KISS Frontman: My Bandmates Were Anti-Semites

Paul Stanley skewers old band members in new memoir
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 7, 2014 6:10 PM CDT
KISS Frontman: My Bandmates Were Anti-Semites
This Feb. 10, 2013 file photo shows Paul Stanley from the band KISS at a Grammy Party hosted by Lucian Grainge in Los Angeles.   (Photo by Todd Williamson/Invision/AP, File)

Surprise surprise, KISS frontman Paul Stanley's new memoir includes dirt on his old bandmates—some of which go beyond the typical rock 'n' roll complaints, the New York Post reports. In Face the Music: A Life Exposed, due out tomorrow, Stanley says original KISS members Peter Criss and Ace Frehley were anti-Semitic, and Criss owned Nazi memorabilia. The two "felt powerless and impotent" when faced with the creative drive of Stanley and bassist Gene Simmons, Stanley writes, so they "tried to sabotage the band—which, as they saw it, was unfairly manipulated by [us] money-grubbing Jews."

In the book, Stanley says Simmons was "very overweight ... wearing overalls and sandals and looked like something from Hee Haw" when they met. Stanley also dismisses Simmons' late reputation as a "marketing genius," saying band members had no input in various KISS-branded products, from condoms to caskets. "He was no marketing genius. He just took credit for things." But Stanley, 62, reveals his own warts too—like a decades-long battle with low self-esteem. "For many years when I first put this makeup on, I had a sense of another person coming out," he writes. "The insecure, incomplete kid ... suddenly got painted away, and that other guy came out." (More antisemitism stories.)

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