REBEL MEETS REBEL: SCOTT IAN INTERVIEWS GENE SIMMONS
Anthrax’s beloved rhythm guitarist pays a visit to Kiss’ legendary demon
By Dan Epstein
Illustration by Steve Chanks
Photos by Pamela Littky
When Kiss bassist and cofounder Gene Simmons invited Scott Ian and Revolver to spend the afternoon with him at his L.A. mansion, the Anthrax axeman came prepared with a long list of questions—not to mention a large stack of original Kiss vinyl albums for Simmons to sign. The two musicians have been friends since 1987, when they met backstage at England’s Castle Donnington festival, but Ian still seems awed to be in the presence of his longtime hero. “I feel like a Make-a-Wish kid,” he says at one point, while checking out the mountain of classic Kiss memorabilia in Simmons’ office. “Whoa!” he exclaims, stopping dead in his tracks at one display case. “Is that the original Gene Simmons Axe Bass?”
Though Simmons has a long-established reputation for arrogance and obnoxiousness, he treats Ian with genuine warmth, like an uncle reunited with his favorite nephew. Without question, Simmons sees something of himself in Ian—both men got into rock music as Jewish kids growing up in Queens, New York, and they’ve both managed to keep their respective bands going strong through the sort of lineup changes and market shifts that would have sunk a less-tenacious outfit. Once Simmons finishes expounding on his latest business schemes—everything from a Kiss coffee shop in South Carolina to a pilot for a TV cartoon called Kiss Babies—the two sit down with Revolver, and the interview begins.
SCOTT IAN Gene, you once told me that your three favorite things, in no particular order, were dessert, money, and sex. And you said you knew you had made it when you had just finished a sold-out show at a big concert hall in Vienna, and you were sitting in your hotel room eating a sachertorte [a rich Austrian chocolate cake] and getting a blowjob at the same time.
GENE SIMMONS What’s wrong with that? Her mouth is full, so she can’t talk—“What does this all mean? Where is this going? Do I have my mother’s hips?” [Laughs]
IAN But after all this time, are you still motivated by the same things?
SIMMONS Yes, it’s exactly the same things. That’s how you know there’s a Hell, because the thing that I love the most is the worst thing for me—sweets. You get fat like a horse. I’ve tried to limit my insatiable lust for all women, so I’ve been happily “unmarried” to the same girl [actress Shannon Tweed] for 22 years, but marriage is out of the question. Last I checked, the only woman who had the right to ask me where I’m going gave birth to me. That’s a good exchange—“I gave you life, I can torture you.” No other woman’s allowed to do that.
REVOLVER Scott, Gene has made it quite clear over the years where he stands on the whole “art versus commerce” issue. What are your feelings on that subject?
SIMMONS Well, he’s much more of an artist than I am. I’m just a whore! [Laughs]
IAN To me, the term sellout means nothing. If you want to stay in your home and record demos on a cassette tape, and the only way for people to hear it is to come to your house, and that’s who you are as an artist—then I’ll say, “Great, you never sold out.” But I play in a band. I want everyone in the world to hear what I’m doing, and I want everyone out there to buy my record.
SIMMONS I want people to say I’m a sellout. I sell out every night! As soon as you charge for a ticket, you’re in the game. As soon as you sell your first T-shirt, you’re in the game. And then you’re not just a musician—you’re a performer.
IAN There’s a million guys out there who play guitar way better than I do, but I understand that you have to entertain. You have to be the best live band in the world, always. That’s what’s kept us going. We were able to make it through the Nineties and a lot of down times because we were such a great live band. We couldn’t sell records for shit, yet we were still out there selling tickets.
Gene, I remember whenever I would see you in the early Nineties, I would always ask, “When are you doing the reunion?” And you would always come back with, “Are you gonna reunite with Joey Belladonna?” And I would go, “Well, no.” And you would say, “You see what I mean?” Then ’96 rolls around, and you did the reunion with Ace and Peter. And then 2006 rolled around, and Anthrax reunited with Joey Belladonna.
SIMMONS And do you know why we both did it? Because it means more ticket sales.
IAN Absolutely. It was our twentieth anniversary, and Charlie [Benante, Anthrax’s drummer] said, “Why not call him up and see if he and [guitarist Dan] Spitz wanna get back and do it?” And it’s been amazing. We’ve bonded as people again. I actually became friends again with a guy I thought I’d never speak to for the rest of my life.
REVOLVER Which is not exactly what happened with the Kiss reunion, unfortunately.
SIMMONS [Sighs] It’s only drugs and alcohol. That’s the thing. I’ve never been high or drunk. But before we were successful, no one in the band would have considered getting so blitzed that they couldn’t even remember if they’d wiped their ass. But once you become big and famous, you have yes-people around you who pack your clothes, drive your bus, drive your jet—you don’t have to do squat. When your breath stinks, no one is there to tell you your breath stinks. And, of course, it affects everyone around you.
IAN Gene, are you satisfied—
SIMMONS Never!
IAN I mean, if you knew tomorrow that Kiss was never going to happen again in any way, shape, or form, would you be satisfied with the legacy that you’ve left?
SIMMONS No. Because you can’t buy that feeling—it doesn’t come in cans. You get up onstage, and you feel like God. It’s an explosion of feeling alive.
IAN I used to look at older bands, like Kiss, and wonder, “What’s the motivation for them to do this anymore?” And then the ’96 reunion tour happened, and I saw it 10 times, and I understood the motivation. I was in the first row with Sebastian Bach, both of us crying our eyes out, because we felt it. They weren’t going through the motions up there—these guys were up there because it fucking mattered to them what their audience was feeling.
SIMMONS I understand that. We all have things like that in our lives. For me, it was [the 1940 Walt Disney cartoon] Pinocchio. I came from another country, Israel, and when I got to America I could barely understand English. I used to go to movies alone, because I had no friends. And I could relate to Pinocchio, because, like him, I was a kid who didn’t fit in. When Jiminy Cricket started singing, “When you wish upon a star,” honest to god I thought he was talking to me—it was this moment where everything disappeared, and it was just me and Jiminy Cricket. And what he said was, “It doesn’t matter who you are—your dreams can come true.” It was like a religious moment. Kiss fans hated me for putting that song on my solo album, but it was for Jiminy. I had to pay that little cricket back for instilling in me what religion couldn’t do, what school couldn’t do, what parents and teachers couldn’t do. It was a sense of belief in yourself. And so help me god, when I sang that vocal, I cried like a 12-year-old kid. Because the words were true.
IAN We always wondered as kids about that song on your solo album. It was like, What the hell is that about? And now we know. [Laughs]
REVOLVER Scott, were you aware, growing up as a Jewish kid in Queens, that Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were also Jewish kids from Queens?
IAN Not at first. I knew they were from Queens, but we didn’t know that they were Jewish—we didn’t know then that they were really Chaim Witz and Stanley Eisen. I just knew that they were four miles from where we lived, and that gave me hope. The Demon was my Jiminy Cricket! There’s a reason that that’s on my leg! [Pulls up his pants leg to reveal an elaborate tattoo of Simmons’ Demon face.] My epiphany was Madison Square Garden, December 14th, 1977—I went to that show, which was the first time my mom let me and my friends go to a concert by ourselves, without my uncle or somebody taking us. I walked out of there, and I knew exactly what I was going to do with my life. There was no other path—that was it!
SIMMONS And it wasn’t easy, was it? Every step of the way, somebody had something to say about it.
IAN Of course. And it’s still extremely difficult. But it’s the greatest thing in the world. I’ve known you forever, but without you in my life—without those concerts, without those records, I don’t know what the hell I would have ended up doing.
SIMMONS You would have been fine. Because you would have had the same work ethic, the same drive, the ability to go out every day and do the same thing, whether or not you felt inspired—you would have made it at anything. You decide to do anything, you do it all the way.
IAN I remember you telling me that, in ’77, after you played those shows at Madison Square Garden, you actually went to stay at your mom’s in Queens. She lived across from Bayside High, so I would have passed right by her house on the bus. I was in the midst of this three-day Kiss insanity, seeing you at the Garden. Had I known that you were at your mom’s, only eight blocks from where I lived, I would have jumped out of a moving bus to come and meet you! [Laughs]
Okay, Gene, I have a couple of questions from some friends of mine. Jon Donais from Shadows Fall is a huge Eighties Kiss fan. His question is, “Any chance of Vinnie Vincent and Bruce Kulick coming back to tour on any of the Eighties or Revenge material? Don’t let them turn their backs on their Eighties fans.”
SIMMONS [Laughs] Oh, man… Every time I say, “No, it’s never gonna happen…” All you can say is “No” today.
IAN This is from Charlie Benante. He wants to know, “How bad were the live performances for the Alive recordings, and who made the decision to do them over in the studio?”
SIMMONS We all did. And they were pretty crappy! Peter was all over the place. I made lots of mistakes, as well—we were more about the performing than hitting the right notes. One really stupid mistake I kept making—during the chorus of “Strutter,” I played a G instead of an F sharp each time!
IAN This is from Shavo [Odadjian] from System of a Down: “Do you know that ‘All Hell’s Breaking Loose’ is rap-rock, and did you know it at the time you recorded it?”
SIMMONS I came up with the chorus, but it really started with Eric Carr, who came up with the lick, and Paul and Vinnie Vincent finished the song. As far as the talking, there’s always been talking in rock and roll. Talking existed in the middle of doo-wop songs in the Fifties, and in the Sixties there was ‘Wild Thing’ by the Troggs. Even Hendrix—he was talking. Rap didn’t exist then. We didn’t know what it was.
IAN Shavo also wants to know what you think of System of a Down, and wants you to know that he’s a diehard Kiss fan.
SIMMONS That’s very sweet of him to say. I love System of a Down for one thing—I’ve seen them, and they get up and they give their all. You have to admire the passion of somebody who believes what they do. It’s very seductive! It’s like going to a black Baptist church—you may not be a believer, but by the end you’ll be saying “Hallelujah!” if the emotion and passion is there. So I salute System of a Down, and I salute anyone who gets up there and really does it all the way, whether you get paid a dollar or get paid millions of dollars. Now, I prefer millions of dollars, but that’s just my heritage. [Laughs]
