everybody who comes to a show is proud
to see the other people there.
Question: Did you enjoy yourself being
inducted into Rock N' Roll Hall Of Fame?
How was the actual event for you?
Paul Stanley: It was vindicating in the
sense that it was vindication for the fans.
This has been very important to them
and I wanted to share that moment. I was
where backstage was hedonism at its
finest. When you are given the keys to
the candy store, you tend to eat a lot of
candy. I certainly had a sugar high. Over
the years, that obviously changed. The
core of why I got into this and the reason
the band got together in the first place
was to make music. To have the privilege
of going out on stage and be able to do
this forty years on is incredible. That's
Kiss, cica 1974
08•2014
there to raise my statue up in the air and
say, "Yes! We did it." In spite of the people
who clearly didn't want us in. We were
there because of the people who did want
us in and those ranks are impressive. For
every clueless music executive who is
still on the board (and at some point will
no longer be), there are musicians be it
Tom Morello or Joe Perry – there is a list
that is literally a who's who of music.
Those are the people who got us in and
ultimately couldn't be stopped by the
people who wanted us out. Sooner or
later all the people who wanted us out,
will themselves be out. The people who
count (not the pencil pushers), the people
who make music are the ones who wanted us in.
what's been the constant. I look over to
the side of the stage on certain nights and
see my little ones in their pajamas waiting for the show to be over, so that they
can go to bed. Family, at one point which
had no place in my life or in rock n' roll in
general has become common place. As
long as you are writing about things that
are relevant, you'll have a fan base that
will go with you and new fans that will
join you. I think we've all gone into a different realm of our lives. I've got a family
and the Bacchanalia that was backstage
at one point is not there anymore, but the
celebration of the core of it which is celebrating life and the freedom to be who
you are has never changed.
Kiss & Def Leppard Appear 8/16 at FMBA,
Tinley Park.
Question: How has the backstage experience changed for you guys over the years?
Paul Stanley: Clearly, there was a time
12 illinoisentertainer.com august 2014
Kelley Simms
Continued from page 6
big step.
Hello My Name
is Tom
a timely opportunity for doing it. And then
IE: How is it to get back into the pop groove?
TB: I was a bit nervous [at first]. If I'm going
to be doing this, then I have to be totally convinced that I'm not only going to enjoy it, but
also engage with the music. You can't just be
going through the motions, so I thought what
I would do was record the songs I wanted to
try out just to try to familiarize myself with all
the parts again and to practice singing them
again. So I did that and I very quickly found
it was like riding a bike- you never really forget. I had to recondition my voice, but I've
been fascinated by the whole process.
Howard Jones got in touch and said he
would very much like me to tour with him, so
we talked it over. Again, it's a big step, but it
got to a stage when three or four people without realizing it just kind of loaded the dice.
It's really only less than six months ago I was
still saying 'never again.' I think also there
was a big psychological component from
moving on from a period of big success with
a pop group where you kind of go into denial
and say "oh, that was then, I don't do that
stuff anymore." Since I've been doing other
musical projects, you kind of play down the
whole importance of the success years and
that takes some coming to terms with. It's a
IE: What accounted for the band breaking so
big in America?
TB: Breaking into America, I think, was a really lucky thing because we happened to have,
first of all, a kind of freak dance hit ["In The