Kiss of death for all who tried to follow legends

Jewish Telegraph, June 2008

NOW, I admit that I have never organised a three-day long rock music festival.
In fact, I have never organised any kind of music festival. But surely, it is logical to have the world’s greatest group closing the festival and not just headlining the first night.
There was no way the rest of the Download Festival could follow Kiss’s opening night finale.
They simply blew away the 60,000+ punters at Donington Park with the greatest show ever seen at the famous venue.
It is 12 years since they last played there — when it was known as Monsters of Rock — but this time they upped the ante to celebrate their 35th anniversary in style.
Before the show, Kiss had given a press conference. I arrived 40 minutes early to ensure I had a good view, but by the time the band appeared — in full make-up and costumes — there was not one square inch of free space.
It takes a lot to get me star-struck, but the sight of Gene Simmons standing within six feet of me took my breath away.
Throughout the press conference, he gurned away for the cameras, flicking his infamous tongue and coming out with one-liners, while it was left to fellow founding member Paul Stanley to answer the questions.
How would the group mark its 40th anniversary in five years?
“We have these amazing wheelchairs. They are incredible. Fire comes out of them,” the former Stanley Eisen said.
But on the band recording any new material, Israeli-born Gene was pretty scathing.
“The record industry is dead. It’s six feet under ground,” the artist formerly knows as Chaim Witz slammed.
“Unfortunately the fans have done this. They decided to download and file share. There is no record industry around. We are going to wait until everybody settles down and becomes civilised. As soon as the record industry pops its head, we’ll record new material.”
Paul added: “The truth is, we have no plans to record and the reason we don’t record is because any classic band that hits the road, the last thing you really want to hear is their new songs.
“Everybody says go out and do a new album. But if you put on a live DVD of any classic band, turn off the sound and I’ll tell you when they are playing a new song, it’s when everybody sits down.
“If you play a new song it means you can’t play a classic one. Tell me, what’s the point.”
The pair — who were joined at the conference by drummer Eric Singer and guitarist Tommy Thayer — also vowed never to stop what they are doing.
Bassist Gene boasted: “We have the time of our lives. We get to wear more make up, higher heels than your mommy does.
“We get to go up on stage and blow up s***. We don’t have to explain what our lyrics mean. We have the best time in the world.
“If I was given Aladdin’s lamp and told rub this, you can become a member of any band, guess which band I’d want to be in? Right here baby, the hottest band in the world, Kiss.”
And Paul was just as forthright: “Trends come, fashions come. The one thing that remains constant is Kiss, we don’t go away.”
He added that they took their physical fitness seriously, saying: “Nobody wants to see a fat guy in tights. We take a lot of pride in what we do before we hit the road.
“We have to live up to everything we’ve done in the past. The last thing we are going to do is disappoint people. We not only want to be as good as we’ve been, we want to be better.
“We don’t want to find out we haven’t trained hard enough when we get in the ring with the heavyweight champ. We go for knockouts every night.”
And they truly did knockout the crowd with their show, in which every song was a bona fide rock classic.
Obviously, in two hours they could not satisfy every wish list, although they could have crammed in a few more songs if they had ditched the audience participation section and cut down on the 1980’s style solos.
But they are minor complaints for this spectacular which showed why Kiss can never be beaten.
And to make it an even better day, Kiss announced that they will be returning to the UK next year for a full tour.
Earlier in the day David Draiman had the Donington crowd eating out of his hand.
The Disturbed frontman, who almost became a rabbi, led the audience in religious fervour, performing old songs alongside ones from new album Indestructible . . . and a surprisingly good cover of Genesis’ Land of Confusion.
The festival was brought to a close by Welsh rock band Lostprophets, featuring drummer Ilan Rubin. They performed a number of tracks from their forthcoming album and admitted that they were a controversial choice of headliner.
Apart from Kiss, my personal highlight of the event was The Subways, one of the UK’s best groups. And it certainly whetted my appetite for their forthcoming second album, All or Nothing.
Download is much more than just a rock festival. There is so much going on. As well as the three music stages, there were stunt motorbike displays, a fairground, market stalls and games arcades.
I’m already counting the days until next year’s extravanganza — although organisers are going to have their work cut out finding a better headlining group than Kiss.