Gene Simmons
speaker
1,552 appearances
6 recordings
6 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 10 Dec
Gene Simmons’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 1.
Appearances
In the days when $25,000 was a lot of money, there was a $25,000 reward on our heads without makeup, yeah.
No, not really. They were snippets, but no. To give you an idea of what $25,000 was, right before KISS happened, I worked on 47th Street in the jewelry district. Minimum wage was $1.25 an hour. It skyrocketed to $1.75 an hour. $100 a week was a good wage. People were making $5,000 a year or something like that? That's right. And a Volkswagen, you could get for $1,500. Wow. Brand new.
That's mind-blowing, actually. When I was a kid earlier, 1959 possibly- I bought a movie ticket for 29 cents and I saw two movies and three cartoons. That's crazy.
Well, a year or two ago, I think a dozen X was a buck 50. Now it's four bucks. Yeah. Unless you shop in LA and then it's seven dollars.
All were female, so don't get excited.
No. I was afraid of marriage, monogamy, and children. I didn't want to turn out like my father. Tell us about your father. Well, my father ran out on us. See, even that doesn't get close to it. My father ran out on me. I was seven years old. I never had a father figure at home. I remember my father was, you know, in the army, Israel was always being attacked one way or the other.
So I remember, I don't know, five or six, there's a machine, a Russian with a Kalashnikov, I think is what it's called. And as funny as it may sound, he had a uniform and on weekends, They'd have to go to the front line. I mean, here you are in Beverly Hills. You know, Pasadena is half hour away. That would be another country that would want to kill you.
And in those days, 35,000 rockets came into Haifa or in that area where I lived. And on the weekends, my father would put on his uniform, take his thing, and hitchhike. They didn't have military trucks. They still hitchhike in Israel now. Well, Israel didn't have an air force or a navy or anything, but just people with guns. And they still beat five Arab countries. We went every time.
And it's generational. Nothing's going to change there until there are new generations who aren't dominated by religion. You have to remember World War II as a student of history. And my mother was 14 when she was in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. During World War II, Germans and Japanese, the entire culture, the entire people, bought the evil hook, line, and sinker. They were Nazi.
They loved it. And even after two atom bombs were dropped on Japan, they didn't make new terrorists or anything. The next generation said, you know, we were wrong. We got to move on. And they stopped worshiping the emperor as God. The culture has to change from within. When guys sitting, self-appointed religious people become less important, happened with Christianity too.
The Pope used to be a big deal and he would say, crusades for them. After a while, they ran out of grownups and they had a children's crusade. Insane. None of them made it to Israel. They were all raped or killed before because they ran out of grownups.
I didn't think I had an appetite. And one second, you're nobody and girls make you go through an obstacle course. What's your name? What sign are you in? Not on the first date, first base, second base, third base, you know, all that stuff. But you're both sexual. You both want the same thing. But then there are the cultural mores. Girls, women, females have different rules. Self-imposed a lot.
And some guys think that. And guys have no rules. It's like two different sides of the same coin. You're both human beings, but may as well speak another language. So, you know, it's tough for a guy. I don't mean to get a girlfriend, but just to satiate himself, as they say.
Going from there, and overnight, on the very first show, we played South Edmonton University, and there were girls back in the hotel. We were nobody. This is Canada.
Yeah, there were girls back at the hotel just because you're in a band. It doesn't happen to plumbers or dentists. and different rules. They didn't even care if you remembered their name. You see, they're bored with their humdrum small-town family life. These strangers, it's like the circus comes to town. It's exciting. You know, it's different. Yeah, and there was a lot of that for many decades.
Many model portfolios from the floor up to here, something like that. And then when I came clean, Shannon and I burned them together.
She always saw it in the media and stuff like that. But at some point, you got to grow up. I don't think women understand that just because there's a guy who's 25 or 30 years old and he's 6'2 and weighs, I don't know, 190, 200 pounds. That's a man. He's got a low voice. No, he's not. She's smiling blankly. So you're a 14-year-old horny kid, and if she turns her back, you'll climb on her mother.
You're inconsolable. You just have an appetite. I mean, it's nice if someone, hello, nice to see you. It's better to treat everybody nicely, but I don't believe for a second that men become mature enough Until their 60s. 60s? Oh, yeah. Really? Well, look at the divorce rates.
Why do divorce rates happen? Why are they so high? Because the guys fuck around. Why do they do that? Because even though they're grown men, they desire the other women.
Is that what you're thinking? Never thought in any of those terms, nor would I hardly ever use the word pathological. In all other ways, I thought I was responsible. I show up on time. I treat people nicely. I make money. I buy my mother houses. You know, I take care of everything. No drugs, no booze. I don't even smoke cigarettes. And I like girls. Socially acceptable vice.
Showing 1361–1380 of 1,552 · page 69 of 78
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