Gene Simmons
Gene Simmons
Chaim Witz, known professionally as Gene Simmons, is an Israeli-American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, actor and television personality. Also known by his stage persona The Demon, he is the bass guitarist and co-lead singer of Kiss, the rock band he co-founded with rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley in the early 1970s...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth25 August 1949
CityTirat Carmel, Israel
CountryUnited States of America
Gene Simmons planned on being a success the moment he launched himself out of his mother's womb.
Don't believe bands who say it's all about the fans and they want to give their music away for free. The result is they will continue to live in their mother's basement.
There is nothing that I would do ever to break my mother's heart.
My mother is probably the wisest person I've ever known. She's not schooled, she's not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons.
My mother had a horrific life. At fourteen, she was in the Nazi concentration camps. Her sense about life now is, every day above ground is a good day.
It's in the history books, the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.
My background is full of pain. My mother was in a Nazi concentration camp and our whole family was killed off. Then early on your father leaves and all you've got is your mother, and I was an only child. Then you come to a new country and I can't speak English.
The venue has to know what it's buying.
So you had people coming in with scissors, you know, 'my mom's a hair stylist,' or a toothbrush, 'my dad's a dentist,' and my son came in with a poster of me spewing blood and spitting fire,
Personally I support 14,000 kids in Zambia - I feed and clothe them - but I don't hold press conferences about it. I don't do it so you'll think what a nice person I am; it's private.
Well that's not a good idea, but that was close to reality, because my kids' real mom, Shannon Tweed ... was a former Playmate, ... It's tough for a very young child to explain to the other school kids 'yeah, mom was on the cover of Playboy and dad's this wacky rock star who has a talking codpiece and spits fire.'
When you are a rock star in front of 20,000 people, you receive instant gratification. A rock star on tour is a king in his domain.
It's a personal statement that's a sort of personal allegiance to the United States of Indy.
The notion is that if you want to welcome me with open arms, I'm afraid you're also going to have to welcome me with open legs.