synopsis of gene's book by mr snackwell from kissfaq.com
Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 1:35 am
it gave me a chuckle.........
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with Me, and it was Me. And I looked upon Myself, and I saw that I was good. I had a Davy Crockett hat.
I was born in Haifa, Israel, which was known as New York City between the years 1974 and 1985. My mother was a strong-willed, hard-working, knock-kneed little woman who had survived the German-Nazi-Christian-Nazi-German concentration camps. She taught me to never trust a Gentile, but to watch what you say about them on national television, just in case.
When I was very young, my mother and I caught my father cheating with a Blond Woman. Their marriage ended immediately. Decades later, a psychotherapist told me that being trapped between my mother and the Blond Woman had instilled in me a crippling, lifelong compulsion to simultaneously please and dominate women. As I listened to this therapist talk, I could tell she was a highly educated professional with a sincere desire to see me grow and heal as a human being. So I fucked her.
My mother and I moved to America, where I was suddenly immersed in an exciting new culture. I loved the TV shows, horror movies and twist records. I also took up running, at the suggestion of the many non-Jewish children in my neighborhood. I never had many friends, especially after I invited one playmate over after school and he insisted on creasing my comic books as he read, them, decimating their resale value. That experience taught me that human companionship can really bust your bottom line. It’s a lesson that has served me well to this very day.
But my life really changed when I saw Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The minute they started playing, the room was filled with a piercing, high-pitched whine, and I knew that either every girl in the audience had started screaming or my training bra was stuck in the washer. It was the former.
After that, you couldn’t stop me. I was bound and determined to be the biggest rock star who ever lived. By the late sixties, I felt I was well on my way, thanks to the 1,000-odd songs I had written comparing my relatives to flotation devices.
The turning point was meeting my creative partner, Paul Stanley. Right away, I could tell Paul was a serious, sensitive artist. He was an inveterate dreamer who believed his body was enveloped in a bright purple aura. He had highly expressive hands. He enjoyed learning about table wines, shopping for Oriental rugs and procuring frilly blouses from ladies’ boutiques. He was an avid reader of “Mary Worth,” and his favorite expression was “EEK! A mouthe!” But he was absolutely not gay, and I’m offended you even implied it.
The final pieces in the puzzle fell into place when we hired Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, two musicians who were desperate to make it and never did anything of consequence. What counted was that we all had the same vision. We wanted to form the band we ourselves had always wanted to see, and the marketing empire we had always wanted to bend us over a sink.
Our hard work paid off. Within just a few years, the prestigious Gallup organization had ranked us Number One in the category Favorite Recording Act, Doomsday Cult or Other Passing Fad.
Yet all was not well in paradise. Ace and Peter kept jeopardizing our hard-earned success by numbing themselves with chemicals and being Gentile. It all came to a head while we were filming our first movie, “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park” (which would be nominated for the prestigious Golden Globe in the category Best Cautionary Tale, Inadvertent Comedy or “Musical”). Ace and Peter said they had had enough and wanted to leave the band. Paul and I made a counteroffer. They accepted, which is how we made history by becoming the first band to release four solo albums on the same day, and to take them back in the same week.
Around this time, I had started living with Cher. I loved her truly and deeply; she was only the second brunette after Mom to steal my heart. Our relationship was so important to me that I promised I would honor it by only stuffing my sausage into blondes and redheads from now on. I could tell Cher was touched by that show of commitment, which she knew didn’t come easy to me. But eventually we drifted apart, as is so common at our level of show business.
As KISS entered the ’80s, we had to make some big changes to stay on top. We finally let go of Ace and Peter. And we took off the makeup – a wise decision that gave us a new lease on life, enabling us to compete with commercial juggernauts like Trixter.
We were doing so well that I had 10 months out of every year to pursue other projects. I appeared in movies alongside respected actors like John Stamos. I created my own record label, which Billboard said stuck to the vinyl better than any other brand on the market. I founded my own management company to handle the careers of other performers, many of whom were still living at the time. Life was good.
At the same time, my relationship with Paul changed. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that we finally recognized it for what it was. It’s interesting that people sometimes assume Paul and I were the closest friends in the band, simply because that’s what we told reporters for 30 years. In reality, you couldn’t find two people who are more different. I like cake; he only likes the frosting. I’m a big fan of Barnes; he only cares about Noble. I want to sleep with every woman I meet; he wants to borrow their pumps.
There you go again.
In the mid-’80s, I settled into a long-term relationship with Shannon Tweed, a former nude model and popular Hollywood concubine whose work ethic matched my own. Over the years, we have raised two children together, Nicholas Adam Tweed-Simmons and Sophie Simmons Tweed-Polyester. I have tried to raise them as well as my mother raised me, but it isn’t always easy. They’re half-Gentile, so I’ve taught them to never honor a contract they signed with their non-dominant hand.
Throughout the ’80s, whenever I was on the road or in the recording studio without Ace and Peter, I noticed that KISS was now stress-free – as our drummer, Eric Carr, proved by locking himself in his hotel room with the lights out until he caught the cancer and died. Honestly, had either of the two addicts been around to distract us with their shenanigans, I don’t know how Paul and I even could have gotten through the funeral.
By the dawn of the ’90s, we had made KISS a very big international band, topping the charts in Trinidad/Tobago and U.S.-occupied Guam. We were firing on all cylinders. So we let go of everybody we were working with and rehired Ace and Peter for a massive five-year tour. It’s not worth discussing why we did it, since you’re not qualified to have an opinion. You’re also not entitled to have that twenty in your back pocket, or that meatball on your plate that I’ve been eyeing for the last three paragraphs. NOM NOM NOM!
Fans sometimes think I’m lying when I say the reunion was a nightmare, or torture. And they’re right. Actually, it was a nightmare about torture. We had very clearly laid out all the terms of the deal: No drugs. No lateness. No motor cars. Not a single luxury. We explained that we would pull the plug if Ace or Peter violated any one of those rules.
So of course, they immediately violated all of them. For five years, we had to keep reminding them we would pull the plug if their behavior didn’t improve. But some people just keep doing the same thing over and over again and never learn their lesson.
Complicating matters even further, Ace and Peter had never been very financially sophisticated. “Where’s my check?” they would ask constantly, as if money were something that appeared miraculously in your hand after you had worked for an agreed-upon number of hours. I sometimes wondered if they had any idea what our nation’s court system is for.
For the second time, we had to say goodbye to Ace and Peter. Today, KISS soldiers on with two younger, hungrier, more dependable musicians whose names happen to escape me at the moment. We’re a bigger band than ever, playing in front of adoring crowds at open-air events honoring our nation’s brave livestock.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that, come what may, KISS will endure – just maybe not in the form you’d expect. It could be a Broadway musical, or a traveling exhibit, or an inert gas. What counts is that I did it: I made it to the top. Every day above ground is a good day, and every day above sea level fucking rocks.
Thank you, America, for making an immigrant boy’s dream come true. Hugs to Guam.
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with Me, and it was Me. And I looked upon Myself, and I saw that I was good. I had a Davy Crockett hat.
I was born in Haifa, Israel, which was known as New York City between the years 1974 and 1985. My mother was a strong-willed, hard-working, knock-kneed little woman who had survived the German-Nazi-Christian-Nazi-German concentration camps. She taught me to never trust a Gentile, but to watch what you say about them on national television, just in case.
When I was very young, my mother and I caught my father cheating with a Blond Woman. Their marriage ended immediately. Decades later, a psychotherapist told me that being trapped between my mother and the Blond Woman had instilled in me a crippling, lifelong compulsion to simultaneously please and dominate women. As I listened to this therapist talk, I could tell she was a highly educated professional with a sincere desire to see me grow and heal as a human being. So I fucked her.
My mother and I moved to America, where I was suddenly immersed in an exciting new culture. I loved the TV shows, horror movies and twist records. I also took up running, at the suggestion of the many non-Jewish children in my neighborhood. I never had many friends, especially after I invited one playmate over after school and he insisted on creasing my comic books as he read, them, decimating their resale value. That experience taught me that human companionship can really bust your bottom line. It’s a lesson that has served me well to this very day.
But my life really changed when I saw Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The minute they started playing, the room was filled with a piercing, high-pitched whine, and I knew that either every girl in the audience had started screaming or my training bra was stuck in the washer. It was the former.
After that, you couldn’t stop me. I was bound and determined to be the biggest rock star who ever lived. By the late sixties, I felt I was well on my way, thanks to the 1,000-odd songs I had written comparing my relatives to flotation devices.
The turning point was meeting my creative partner, Paul Stanley. Right away, I could tell Paul was a serious, sensitive artist. He was an inveterate dreamer who believed his body was enveloped in a bright purple aura. He had highly expressive hands. He enjoyed learning about table wines, shopping for Oriental rugs and procuring frilly blouses from ladies’ boutiques. He was an avid reader of “Mary Worth,” and his favorite expression was “EEK! A mouthe!” But he was absolutely not gay, and I’m offended you even implied it.
The final pieces in the puzzle fell into place when we hired Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, two musicians who were desperate to make it and never did anything of consequence. What counted was that we all had the same vision. We wanted to form the band we ourselves had always wanted to see, and the marketing empire we had always wanted to bend us over a sink.
Our hard work paid off. Within just a few years, the prestigious Gallup organization had ranked us Number One in the category Favorite Recording Act, Doomsday Cult or Other Passing Fad.
Yet all was not well in paradise. Ace and Peter kept jeopardizing our hard-earned success by numbing themselves with chemicals and being Gentile. It all came to a head while we were filming our first movie, “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park” (which would be nominated for the prestigious Golden Globe in the category Best Cautionary Tale, Inadvertent Comedy or “Musical”). Ace and Peter said they had had enough and wanted to leave the band. Paul and I made a counteroffer. They accepted, which is how we made history by becoming the first band to release four solo albums on the same day, and to take them back in the same week.
Around this time, I had started living with Cher. I loved her truly and deeply; she was only the second brunette after Mom to steal my heart. Our relationship was so important to me that I promised I would honor it by only stuffing my sausage into blondes and redheads from now on. I could tell Cher was touched by that show of commitment, which she knew didn’t come easy to me. But eventually we drifted apart, as is so common at our level of show business.
As KISS entered the ’80s, we had to make some big changes to stay on top. We finally let go of Ace and Peter. And we took off the makeup – a wise decision that gave us a new lease on life, enabling us to compete with commercial juggernauts like Trixter.
We were doing so well that I had 10 months out of every year to pursue other projects. I appeared in movies alongside respected actors like John Stamos. I created my own record label, which Billboard said stuck to the vinyl better than any other brand on the market. I founded my own management company to handle the careers of other performers, many of whom were still living at the time. Life was good.
At the same time, my relationship with Paul changed. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that we finally recognized it for what it was. It’s interesting that people sometimes assume Paul and I were the closest friends in the band, simply because that’s what we told reporters for 30 years. In reality, you couldn’t find two people who are more different. I like cake; he only likes the frosting. I’m a big fan of Barnes; he only cares about Noble. I want to sleep with every woman I meet; he wants to borrow their pumps.
There you go again.
In the mid-’80s, I settled into a long-term relationship with Shannon Tweed, a former nude model and popular Hollywood concubine whose work ethic matched my own. Over the years, we have raised two children together, Nicholas Adam Tweed-Simmons and Sophie Simmons Tweed-Polyester. I have tried to raise them as well as my mother raised me, but it isn’t always easy. They’re half-Gentile, so I’ve taught them to never honor a contract they signed with their non-dominant hand.
Throughout the ’80s, whenever I was on the road or in the recording studio without Ace and Peter, I noticed that KISS was now stress-free – as our drummer, Eric Carr, proved by locking himself in his hotel room with the lights out until he caught the cancer and died. Honestly, had either of the two addicts been around to distract us with their shenanigans, I don’t know how Paul and I even could have gotten through the funeral.
By the dawn of the ’90s, we had made KISS a very big international band, topping the charts in Trinidad/Tobago and U.S.-occupied Guam. We were firing on all cylinders. So we let go of everybody we were working with and rehired Ace and Peter for a massive five-year tour. It’s not worth discussing why we did it, since you’re not qualified to have an opinion. You’re also not entitled to have that twenty in your back pocket, or that meatball on your plate that I’ve been eyeing for the last three paragraphs. NOM NOM NOM!
Fans sometimes think I’m lying when I say the reunion was a nightmare, or torture. And they’re right. Actually, it was a nightmare about torture. We had very clearly laid out all the terms of the deal: No drugs. No lateness. No motor cars. Not a single luxury. We explained that we would pull the plug if Ace or Peter violated any one of those rules.
So of course, they immediately violated all of them. For five years, we had to keep reminding them we would pull the plug if their behavior didn’t improve. But some people just keep doing the same thing over and over again and never learn their lesson.
Complicating matters even further, Ace and Peter had never been very financially sophisticated. “Where’s my check?” they would ask constantly, as if money were something that appeared miraculously in your hand after you had worked for an agreed-upon number of hours. I sometimes wondered if they had any idea what our nation’s court system is for.
For the second time, we had to say goodbye to Ace and Peter. Today, KISS soldiers on with two younger, hungrier, more dependable musicians whose names happen to escape me at the moment. We’re a bigger band than ever, playing in front of adoring crowds at open-air events honoring our nation’s brave livestock.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that, come what may, KISS will endure – just maybe not in the form you’d expect. It could be a Broadway musical, or a traveling exhibit, or an inert gas. What counts is that I did it: I made it to the top. Every day above ground is a good day, and every day above sea level fucking rocks.
Thank you, America, for making an immigrant boy’s dream come true. Hugs to Guam.
