When Kiss played their final show on December 2, 2023, at Madison Square Garden, it was the closing chapter of a 50-year cultural phenomenon. Speaking recently with producer Rick Rubin on his Tetragrammaton podcast, Gene Simmons opened up about that emotional night and what comes next — both for the band and for music itself.
“We took a look at this idea of we were born in New York City, 10 East 23rd Street, 10 blocks down — 10 — from 33rd Street, Madison Square Garden,” Simmons recalled. “So we decided, ‘Let’s finish off Christmas’ or Kissmass, ’50 years after the birth of the band 10 blocks down. Let’s do it at New York and only do one show and film it and all that stuff, and invite our friends. It’ll be like a celebration.’”
The band eventually agreed to do a second show after some convincing from management and the film crew. Simmons described the events surrounding the final performances as nothing short of surreal.
“We could have been there for a week or 10 days… So we did December 1, December 2 in New York. But by the way, like all things Kiss, the Empire State Building lit up with our faces on it. There were 800 New York City cabs wrapped around with Kiss imagery. If you went into the subway and you got a subway ticket, you had our faces on the subways. You went to get a pizza, the outside of the pizza boxes, [there] were our faces in your face. There were Kiss pop-up shops. Basically, if you started a new religion and called it Kisstianity, that’s what was going on. It was like a total takeover…”
He continued, “We just couldn’t believe it. There were people walking around the streets of New York during the daytime because fans flew in from around the world — Japanese fans and all that stuff — during the daytime in full makeup. We’d be going to the Empire State Building… and on the way there we were seeing Kiss people on the streets dressing early to go to the show.”
Reflecting on the final performance, Simmons described it as “very emotional,” a mix of pride and sadness. Not unlike the end of a relationship, the moment was bittersweet — especially when he spoke about the absence of original bandmates Ace Frehley and Peter Criss.
“Pride, but also a little sad because… People who have been married, I’m guessing, a few times, but remember when it was real love and that magic of the thing, if it doesn’t last, there’s a sadness there,” Simmons said. “Sometimes it’s drugs and alcohol, sometimes they just go apart. But when it was great, it’s sad because not everybody survives life. And I’m still sad about Ace and Peter, who even today can’t enjoy the fruits of their labor. They were equally as important as Paul Stanley and myself in the formation of the band and those first few years — there’s no question about it. It was a four-wheel-drive vehicle. And then the air started coming out of two of the wheels…”
Simmons recounted that even Ace, at one point, voted to remove Peter due to his declining drumming abilities. Later, Ace himself chose to leave despite offers to stay on in the band while pursuing a solo career.
“When it was time for Peter to go, Ace voted, ‘No, he’s gotta go. He can’t play the drums anymore.’ And then Ace, using his words, walked out of Kiss. Even though we said, ‘You can stay in Kiss. Have a solo career. We don’t want a penny of it. Have your cake and eat it too.’ And he said to my face, ‘No, I can’t stay in the band.’ He said it in print, ‘If I do another tour, I’m gonna kill myself.’ That’s verbatim. And I didn’t understand what that meant. I didn’t wanna get into it. And then he said, ‘You watch. I’m gonna sell 10 million records.’ I can’t respond to that. I don’t know what that meant. Logically — stay in the band, have your cake and eat it too.”
The story of Kiss, however, doesn’t end at the Garden. Simmons revealed that the band has partnered with Pophouse Entertainment to create an avatar-based show using the same technology developed for Abba’s Voyage experience in London. The virtual versions of Kiss were designed by none other than Industrial Light & Magic, and Simmons teased a major leap in immersive concert tech.
“The very end of both of those final Kiss shows — we had made a deal with a company called Pophouse who bought Abba rights and put on this avatar Abba show in London, which has got millions of people going,” Simmons explained. “And whatever technology you saw there is now primitive. They are investing untold amounts. I don’t wanna say anything more than — you know what virtual reality is when you put those glasses on, and you would swear your life that the ground just opened up and you have a chasm and you’re falling and free fall, and you have this sense that what you’re seeing is real. And by the way, all around you, no matter where you look — up, down — your sense of reality. Now imagine that without glasses. And I’ve seen it…”
He concluded with a nod to the inevitable evolution of entertainment: “So in a lot of ways entertainment itself and life itself is changing dramatically with A.I. and technology and all this stuff. There will still be room for live bands playing live with the blues and all that — there’s no substitute for that — but in other areas, the sky’s the limit. No limit.”
