{"id":340182,"date":"2025-12-10T02:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T02:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/340182\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T02:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T02:39:07","slug":"kiss-rocker-gene-simmons-gives-blunt-advice-to-sen-alex-padillas-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/340182\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiss rocker Gene Simmons gives blunt advice to Sen. Alex Padilla’s son"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Kiss rocker\u00a0Gene Simmons<\/a>\u00a0gave blunt advice on Tuesday to the music-loving son of\u00a0Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla<\/a>\u00a0of California during a Senate hearing on legislation to pay recording artists. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy youngest son. His name is Diego. He\u2019s ten years old. He has quickly fallen in love \u2014 not with the bass, but the electric guitar,\u201d Padilla told Simmons at a Senate hearing where the rocker testified. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat advice do you have for him?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHave a fallback position,\u201d\u00a0Simmons<\/a>\u00a0deadpanned, prompting the Senate hearing room to erupt in laughter.<\/p>\n

Gene Simmons, a founding member of the rock band Kiss, walks through the US Capitol on Dec. 9, 2025, in Washington, DC.\u00a0 Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I say this seriously,\u201d Simmons continued after the attendees quieted down, \u201cbecause since the advent of downloading and file sharing, where artists are actually getting minuscule amounts, barely able to get by.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simmons<\/a>, 76,\u00a0did give the tyke a tip by noting that he saved up money to launch Kiss while working first as a teacher, at a real estate firm and as some sort of assistant to a Puerto Rican government official.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was making $23,000 a year when that meant a lot of money. But doing the Jewish way of living with your mother, not paying rent, and so on. So I amassed a large enough amount so that I could support the band. We were forming together without managers and everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simmons later asked Padilla what kind of music his son liked.<\/p>\n

\u201cHeavy metal,\u201d the senator replied.<\/p>\n

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual property invited Simmons, who formed Kiss in New York City in 1973, as well as radio broadcasting and music royalties executives to Capitol Hill to debate legislation that would pay artists and music recorders when their hits are played on AM or FM radio.<\/p>\n

Sen. Alex Padilla with his son. Facebook\/Sen. Alex Padilla<\/p>\n

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) grilled a radio broadcasting executive for his opposition to the American Music Fairness Act elsewhere in the hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an issue of fairness. This is an issue of meeting the constitutional prerogative,\u201d Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) told\u00a0Henry Hinton, Inner Banks Media president and CEO, in a key exchange.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to compensate creators. They have that right,\u201d added the Tennessee Republican who represents the interest of American\u00a0musicians in Nashville.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd sir, broadcast has blocked this,\u201d Blackburn continued. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be in business if you didn\u2019t have access to spectrum. You wouldn\u2019t be in business if the FCC didn\u2019t give you a license. You wouldn\u2019t be in business if there was not music to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hinton, who serves on the board for the National Association of Broadcasters, told Blackburn he was more than willing to come to Nashville to meet with music creators in the future.<\/p>\n

Gene Simmons on stage with Kiss. ZUMAPRESS.com<\/p>\n

Simmons, who as a rocker is not a typical figure seen in the halls of Congress, charmed senators on both sides of the aisle throughout the hearing with his genial demeanor and snappy one-liners \u2014 without ever acknowledging the slightest doubt that the bill would pass Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to pass this bill. It is bipartisan. You will do the will of the people because 70% of the United States of America in a recent poll said, \u2018We want this injustice cured,’\u201d he told the lawmakers.<\/p>\n

In a more serious aside, Simmons \u2014 who was born in Israel and was the child of Hungarian Jews who survived the Holocaust \u2014 also explained that he was advocating on behalf of the many emerging artists, since he\u2019d\u00a0\u201cdone very well because America gave a first generation legal immigrant the chance to do well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kiss frontman, who was\u00a0honored<\/a>\u00a0at the Kennedy Center Sunday, made the case that the legislation was necessary to protect American artists above others because they have given the world the soundtrack of their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re only talking about AM and FM radio and paying our Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, even my newest, best friend George Strait, who\u2019s a co-winner of, proud winner of the \u2026 Kennedy Honors,\u201d Simmons said.<\/p>\n

Gene Simmons walks through the US Capitol building on Dec. 9, 2025. Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI told him, \u2018George, do you know one of your biggest songs, \u201cAmarillo,\u201d which has been broadcast on AM and FM radio hundreds of thousands of times? Do you know you never got a penny for any of those broadcasts?\u2019 He looked around. He said, \u2018What do you mean?’\u201d he recalled, before turning the episode into a reflection on the actions of broadcasters.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you defend that, Mr. Hinton?\u201d asked Simmons of his fellow witness in the hearing. \u201cGod bless him. We all live in America. We disagree, but he\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kiss frontman added elsewhere: \u201cWhen you work hard and you get to the top, what do you got? Zippo. Rooney. That\u2019s not the American way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are wars going on and everything, but our emissaries to the world are Elvis and Frank Sinatra. That is who,\u201d he also said. \u201cAnd then when they find out we\u2019re not treating our stars right \u2014 in other words, worse than slaves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSlaves get food and water. Elvis and Bing Crosby and Sinatra got nothing for their performance. We got to change this now for our children and our children\u2019s children. And I know you will,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president will sign this once all you guys respectfully get your act together and put this across the board. Let\u2019s do the right thing. God bless America.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0Kiss rocker\u00a0Gene Simmons\u00a0gave blunt advice on Tuesday to the music-loving son of\u00a0Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla\u00a0of California during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2356,236,88,16517,111,720,194],"class_list":["post-340182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-california","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-gene-simmons","tag-politics","tag-senate","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340182","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=340182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}