In a new interview with Justin Richmond of the Broken Record podcast, Paul Stanley was asked to rank his top five KISS albums. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “For different reasons, the first has to be ‘Kiss Alive!’. Because ‘Kiss Alive!’ really captured the essence of the live experience. Now, that couldn’t have happened without us going in the studio and enhancing it and surrounding you with people… Live albums were boring for four hours. You didn’t even know they were live until the end of the song where you heard some clapping. But for KISS, we wanted an album that immersed you, immersion in the experience, which means being surrounded by people, which means bombs going off that are deafening, which means fixing any mistakes or a broken string. Snobs or purists may have looked down their nose at that idea, but the truth is that album is still considered, if not the greatest, one of the greatest, and in a lot of circles greatest live album ever. Not because everything was live, but because it captured the live experience.”
Stanley‘s No. 2 pick was KISS‘s fourth album, 1976’s “Destroyer”, which was produced by Bob Ezrin, who had previously worked with Alice Cooper. He said: “‘Destroyer’, even though it didn’t sound much like its predecessors, but working with Bob Ezrin was such a education, such a schooling, discipline and upping the writing and putting aside at least temporarily all the songs about sleeping with this one or this group of your parties, and it raised the bar. So many of those songs wound up in our show up until the very end — ‘Detroit Rock City’, ‘God Of Thunder’, ‘Beth’, ‘Shout It Out Loud’.”
Elsewhere, Stanley chose 2009’s “Sonic Boom”, which marked KISS‘s first album to feature lead guitarist Tommy Thayer. He said: “‘Sonic Boom’ was a great album by a band that recognized its roots and recognized where it came from and picked up the slack and kept moving forward. I love that album, and I love the spirit that went into it, where everybody knew what they wanted to do, and at our best. And most people’s best, I think, comes from trying to make the team or the band or whatever you’re involved in better, and that will make you look better than just trying to make you look better. And the team spirit on ‘Sonic Boom’ was really, really palpable. And a great album. Great album. And if [a song like] ‘Modern Day Delilah’ had been on ‘Rock And Roll Over’, it would be a classic. But songs take decades to gain that kind of patina or to have that life connection of when you heard that song at a certain time in your life. So, as time went on, songs could be great, but they didn’t have the luster of being tied to the past. So whether it was ‘Modern Day Delilah’ or ‘Hell Or Hallelujah’ [off KISS‘s 2012 album ‘Monster’]… And I just found myself going, ‘That’s as good as it gets.’ And it’s a different time now, and people don’t connect to songs as time pieces or a sonic photograph of a certain period. So ‘Sonic Boom’ would be in the top three.”
Paul then picked 1976’s “Rock And Roll Over”, saying: “I like that album. It doesn’t sound anywhere near what we sounded like, and that’s after‘Kiss Alive!’ It was very elusive for us, perhaps because of some of the people we were working with. It just escaped us. We did something with real focus and clarity of what we were doing, so that’s really good.”
Stanley‘s final choice was 1996’s “Kiss Unplugged”, which was recorded in studio for the television program “MTV Unplugged” and released as part of a series of live and video albums. He said: “I love ‘Kiss Unplugged’. That album, I just listened to some of that couple of days ago. The band at that point was just on fire. No effects, no amplifiers, no running around — us with guitars and drums and singing our asses off. And also it gave a chance to showcase the songs, because I’ve always adhered to the idea that a good song can be played on one guitar. If you have to go, ‘Well, wait till you hear the sound effects on this song.’ No. A great song can be stripped away, and it’s fantastic. So to hear ‘Sure Know Something’ or ‘I Still Love You’, you hear those songs and there’s a ‘wow’ factor just because it’s that good. So ‘Kiss Unplugged’, I would put in there… I love the simplicity and the fact that it’s undeniable. I mean, it’s just four guys with their instruments.”
KISS played its two final shows ever in December 2023 at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.
The last show, held on December 2, 2023, streamed live on pay-per-view.
KISS launched its farewell trek in January 2019 but was forced to put it on hold in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“End Of The Road” was originally scheduled to conclude on July 17, 2021 in New York City. The trek was announced in September 2018 following a KISS performance of the band’s classic song “Detroit Rock City” on “America’s Got Talent”.
Early last year, KISS sold its entire music catalog, likeness and brand name to Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment, which is behind “ABBA Voyage”. A biopic, an avatar show, and a KISS-themed experience are already in the works, with Stanley and Gene Simmons playing key roles in the development of all these projects, working closely with Pophouse.
Using cutting-edge technology, Pophouse Entertainment Group, which was founded by ABBA‘s Björn Ulvaeus, will create digital versions of KISS. The project was previewed at the final KISS show.
