Sun. Sept. 16

It was 2001 and I was talking with KISS bassist-singer-product hawker Gene Simmons from New York. "If I was any luckier,I'd throw up," he told me. I haven't talked to him since, but I'm pretty sure what he said in that interview holds trure today. He's one lucky man. He and Paul Stanley - the remaining original KISS members still standing play with, um, two other guys dressed up as former members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss - play Comcast Center Sunday Sept. 16 with Motley Crue. But KISS isn't all about music. Some would argue that's somewhere down on the list. It's a lot to do with image and marketing, returning to the kabuki-style make-up that hides your age (after shedding it and stumbling big time), and still cleaning up at the arena level. KISS is playing to grandparents who sang along to "Rock 'n' Roll All Nite" when they were then 13 and their 13-year-old grandchildren. The show? It'll be bawdy, and rockin' and suggestive, but not really subversive. The most subversive thing about Simmons - who of course is a reality TV star now, too, - is that he was one of the first rockers to be such an out and out capitalist.
    If you were to suggest to Simmons that what he does for a living is "creating art," he may just spit (blood) at you. Figuratively, of course - he saves the real blood-spewing for when he's onstage, playing with his band. He just doesn't have much truck with the rock-as-art school.

"Any time anybody tells you otherwise," Simmons says, "that it's for some great artistic notion or they have a message, you have to remember rock 'n' roll musicians are not schooled, can't write or read music, certainly never went to school to pay dues, and have no certification of any kind that we're even qualified to do what we do. We took the lazy way out." So what motivated the young Simmons to pick up an instrument and join the rock world several decades years ago?"For me," wrote in Simmons in an autobiography, "Kiss and Make-Up," "it was always about chasing skirt." Simmons claimed 4,600 (and still counting) sexual liaisons during the course of his career, making him the Wilt Chamberlain of rock. But you can take "drugs" right out of the sex-and-drugs-and-rock-'n'-roll equation. He is militantly antidrugs and antidrink as well.

Simmons cocreated Kiss with Paul Stanley. They fashioned themselves as comic-book-like characters in full makeup (Simmons as a giant bat-lizard); they made their concerts a rock 'n' roll circus, complete with (fake) blood vomiting and large-scale pyrotechnics; they wrote a slew of hedonistic, rebellious hard-rock songs that hit a chord with middle-America - and the rest of the world. Simmons,  turned the idea of rock merchandising into - well, we shouldn't call it an art form, should we? A science, then.

I threw some questions at Gene; he threw answers back. It might be noted than when we talked KISS was contemplating its farewel tour. Like tours by Elton John,the Who and Bowie ... it was not. Is this one? Don't bet on it. They're touring to promote their first new album in years, "Sonic Boom," (no relation to the English musician Peter Kemper who uses that as his moniker).

Q. Monogamy and marriage don't work for you?

A. Women unfortunately will never understand that. I believe marriage is obsolete. It's professional prostitution: You pay for her to be with you. Who invented this system? The devil?

Q. This is not a problem with your partner Shannon Tweed?

A. I've been together and we have two kids. [Shannon] is completely free. Marriage is out of the question. It's an institution, but you've got to be nuts to want to be in an institution. . . . You've really got to be selfish. The only way to happiness is make sure you're happy first; it's preferable if other people are happy, too, but you can spend your life chasing your tail trying to make everybody happy.

Q. You're very close to your mom. How does she react to this philosophy?

A. She doesn't understand the notion of me not wanting to get married, but she had a broken marriage. She actually said something a long time ago: "As long as he doesn't get high or hurt people, I don't care what he does." She's right. The rest is a mirage, societal rules.

Q. You've never lacked for ego. At one point in your book, you admit to having an inflated sense of yourself.

A. Without question. When you've got no role models, when all you've got is the face staring back at you in the mirror, you're gonna like that guy or not. It helps to love that guy. It helps to be delusional, and I am. When I look in the mirror I think I'm better-looking than I am. Deep down inside, I know that I'm not the best-looking guy in the world.

Q. In the book you portray yourself, especially in your youth, as something of an outcast.

A. I still see myself as an outcast, but that's good. It's better fuel for the fire, never to take anything for granted. It's good to have the notion you have something to prove. Otherwise, once you have the fame and skirt, will you still open your eyes at the crack of dawn and work as if your life depended on it?

Q. Your book is not exactly rich in self-analysis.

A. I'm a lucky guy. As far as I've been able to come, I think, therefore, I am - and the rest is academic. About the only thing I can put my fingers on - or my fingers around the throat of - is epicurean hedonism. The pursuit of life is the pursuit of pleasure. What it all means, I don't really care. The message is, `Every day above ground is a good day.' Enjoy it. What does it mean? It means nothing.

Q. Is there an afterlife?

A. Who cares? I have problems with that, an afterlife. It seems greedy to me. I'd like you to come back and get another chance. Me, I'm completely happy. My life has been just a hoot.

Starts at 7. Tix: $125-$30 on Stub Hub.

885 S. Main St., Mansfield   www.livenation.com