SAN DIEGO — How liberating is it for Gene Simmons to prepare to tour 13 months after playing his final December 2023 farewell concert with Kiss, the band that made him so wealthy in its 50-year run that he boasts of being part of the “1 percent?”

“It’s very liberating,” said the veteran bassist and singer. “I can wear sneakers if I want. I don’t have to fly through the air, or spit fire, or wear 40 pounds of studded leather and seven-inch dragon boots.”

With a reported net worth of $400 million, Simmons, 75, also doesn’t have to work another day in his life. But the man long known by Kiss fans as “The Demon” dismisses the idea of retirement as unthinkable.

“My ego won’t allow it,” said the 6-foot-2 Simmons, whose towering level of self-confidence has long been a matter of public record.

It is unclear how his ego is handling the fact that 17 of the April and May concerts on his 26-date tour with the Gene Simmons Band were abruptly canceled on March 20. The shelved California shows include what would have been the tour-opening date in Anaheim and an April 4 date in Temecula.

No reason has been given for the cancellation of those shows on the tour, which is now scheduled to begin on May 2 in Georgia. A spokesperson for Simmons did not respond to multiple requests from the Union-Tribune to explain why the concerts had been so suddenly shelved.

Typically, only a medical emergency or anemic advance ticket sales would lead to such a drastic move so close to the scheduled start of a tour. However, Christina Vitagliano — who handles Simmons-related VIP concert experiences — assured fans in an online post: “GS is ok; nothing wrong health-wise!”

Simmons has yet to comment on his suddenly truncated tour, or on the March 23 announcement that Kiss will reunite in November for a makeup-free “unmasked” performance in Nevada as part of the Kiss Army Storms Vegas fan club event.

This interview took place March 5, 15 days before the cancellations occurred.

The four-man Gene Simmons Band debuted in 2017, the year before Kiss launched its six-year “End of The Road” farewell tour. The Gene Simmons Band went on hiatus in the fall of 2018 and remained inactive until last April.

The current lineup teams the group’s namesake with drummer/vocalist Brian Tichy and guitarists/vocalists Brent Woods and Jason Walker. Their repertoire leans heavily into the Kiss catalog, replete with such fan favorites as “Deuce,” Cold Gin,” “Calling Dr. Love” and the inevitable “Rock and Roll All Nite.”

But there are also some twists, including cover versions of Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” and “Whole Lotta Love” and Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades.” There’s also a new version of Van Halen’s “House of Pain,” a song Van Halen recorded with Simmons after he offered the then-unknown band a production deal in 1976.

“And we do songs that Kiss never did live, like ‘Spit,’ which I originally titled ‘Sh–,’ ” Simmons said, speaking from one of his Southern California homes (he owns six).

Does he miss Kiss and its many years of playing over-the-top, high-production shows in arenas and stadiums around the world? Apparently not.

“Kiss was such a behemoth,” said Simmons, who was born Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel, four years after the end of World War II. “You had to plan which song got played when because the lights and pyro had to be carefully coordinated. And you had to press the right buttons at the right time to levitate and fly across the stage.

“Kiss traveled on private jets. We had a road crew of 60 people, 20 tractor-trailers, and a partridge in a pear tree. It was like a small city and it took 12 hours just to set up the stage. This band I have now is an entirely different, free-flowing thing. I can literally jump off the stage into the audience, if I want, and bring people from the crowd up on stage to sing ‘Rock and Roll All Nite.’ It’s loosey-goosey. And, of course, if you want to be my roadie ....”

That’s right, you can be Simmons’ “roadie/personal assistant” for a day at each of the remaining stops on his now-trimmed-back tour. You will meet with Gene and his band early in the day to go over the schedule for that night’s show, hang out backstage, have a pre-concert meal with the group, be on stage for the concert, and be introduced to the audience.

Exactly how much will Simmons pay his roadie-for-a-day?

“Excuse me?” he replied. “It’s the other way around.”

Fans must pay a minimum of $12,495 for what is being billed on Simmons’ website as the Ultimate Gene Simmons Experience. For that amount, you can bring along a friend and also receive a Simmons’ “signed rehearsal bass guitar.” The more budget-minded can opt for a Gene Simmons Bass Experience, priced at the comparatively bargain rate of $6,500.

“Anybody who wants to can go to genesimmons.com for all the specifics,” he said.

The Ultimate Gene Simmons Experience will also afford well-heeled fans the opportunity to help with the equipment load-in prior to each concert, in a manner.

In a novel move, Simmons is requiring each venue on his now-shortened tour to provide all the equipment and stage crew members for his performances. In effect, there is no load-in, at least not in any conventional sense.

“It’s like a commando unit; there’s nothing holding us back,” Simmons said. “No trucks, no road crew. It’s just the band and our sound guy, and that’s it.”

Is this a profitable business model?

“That’s never been asked of me, and that’s fairly surprising,” he replied. “Because it goes without saying that it is profitable. Profitable is my middle name: Gene ‘Profitable’ Simmons.”

Exactly how profitable is a matter of record, even discounting the 17 canceled tour dates.

In 2024, Kiss sold the rights to its song catalog for $300 million to Pophouse Entertainment, the same company now working on a a Kiss biopic and a Kiss avatar show. The band’s 74-date “End of the Road” farewell tour grossed a reported $89.8 million by the time it concluded in late 2023, following a lengthy, pandemic-fueled delay.

That’s $28.2 million more than the first Kiss farewell tour grossed in 2000 and 2001. It’s also about $54 million less than the $143.7 million Kiss grossed when Simmons and guitarist/singer Paul Stanley reteamed for its “Alive/World Wide” 1996/1997 reunion tour with the band’s two other original members, lead guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss. (Criss had left the band in 1980; Frehley in 1982.)

Kiss’ first farewell tour was short-lived.

By 2004, Simmons and Stanley were back on the road with drummer Eric Singer and lead guitarist Tommy Thayer, who had stepped aside for the reunion tour that briefly brought Frehley and Criss back in the fold. The lineup with Singer and Thayer remained intact through Kiss’ final performance in late 2003.

The band, which was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 (minus Thayer and Singer), has sold an estimated 100 million albums worldwide. Eager to keep Kiss in the public spotlight until its avatar show debuts in a year or two, on March 22 the band and Pophouse debuted a Kiss streets of New York immersive audio walking tour at kissonline.com.

Timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the band’s “Dressed To Kill” album, the “tour” features exclusive interviews with Simmons, Stanley and Kiss album cover photographer Bob Gruen. The free “tour” can only be accessed via mobile phone. (This year also marks the 50th anniversary of Kiss’ career-making live double-album, “Alive!”)

Also in the works is a five-part Kiss documentary. Simmons spoke about it and other topics with the San Diego Union-Tribune. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Is the Gene Simmons Band a long-term endeavor?

A: You know, we’re taking it a day at a time. The headline is: “We are having a party, and the fans are invited.” We’re playing in all sizes of venues, and we’re doing a cruise next February with a few thousand fans.

Q: Are you just touring now for fun, or do you still have anything left to prove?

A: That’s a good question. I guess that when you are having the time of your life — and there are no managers or record labels to deal with — you do it for yourself and the fans. And to see the fans jumping up onstage and having fun, that’s a real hoot. I don’t think people say the word “hoot” much anymore.

Q: Except in Scotland, perhaps. Was it bittersweet for you to have Kiss come to the end of the road?

A: There’s a five-part documentary we are working on that shows all the heartache and the wonderful camaraderie we had. We could have been born from the same Kiss mother and Kiss father. We had lot of problems with the original members (Criss and Frehley); there were drugs and booze and everything, all the trials and tribulations of being in a band.

But with Eric, Tommy, Paul and myself, it just so happened that no one smoked cigarettes, no one drank, no one did drugs. It’s the same with the Gene Simmons Band. You can’t expect the fans to show up if you are affected by any chemical on stage. They are not there to see somebody throw up on their shoe. You’ve got to love and respect the fans. Without them, I could be (working at a fast-food place) asking the next person in line: “Would you like some fries with that?” And that’s OK, too.

Q: My parents, like yours, were born and raised in Hungary before immigrating to the United States. You were born in Israel and moved to New York with your mother when you were 8 years old. How important was cultural assimilation for you as a Jewish immigrant in this country at such an early age?

A: Oh, I wanted to be American right away. One of the first things I saw after we moved here when I was young was a guy flying through the air with a cape, Superman. I had never imagined anything like that — superheroes — and all that was created here in this country. All the superheroes and all of the Hollywood film studios were created by my people; literally, the entire movie industry, agents, managers and all the comic books. Even Superman and Batman were created by Jews. It is strange, isn’t it? But maybe that’s what America is all about, the idea that you can have an alter-ego. You’re American, but also African-American or Pakistani-American. But first and foremost, you’re American.

Q: How concerned are you about the current wave of antisemitism and anti-Palestinianism here and in other parts of the world?

A: It’s generational and political. It will pass. My mother was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. This world is much better now than it was then, and it will continue to get better. I am a firm believer mankind will come out of the darkness. We’re going through some bad stuff. There are some (awful things) going on around the world, and it’s heartbreaking. But there are no more world wars. In World War II, tens of millions of people died, so it’s much better now.

Q: Before Kiss, you were a New York City public school teacher in Spanish Harlem. What are the biggest lessons you learned from doing that?

A: I learned that the mountain ain’t coming to you, Mohammed, you’ve got to go to it. When you have 12-year-old kids in Spanish Harlem and try to get them to read about pasty-faced Jane Austen, they can’t relate to that. You can’t force young people if they’re not interested. So, I brought in Spider-Man comics to get them excited about reading and discussing ideas. I got in deep trouble because Spider-Man comics were not in the syllabus. It was not approved. But I didn’t care. And I didn’t last long as a teacher, of course, because the band (Kiss) exploded nationwide within six months of forming, so I had to quit teaching.

Q: Isn’t there a big parallel between engaging kids in a classroom and an audience at a concert?

A: That’s exactly right. As soon as you get on stage, it’s show business whether you’re in a band, are a politician, or the current president giving the State of the Union on TV. I don’t care what political party you subscribe to, it’s show biz. You either have people dying to hear what you are about to say, whether they like it or not, or — if you are boring — game over. And that includes teachers, ministers, or people who perform a stage show. The message may be important, but if you don’t know how to deliver that message, people don’t care. So, whether you are in band, or are the president, or a teacher, your job is to hold people’s attention.

_______

©2025 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.