admirer of Dylan, he was thrilled to have the folk icon acknowledge his group.<\/p>\n

Years later, in 1991, while Dylan was in-between projects, Simmons decided to test his luck and see if the singer would write a song with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody buys lottery tickets. What are their chances of winning? Not much,\u201d Simmons explained to The Pulse of Radio. \u201cSo what? There is a chance you can win, and I\u2019m like that.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo I called his manager: \u2018Can I speak with Bob?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018What do you wanna talk to him about?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I\u2026 I wanna write a song with Bob.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

To Simmons\u2019 surprise, Dylan was game.<\/p>\n

And all of a sudden, within two days, an unmarked van shows up at my house, and Bob gets out with an acoustic guitar in his hand,. I mean, it was just like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Gene Simmons<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd all of a sudden, within two days, an unmarked van shows up at my house, and Bob gets out with an acoustic guitar<\/a> in his hand, and tells his driver, \u2018I\u2019ll see you at the end of the day,\u2019 comes up, and we start strumming. I mean, it was just like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simmons was thrilled, but he decided to save the song \u2014 \u201cWaiting for the Morning Light\u201d \u2014 for himself rather than give it to Kiss. It finally came out in 2004 on Simmons\u2019 second solo album, Asshole.<\/p>\n

\u201cBob came up with the chords, most of them, and then I took it and wrote lyrics, melody, the rest of it,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe understood each other right away. He picked up an acoustic guitar, and we just tossed it back and forth: \u2018How \u2019bout this, how \u2019bout that?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he started to strum, because he \u2014 at least with me \u2014 tended to talk and strum guitar at the same time. And as soon as I heard the first three or four chords, I went, \u2018Wait, wait, what\u2019s that? Do that again.\u2019 So I went and started to write a lyric around that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A second song from that session, \u201cNa, Na, Na, Na,\u201d was released later on 2017’s Gene Simmons Vault, a collection of his demos from 1966. to 2016.<\/p>\n

Gene Simmons – Waiting For The Morning Light – Demo – YouTube
\n\"Gene<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Oddly, shortly after the release of Asshole, Simmons found himself in a new feud with another unlikely adversary: Carlos Santana.<\/a> The spiritual guru of guitar took issue not with Kiss but with the bassist himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s not a musician, he’s an entertainer,\u201d the guitarist declared<\/a>. \u201cA musician is Coltrane, Bob Marley<\/a>. Kiss is Las Vegas entertainment, so he wouldn’t know what music is anyway. That’s why he wears all that stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimmons hides his talent beneath costumes and makeup. A musician doesn\u2019t need the mask or the mascara. There\u2019s a difference between an entertainer and a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, Simmons would say only, \u201cNot everyone likes the same meal.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the words stung, and four years later, he shot back during an interview for Kiss\u2019s then-new Sonic Boom album.<\/p>\n

“It’s time for us to go out and show the little boys how the big boys do it,” the bassist declared. “I’m sick and tired of these bands like Carlos Santana looking at his shoes and thinking that’s a rock concert. Get off the stage!”<\/p>\n

Unlike Dylan, Santana probably won\u2019t be getting a request to collaborate with Simmons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bob Dylan hasn\u2019t been shy about picking fights with his fellow artists. Over the years he\u2019s had beefs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-240112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}