Gene Simmons joins Ben Shapiro to discuss his "free spirit" political stance, noting that while he disagrees with some views, he respects the office of the President despite personal objections to Donald Trump. Simmons recounts his Haifa childhood as a Holocaust survivor's son, which fueled his immigration to New York and subsequent inspiration from The Beatles' Ed Sullivan Show debut. He details how KISS achieved global fame through theatrical marketing rather than musical credibility, evolving rock from Chuck Berry to EDM while emphasizing pragmatism over romance in both business and life. Ultimately, the conversation highlights how entertainment can transcend political divides by prioritizing joy and respect for institutions. [Automatically generated summary]
And then one day, I can't remember who, said, hey, let's go downstairs to Woolworth and bought makeup and black lipstick and red lipstick and decided to put on makeup.
If you ask people on the street, just a close-up of Teddy Roosevelt on the You know, Mount Rushmore.
Who's that?
I have no idea.
But as soon as you show those faces, they go, oh yeah, kiss.
Even if you hate the band.
And I'm talking Africa, Southeast Asia, anywhere you go.
It doesn't mean it's the best band.
It just means that the imagery connected in ways No other band connected.
Gene Simmons is a rock and roll legend, best known as the charismatic bassist and frontman of KISS. With a larger-than-life persona theatrical concert style and signature face paint, Simmons and KISS revolutionized rock in the 1970s and 80s with hits like I Was Made For Lovin' You and Rock and Roll All Night.
Born in Haifa, Israel, Simmons immigrated to New York City with his mother as a young boy and was inspired to become a performer after seeing The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.
With a knack for marketing and a love of music, Simmons created his demon persona to make Kiss a massive success.
44 albums later and at 100 million records sold, the band just finished their farewell tour in 2023.
Beyond his musical career, Gene Simmons has leveraged his stage personality into a career as an entrepreneur, appearing on reality television and launching a successful merchandising empire.
In today's episode, Gene tells the story of his family's persecution and immigration to the United States, how his upbringing shaped his personal philosophy, and his journey to becoming an iconic rock star.
He also shares the reason for his deep American patriotism as well as a few hard-learned lessons about love.
Gene Simmons' impact on American music and culture is undeniable.
Don't miss the legendary Gene Simmons on this episode of the Sunday Special.
Well, I think it's fair to say that I'm completely unqualified in the body politic, especially worldwide body politic, because our perceptions, perhaps yours, mine, and The rest of the populace is based on what we see, hear, and feel emotionally from social media.
Having said that, why anybody would care what I have to say about anything other than the fact that I stick my tongue out for a living?
By the way, I would have done that for you right away, but the floor is a little dirty.
So I think it's fair to say that the powerful and attractive man you see before you Votes on issues rather than political parties or personalities.
So, by the way, some of the things you've said I completely disagree with, and other things just make sense to me.
And that's what I highly recommend to the rest of the populace of this third stone from the sun.
Which is to say that life gives you a menu and you're lucky and blessed to be living in a free society.
Pick and choose the items that make sense for you.
You may not be changing lots of stuff, but at least you'll be voting your conscience.
So am I essential?
I don't like labels because they limit who and what you are.
A free spirit generally...
Very liberal in terms of humanism.
Generally speaking, love thy neighbor as thyself.
Most of the time.
I don't treat Nazis the same way as I would perhaps you.
You know, love thy name.
You know, don't...
What's that phrase?
Do unto others what they would unto you.
In other words, don't do the stuff you think will hurt.
Well, that also generally applies.
A sadomasochist might slap you in the face, and I'm going, what are you doing that for?
He goes, well, I'm a sadomasochist.
I like that.
I thought you'd like it too.
So we can apply...
Everything's just general.
There's always an exception to it.
So the short answer, although...
You've opened up a can of worms because you can tell I love the sound of my own voice, is that I respond to issues, mull them over, and sometimes I think it makes all the sense in the world to build a wall Around any sovereign state,
and it's interesting to note, by the way, that not too long ago, the Pope, who I'm a big fan of, I think is good for humanity, and generally speaking, provides uplifting messages, said, and I'm almost quoting, that building a wall, especially between America and Mexico, is not humane.
It's not good.
It's not nice and all that stuff.
Except for the fact that the Vatican has a massive wall around itself.
So, I believe good fences make good neighbors.
And you're talking to an immigrant, a legal immigrant.
I know I don't look Swiss.
I was born in Israel.
And in a lot of ways, I... Consider myself American.
You know, this idea of Jewish American or Israeli American or African American.
So, you know, get used to it.
You're American if you love it.
And I should probably stop.
Otherwise, it's going to be the Gene Simmons show, not the Ben.
By the way, you know what?
You know, I speak Hebrew, Hungarian, German, English, a few other languages.
So, I want to talk to you a little bit about the sort of heterodox politics that you described, because it used to be in the United States that that was sort of considered the norm, is that you could hold a wide variety of views, sometimes in conflict with one another, that heterodoxy was sort of the way of the world.
That is the way that you approached political issues.
It wasn't straight-line partisan.
You could hold by one party.
You could hold by the other party.
You could have a mix of the two.
And now it seems as though all the heterodoxy seems to have moved to one side of the aisle.
It's one of the bizarre...
Things that sort of happening in American politics today.
If you look at the left side of the aisle, there's not a lot of ideological diversity.
If you look to, for example, the Trump coalition, you have people who disagree on pretty much every issue that it's possible to disagree on.
You have pro-choicers and pro-lifers inside the Trump coalition.
You have people who are pro-big government and pro-small government.
You have people who are interventionist and isolationist.
All inside sort of the same coalition.
And I wonder how much of that has to do, you think, with, say, Donald Trump.
And how much do you think that has to do with the sort of increasingly censorious nature of the left?
I would say that the extreme left has taken over the left, and the extreme right has taken over the right.
And the vast majority of us, which is why the polls got it wrong again, and they will continue to get it, because the big swath, that big middle, Don't really want to get into arguments and stuff.
They just want to do what the founding fathers in America designed.
When we used to have curtains and you voted, you vote your conscience and it's nobody's damn business who you're voting for.
Nowadays, families get split down the middle when the kids vote one way and dad votes another way.
But I think it's a wake-up call for everybody.
It's twofold.
One is...
Have a sense of humor.
You know, just laugh a little bit.
You're not gonna die tomorrow.
It's gonna be okay.
Two, it bears noting that no matter how extreme somebody's views are in America to you, in the same way that American currency has two completely different parts that don't resemble each other, it's their America as well.
Certainly as well as yours.
So we can agree to disagree And I would prefer to have conversations that don't start off politically and find out what makes us, you know, Americans, which is, hey, you like burgers?
I love them.
And do you like, you know, find the stuff that you go to.
When you have a camera that goes across a football field or a baseball field or any public thing, you'll find people of all kinds of denominations, races, political views, and all that stuff.
Everybody's allowed to be in that game, or do you have to sign in and say, Are you a Republican?
Are you a Trumpian?
Are you a thisian?
Are you a thatian?
Mostly it's Armenians that have the IAN. Or, north or south, depends.
It could be a YAN. I'm here with life lessons, Ben.
So, I would recommend some of my best friends are toe-the-line The cult of personality, basically.
From step one to step ten, whatever our current president says, they fall in line with.
And I'm kind of in the middle.
I'm Gladys president.
My crypto holdings in the millions are doing very well, thank you.
I think it bears noting, and most people don't know this, is that our current president, and I think it bears noting that before he became a political animal, because once you become a politician, your tail grows and your fangs come out and it's adversarial stuff.
That's what it's all about.
He was actually a big supporter of Democrats.
And Bill and Hillary Clinton went to his wedding.
And they were pals.
And if you take a look at when Barbara and the original cast of The View were on and Donald Trump came on, kissy kissy, hug hug, they loved him.
Even Whoopi.
I knew Whoopi a little bit.
So, I think people have a mistaken sense of what the body politic is all about.
So, I would recommend everybody start off with, before, you can easily list what you don't like about somebody.
I don't like what Trump said here, I don't like what, well, first of all, Use the word president, because if you don't like the person in office, at least respect the office he was elected to.
He is President Trump.
If you don't like it, next time vote for somebody else.
That's democracy.
So find good things to say about Trump.
He's not a Nazi.
My mother was a concentration camp survivor of Nazi Germany.
The rest of our family wiped out.
I know what a Nazi is.
He's not a Nazi.
It may not align with your version of what it is to be liberal and stuff, but maybe I don't either.
And trust me, I'm not a Nazi.
His children, well, none of them smoke, drink, get high, any of that stuff.
Neither do I. I've never been high, never been drunk, never smoked cigarettes.
That's a pretty good indication.
If you come to Hollywood, the most liberal, most progressive folks have really messed up kids.
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So, as you mentioned there, you know President Trump.
Well, he had a kind of a take-no-prisoners attitude.
I know the guy who created the show, Mark Burnett, who early on, I'm sure, realized it's difficult to get a tiger in a cage.
Okay, now behave.
Now you're in the middle of a cage.
He's a tiger.
Those are the stripes on the animal.
So he basically said what he wanted to say.
And he was kind enough.
I had a roast where all kinds of comedians cut me a new one.
And he was kind enough, you know, to send his five or ten jokes that made fun of me.
Look, at the end of the day, if you didn't know somebody and they didn't talk about politics, you'd have no problem sitting down because you probably recognize The human part of that.
And I would urge everybody to, when you first meet somebody, it's not a litmus test.
Don't start talking about, do you want to transition?
And yours truly, I'm an only child for my mother, who has always been my hero, my moral compass.
Without her, I would have veered right into darkness.
So by the time I was seven...
My mother found herself having to get up at the crack of dawn and working six days a week from 7 a.m.
until 7 p.m.
at night.
And Israel, in those early days, we didn't have an infrastructure.
You'd go once a week down to the...
A place where the government officials are and they give you a newspaper that's cut out and you get a slab of butter.
And I remember this.
With the print, you know, falling off onto the food, you get bread, a slab of meat and so on.
And that was supposed to, you know, some other stuff, fruits, vegetables, that was supposed to last you for a week.
There were no paved roads or anything.
I never saw a television set, never heard of it.
We didn't have a radio.
There was an outhouse, literally a hole outside the front door.
We had a one-bedroom, I remember as a kid, and there was a big hole right above the, well, the living room was the bedroom, was the kitchen.
You know, the kitchen was over there.
It was just a sink.
There was no refrigerator.
There was an icebox.
Once a week you'd get ice and that was it.
I know it sounds like another century, but most new countries start that way.
And when we...
My mother had two brothers who escaped Nazi Germany and all that before World War II and succeeded.
My uncle George, my mother's brother, became a...
Periodontosis, it's a big word.
Basically, he made bridges, fake teeth.
I have to tell you, one of the first impressions when we landed with El Al Airlines.
We got out, and I think it must have been close to winter, because there was a big billboard, and there was Santa Claus, who I'd never heard of before.
I never heard of Jesus or Santa Claus, any of that.
And he's sort of leaning back, holding a cigarette over here.
And in the background, I'll never forget this, there were reindeer over there with the chariot or whatever they pull.
And he's like that, smiling with the big beard.
You know, all I knew was, oh, that's a rabbi.
That rabbi is smoking a cigarette.
And I didn't know that.
And then when we came to my Aunt Magda's house, the wife of my mother's brother, Larry, who, bless him, had his own bakery and made a small fortune.
And my waistline is proof of that.
And I want to tell you that I saw my first television set at Aunt Magda's house.
And it must have been at the right time in the afternoon.
They turned it on, and I had a spoon in a schmucker's jar, and I was eating the jam because I'd never tasted anything like that in my life.
And both my aunt and my mom were laughing, tears and everything.
I never saw a refrigerator.
I know this all sounds like...
I never saw a fridge.
I said, you know, Hungarian, because my Aunt Magda spoke Hungarian, not Hebrew.
Mios!
Mios!
You know, like, I want a little bit of that.
Can I taste it?
And she said, of course.
And she gave me a spoon, expecting me to just take a little bit.
And I put a little bit in my mouth.
And I thought, she said, sure, you can have that.
So, you know, I started eating that.
And they turned on the television.
And I put down the jar because what I saw was a guy flying through the air with a cape.
I'll never forget that.
And I, no matter how good this was, I... What is that?
You know, look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane.
This amazing land where you had movies and images and people flying through the air and big buildings.
I was afraid, I swear to you, I was afraid to cross the street at my Aunt Magnus' house because there were cars going by.
I always had a job delivering newspapers, working at a butcher store, and just, you know, always worked.
Even when I was six years old in Israel, picking cactus fruit and selling it with Shlomo, my Moroccan friend, Solomon in English, To bring some prutah, you know, the shekels, the Israeli pennies of the time, and bought my first ice cream when I was a little kid, six and a half years old, and I still remember That taste, I'll never forget that as long as I live.
Because nothing is as sweet as something you, you know, by the sweat of thy brow, it says in the good book.
Nothing is as sweet and rewarding as something you worked for.
You don't have to thank anybody, it's all yours.
And then I put all the rest of the money on the table in front of my mother and she was amazed.
I remember her hugging me and saying, that's my little man.
And ever since then, I've been working for women.
Without the money, I don't get much attention.
So, I must have been 13 or something, and it was a Sunday night.
And of course, Sunday, I went around getting everybody's money for delivering the newspapers and all that.
And by the early evening, I was at home at my mother's apartment.
And the Ed Sullivan show came up, and the Ed Sullivan show, for those of you that don't know what it was, was the biggest show on television.
When the Beatles were on, literally 75 million people were watching this.
At the time, half the population of the United States of America.
The total population at that point, 64, 60-something, was about 160 million.
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Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. So, how do you go from being a teenager just like, you know, a million other teenagers across the United States?
You want to be in a band, you start playing.
It's still a pretty long journey from there to, you know, the top of the heap in terms of rock music.
About being in a band was in the patois of the street.
There were a lot of chicks.
I mean, if I announced or held a sign of, I'm studying to be a dentist, they're just not going to care.
Later on they do, once they realize you're making good living and that's what it's about.
And so it was the payoff was immediate.
You get more popular.
We get more girls and all that because that's our primordial, you know, the urge to merge.
That's what we...
I'm giving you a lot of stuff here.
You're going to be able to use this in political discussions.
And so...
At the same time, I was working.
I became the assistant to the director of the Puerto Rican Interagency Council, a government research and demonstration project.
I was the only Jew there, but because it was a government research and demonstration project, there was a percentage of non-Puerto Ricans who had to be there, and I was the one, because I took typing classes in high school, pragmatism, because all the girls...
We're taking the typing classes.
So I signed up.
I also signed up for another class where only girls took it.
Greg and Pittman.
It was called Shorthand.
I signed up.
And that gave me the ability to get hired by Kelly Girls, which became Kelly Services, that hired me out for lawyers, real estate companies, all that.
In fact, I became...
The assistant to the director of the research and demonstration project.
And then I became the man Friday to the editor of Vogue magazine.
Again, on a floor where there are only girls, bottles and everything else.
Then it was terrible.
I gotta tell you, it was just torture.
Couldn't wait to get out of there.
And at the same time, decided to get serious about putting a band together.
And happened to accidentally meet another member of the tribe.
That's failed language for the rest of the world.
May not know what that means.
And Stanley Eisen became Paul Stanley.
And we put a band together.
And the idea was, even though we weren't able to verbalize it, let's put together the band we never saw on stage.
Almost the way girls...
Really have it in their DNA. There's a club and she calls ahead because she wants to know what's going on.
And she gets the word, uh-oh, just beware, all the girls are wearing short black minis.
So she thinks and goes, I think I'm going to put on a red short minis.
And we continue on, you know, we're doing new stuff and everything.
But during the course of Kiss's active years, every year we'd tour and stuff and kept breaking the rules by making toys and games and licensing and merchandising, where other bands were concerned about things like credibility.
That never entered into our minds.
That's for losers.
Credibility?
You never even went to music school to learn how to To learn the basics of music.
You can't read or write music.
Lennon, McCartney, Hendrix, The Stone, they can't read or write music.
You just kind of make it up.
You're completely unqualified to do that, but you're concerned about credibility.
Get out of here.
You know, it's noise.
You're lucky enough if you can make some money and the chicks chase you, and then you die.
That's all there is.
What does it mean?
Where is this going?
Do I have my mother's hips?
Shut up!
Just be lucky you didn't have to join a symphony orchestra where you'd have to pay your dues to learn about Tchaikovsky and Chopin and music.
You know, just an idiot like me picks up a thing and like a caveman, you sort of fumble through it.
And if you can't sing, then write a song called Wild Thing.
So, I think the scientific version of it, the headlines are having the right thing At the right place and the right time.
So, before the advent of sort of modern social thought, you know, those things, you, no matter how good looking you are with a kippah on your head, would have tried this a few decades ago.
Wouldn't be as easy.
It's a more, except culture is a moving target as people get more I'm educated to the idea that not everybody looks like you, walks like you, or talks like you.
And, I mean, I would do it now except the floor is dirty.
I would show it to you.
And, you know, it seems to have a life of its own.
And I remember in sixth grade, should I pause, pregnant pause, while you want to laugh?
Okay, so I was always the tallest kid in class, and a clown, because I wanted attention, and they'd stick me in the back of the room.
Of course, Stella and Irene, I remember their names, sixth or seventh grade, In the middle of the class, I'd get in trouble because they'd whisper, hey, Gene, do that funny thing you do when you stick your tongue out.
And I thought it was like, oh, you know, like a funny face.
So I'd stick it out and wiggle it and make it twirl around because, you know, it can do those things and yours can't.
And they'd go, okay, Mr. Klein, get...
My mother's maiden name, get over here, what were you doing?
I was just sticking it out.
Show the class what you were doing.
I'd stick it out and they would all laugh.
And so, again, singularity.
The four original members of KISS, John, Paul, George, oh no, that was another band.
Myself, Paul, Ace, and Peter, we were lucky enough to find each other in the beginning.
And not everything lasts forever.
Not everybody's designed to run a marathon.
It's just life.
But in the beginning, all for one, one for all, we had written some songs, pretty good.
We found the right guys.
We were in a rat-infested loft, 10 East, 23rd Street, only 10 blocks from 33rd Street, Madison Square Garden.
And then one day, I can't remember who, said, hey, let's go downstairs to Woolworth, which was a New York store, and bought makeup and black lipstick and red lipstick, and decided to put on makeup.
Bought some mirrors.
And pretty much on that very first day, what became possibly the four most recognized faces on the planet More recognized than Mount Rushmore.
Well, music changes because new generations come along.
And when my mother and I first came to America, this was pre-Beatles in 1958. Sometimes I think it's 1858. The first music I heard was Chuck Berry, even though I couldn't speak English.
Chuck Berry, Little Richard.
As a matter of fact, ironically and strangely, I did the eulogy for Chuck Berry's open casket when he passed away.
The Berry family asked me to do that.
It's on YouTube.
And...
Again, when the Beatles came along, it was a seismic shift.
That moved it a little to bigger sound, less complex, bigger riffs.
And so we're a product of all those English bands, actually.
But even during our reign...
As the Gallup polled number one band on the planet, three years in a row, 77, 78, 79, above the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and the Bee Gees, there was something going on.
It was called grunge.
It came out of Seattle, and it was a different form of music.
Then there was new romance, new wave, alternative.
Music keeps changing.
There was once something called big band, It was, you know, they had the template which is lots of horns and that's what you did.
And the Beatles came along and all of a sudden it was less about the temptations and four or five guys Moving together with steps with a big band in back of them, and it was just four or five guys in the front playing their own instruments, writing their own songs.
So music will continue, and now we finally come to the end of days when you can be an EDM artist and make an awful lot of money, and the expertise goes in front of 50,000 people.
Well, yeah, I have to say I did my musical education wrong.
I'm the normal Jewish kid who took violin lessons from the age of five till the time I was maybe 17 years old and it got pretty good and then I realized that there ain't no money in classical music and I learned it at school talent shows that the guy who could play three chords was definitely going to do better with the girls than the guy who was playing Fritz Kreisler and Beethoven.
So just lessons that you learn along the way for sure.
But when you're making a political or observational point to somebody who doesn't like you, those of us who are slower, the pregnant pause, it doesn't respectfully impregnate my slow mind until after you're done.