There's a difference between standing up and telling people what you're planning to do and standing up and going and accomplishing something.
I've seen myself do stuff on stage that was pretty amazing. I think that would be true for any athlete. Any top athlete will see something that they are very proud of. All my injuries will attest to the fact that besides being a musician, it comes down to being an athlete.
Autobiographies, for the most part, to me, are like writing a love letter to yourself.
To go from being an unpopular, chubby little kid who was chasing girls and couldn't seem to catch them, to being chased after and making sure I ran slow enough that I did get caught, it was 180 degree turn. It was being given the keys to the candy store.
I was a chubby boy. My pants used to wear out in the middle, and it was because my legs used to rub together. I wasn't obese, just chunky.
Nothing could ever stop Kiss. I've seen the band in down times where critics were like vultures circling overhead saying things like, 'Well, you know it's the end of your career.'
It's absurd for anybody to look around and hear the acts and artists who cite us as an inspiration, and then tell me that we're not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I started working out, doing a formal workout right around 1980. That's when I really decided I needed to get in shape and it may have been because you just start to see a decrease - a change in your body.
The only exercise I got as a kid was fork to mouth. Food was equated with love in my household. I thought you left the table when the zipper was down and you'd explode if you took another bite. I'd eat my plate and then everyone else's leftovers.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is marketing. You've got a bunch of faceless people in a back room who trademark a name that sounds very official. Well, if you had thought of it first, you would have been the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
When rock & roll is done with that fervor, it's close to gospel.
When you start fooling around with drugs, you're hurting your creativity, you're hurting your health. Drugs are death, in one form or another. If they don't kill you, they kill your soul. And if your soul's dead, you've got nothing to offer, anyway.
A Kiss concert experience is like sex or anything else that's done with more that one person. It's the give and take that makes it so great. When the audience takes it to the next level, we can kick it up another notch.
When you're in a position to have gotten so much, the gift at this point is giving back.
I'm a great believer in not over-thinking lyrics. You might become technically better as a songwriter, but you lose what originally made your songs great.
I am one of the biggest Laura Nyro fans. I still listen to that stuff incessantly. Laura Nyro does not belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Songwriter Hall of Fame? Absolutely.
KISS has always been outside of the borders of what other bands can do. Not that some of these other bands wouldn't want to do it - the fact that they may snicker or look down their noses at what we do is more out of jealously than anything else.
In terms of merchandise, you can't force anyone to buy something.
Doing my art came out of something very solitary and something that I had no intention of showing anybody, and yet once people saw pieces in my house, it became really clear that there was a great demand for my art.
Tooting my own horn is of no interest to me... it takes you away from real life. It's a waste, and I don't find a need to sing my own praises.
