![\"Kiss](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Kiss-1975-Far-Out-Magazine1-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Casablanca Records)<\/p>\n
Fri 14 November 2025 4:00, UK <\/p>\n
The problem with inspirational artists of the highest order, is that the size of their talent can also haunt you. Jimi Hendrix is inspiring upon first listen, but try to play a lick by him and you\u2019ll soon find yourself traipsing your Fender down to the pawn shop.<\/p>\n
This was the issue that Gene Simmons<\/a> first faced when he thought about an improbable future in rock \u2018n\u2019 roll. \u201cThe irony was that I noticed if I was gonna be in a band, I didn\u2019t see myself as a lead singer,\u201d he told Rock Cellar<\/a>. \u201cPhysically I was too big and I didn\u2019t see guys my size doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n It was an age of slight and flighty British invaders, and sadly, he didn\u2019t see himself represented under the spotlight, adding, \u201cI was also heavier as a kid, so I didn\u2019t see guys my size fronting bands.\u201d<\/p>\n But beyond size, it was also his singing that came into question. He knew he was no Aretha Franklin and even the likes of Paul McCartney had a certain acrobatic quality to his performance. He required a punkier role model. <\/p>\n Thankfully, he found them fairly quickly. He knew he \u201ccould sing well enough\u201d, but \u2018well enough for what\u2019 was the question until two new straightforward stars entered the frame. Suddenly, as a youngster, he knew he was \u201cat least as good as Eric Burdon and Mick Jagger, those guys, who sing pretty straight ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n While Burdon\u2019s power could stir honey into tea from a thousand paces, and its the low rumbling, clenched-first performance that makes \u2018House of the Rising Sun\u2019 one of the era\u2019s finest vocal takes, what Simmons took from him and flouncy Jagger was that you could swing from the hip with a melody without too much formal technicality and still pull it off.<\/p>\n As he quipped, \u201cI mean, anybody can sing \u2018Satisfaction\u2019. There\u2019s no vocal histrionics on it.\u201d Even Keith Richards agrees with that, saying that he was jealous of the fact that The Beatles had four singers in their band, and The Rolling Stones didn\u2019t even have one. As harsh as that joke might\u2019ve been on Jagger, the guitarist is equally quick to recognise his swagger.<\/a><\/p>\n Attitude was something that Simmons noticed was strutting onto the scene in spades. \u201cSo I immediately joined bands,\u201d he says. \u201cThe first band I joined might have been the Missing Lynx and then I really hit my stride with a group called the Long Island Sounds and then after that we had a group called Cathedral which had a Hammond B-3 organ.\u201d <\/p>\n Adding, \u201cBy that time I\u2019d been starting to write my own songs or co-writing songs. One of the early ones was a song called \u2019She\u2019, which Kiss later recorded for the Dressed to Kill album.\u201d <\/p>\n The rest, as they say, is ancient history.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Casablanca Records) Fri 14 November 2025 4:00, UK The problem with inspirational artists of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,16517,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-290665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gene-simmons","10":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}