Gene Simmons recounts his journey from fleeing Nazi-occupied Hungary to building a $400 million KISS empire, crediting his mother's survival of Auschwitz with instilling a philosophy that rejects victimhood. He details turning the band into a global merchandising giant selling everything from condoms to caskets, while navigating modern challenges like AI copyright issues and maintaining sobriety through gratitude rather than fear of his own father's abandonment. Ultimately, Simmons illustrates how personal trauma can forge resilience, transforming a childhood of silence into a loud, enduring legacy defined by gratitude and self-made success. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Gene Simmons Uncensored Night00:01:42
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored, he's one of the smartest and richest men in music history.
KISS legend Gene Simmons gives me his lessons from an extraordinary life.
We'll talk money, power, showbiz, scandal, politics, and love.
He's had it all.
Strap in.
It's going to be a crazy uncensored night.
From the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well, good evening.
Welcome to a special edition of Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Last time my guest was here a few weeks ago, I left wanting a lot more.
I thought, why aren't we doing a whole hour with this guy?
So I asked him.
He couldn't understand why we went either.
So he's agreed, and he's back for the whole hour tonight.
A true living legend of rock one-on-one.
Gene Simmons is rock and roll royalty.
KISS have more gold-certified records than any other band on the planet, selling 75 million records in half a century of touring and tumult.
From rags to riches, Gene has turned his beats into a business empire.
He's got the longest tongue in rock and one of the sharpest tongues in politics.
They called him Dr. Love, the demon, the god of thunder.
He's quite possibly the world's smartest ever rock star.
And tonight, Gene Simmons is uncensored.
Well, Gene Simmons joins me and I said, Gene, I've actually got a stinking cold.
And so my first question was going to be, when you're a singer, what do you do when you get a stinking cold and you're on tour?
I never claim to be a singer.
Singing Through A Stinking Cold00:03:21
What we do is you just pile through it.
The kind of music we do is certainly not operatic and we don't pretend to be on X Factor or any of that stuff.
Have you ever lost your voice?
No, not in the way people think of it.
It's because you just kind of plow through it.
It's more, you know, sort of gut kind of thing.
And I say, Jagger does the smart thing as well.
You write songs in your vocal range without very many high notes or very low.
So you can do it even if your voice is gone.
Have you ever had to cancel a show for sickness?
You?
KISS?
No, you.
Have you ever been responsible for a show?
No.
No.
In your entire career?
No, never.
And that's because...
Look, this is a blessing.
I don't want to get too cornball about it, but by the way, I look pretty good.
You do.
The idea that God or whomever is in charge would give me a chance to lead this kind of life is just unbelievable.
You know, we're approaching 50 years this year, and this journey has been just beyond anything.
So the least you could do is show up on time, love and respect the fans, and understand that what you do isn't necessary.
Food, shelter, those are necessary things.
But the people that stick their tongue out and act like, you know, the court jester, that's not necessary for life as we know it on the planet.
Let me take you back 50 years to your first show in the UK, which received the following review from a gentleman called Tony Wilson, who went on to be, of course, a factory records legend.
This is what he said about your first show when you first popped up, you guys.
We have the same effect as using Brillo pads to get rid of acne.
And you're also playing heavy, most rough metal music.
You're evil, right?
You project evil.
The question is, I mean, is there any evil in you?
Well, we're not doing the show yet.
I don't want to laugh.
What did we do the show?
Did you play football at school?
What do you feel looking at that?
If that was a new band, I'd be interested.
Gee, they look like they're having a lot of...
Exciting, different?
Exciting, different.
And that was the idea because we were such big anglophiles.
American music to us was just boring.
I mean, I know America created blues and rock and eventually rap and all that.
But what the English did, this little island, I know it comprises Wales and all the other wonderful countries, but this little island gave the world the music that stands the test of time.
The Beatles and the kids.
And we wanted to form a band, sort of like the Beatles on steroids, where everybody in the band sang, everybody was a star.
Now, of course, we couldn't shine the Beatles' shoes.
I'm not saying we're anywhere near in that league, nor would we pretend to be.
But the idea, the template was that as opposed to the stones, where there's one guy in the front and the guys are in the back.
Surviving The Holocaust Phase00:08:11
And what an amazing life.
I still can't believe it.
Let me take you back to the very start of this amazing life, because that in itself is truly extraordinary.
And I think was the pivot really for everything that followed.
And that's your mother, who was this remarkable woman who at the age of 14 in World War II, we've got a picture of you with her there.
I think you're about eight years old.
When she was 14, she was taken into concentration camps, three in the end, in World War II by the Nazis.
Somehow survived, and we'll come to that.
And then left at 19, having lost the most formative years of her life in this appalling Holocaust.
How much of an impact did that have, not just on her, but on you?
Well, look, I was born in Israel, and I didn't know anything about history or life or anything.
It's just that I knew that my mother was there.
Our father, my father, see, even our father, I didn't want to personalize it.
My father left us when I was about six or seven years of age.
And unfortunately, it's fairly common.
Fathers just pick up and leave, shameful as it is.
And all I had was my mother, and I was the only child, and she was my rock.
She was the foundation, my moral compass.
But I didn't know anything about my mother.
She wouldn't talk about her formative years, Hungary, where she and my father were born, and never talked about the concentration camps.
And as I got older, I tried to engage mom.
I'm now a sixth grade teacher in Spanish Harlem, and I know a little bit about the history.
Can you tell me?
She wouldn't do it.
It was just too horrific.
You later discovered a lot of stuff about what she'd been through from the archives.
What did you find out about her time in the concentration camp?
My mother, at 14, 13, 14, had gone to Friseur, which is a school to learn how to do makeup and hair and stuff like that.
And the way my mother survived, almost to the T is what Sophie's choice, that Meryl Streep movie is.
The commandant's wife in the concentration camp at Maathausen, I found out, she wanted somebody who knew how to do makeup and hair and stuff like that.
So she brought some Jews in, you know, Jewish girls, any one of you.
And they had a row of young Jewish women.
And Kernje Spretten Deutsch, I can speak a little German.
I made sure I learned how to speak that language.
Kernsche Spreten Deutsch do, Z.
And a few of the girls said, you know, Gechan Sprechtene Besen Deutsch.
And they threw them out.
God knows what happened to them.
My mother, who could get by in German, actually didn't raise her hands because she understood the less I know, I'm the going to keep quiet.
And because my mother, they thought, couldn't speak German, she was allowed to stay there and do the hair for the commandant's wife and so on, and would sneak, you know, a piece of bread or some old chicken in the garbage pail.
And that's how she survived, astonishingly.
And she told me, when I finally confronted her about that, she told me she didn't dare mention this to anybody when she got back to the barracks because she would be killed.
She would be killed for the morsels of food.
As hard it is to believe.
And she lost a large number of her family.
I have no grandparents.
I didn't know anybody, her brother, everybody.
And before she later admitted, my mother lived to be 94 years of age and always told me every day above ground is a good day, you know, in Hungarian.
And I take that with me wherever I go.
Blessed.
And her mother, my grandmother, who I've never met, was being let off to the gas chambers with her mother.
They took the oldest first, and my mother's mother would not let her mother go to the gas chamber by herself.
She willingly walked with her and in essence turned to my mother in Hungarian and said, live, survive.
And my name in Hebrew is Chaim, which means life.
Live.
You know, it's the greatest gift there is.
And that's, you know, despite everything, despite the hardships, my mother's point of view about life and everything was enjoy the little things, this glass of water.
And thank you for this, by the way.
I'll take a little bit.
The water, the thing, you don't know what you've got until and if it's gone.
Every day above ground is a good day.
You better tattoo that on your soul right now.
She also never, and I've interviewed a lot of Holocaust survivors.
She, like them, never had a trace of self-pity.
No, never played the victim.
No, never tugged on anybody's shirt sleeves.
Do you know what a horrible life I've had?
No, she refused to speak about it.
Steven Spielberg, who we've met a few times, reached out for the Shoah Foundation.
He wanted to interview the survivors of the concentration camps and wanted my mother to record her experiences and she refused.
It was too, what she saw was beyond anything.
And of course, there are deniers out there, unfortunately.
But it's a lesson for all of us.
And for those of you that keep thinking that this is just the Jewish experience, very few people understand that millions of gypsies, Christians, undesirables, the homosexual community, millions were slaughtered there just because they were unwanted.
You have a very low tolerance of some of the modern societal traits, entitlement, victimhood, you know, all this kind of stuff.
Is that driven by what happened with your mother?
Of course.
If you don't have a sense of history and where you came from and stuff, you take everything for granted.
This entitlement thing is a disease of modern pop culture, wokeism and so on.
Our kids, Nick and Sophie, are the most wonderful human beings I know of.
They're much better than Shannon and I. Shannon's right outside.
More ethical, more moral, polite, and all this kind of stuff.
I contend to push the button sometimes like you can, but for effect, because we get off on it.
But they never received a penny of an allowance.
This idea of giving your kids money for not doing anything is insane.
So they've never done that.
In fact, Shannon drove the kids every day to school without fail, whether she was sick or not, for years.
And she volunteered to do the lunch thing so that she can keep an eye on her two children.
And Nick, our son, got an award, the only one they've ever given for perfect attendance for the first five years of going to school, which, oh, here I am talking about kids on the Piers Morgan show.
I'm sorry.
You're allowed to.
I've got four kids.
I'm as proud of them as you are of yours.
You know of.
But go ahead.
Let's take a short break.
When I come back, I want to talk to you about the moment you move to America, you and your mum.
And that starts the next phase of both your lives.
And it's an extraordinary phase.
We'll talk about that in a moment.
Moving To America With Mum00:09:34
So we're dedicating the show tonight to rock legend and kiss front man Gene Simmons.
So Gene, you're eight years old.
Your father's walked out on you and your mother, this remarkable woman, and she decides you're going to try your luck, the two of you, in America, the land of the free.
What are your first memories of when you got to America?
I remember a little before we came to America.
My mother had two brothers who were able to escape to America.
My mother was in Hungary at the time that she was put into the camps.
And I didn't know where we were going.
I didn't know what was going on.
And so my mother took me to this thing and we stood in the back of the line.
And I didn't know it then, but there was a man sitting on a higher ledge with a desk and people were lined up.
And my mother in her younger years was just a very, very beautiful woman.
And the man sitting there with what I later learned was the American flag is pointing to my mother in the back of the line and says something in a language I never heard of before.
And we get to the front of the line and he tries to communicate with her and he bends over and he's looking down and he says, do you speak, I didn't know what he was saying, he was saying it in English, do you speak English?
Not a girl.
And he didn't speak Hebrew.
And he fumbled and kernel die spachen bisen Deutsch, can you speak a little German?
She says, so they start talking a little bit in German because he didn't speak Hebrew.
And what I later learned was, okay, we've got your thing.
You're going to America.
You're going to become a citizen a few years down the line.
If you behave and so on, all I need you to do is to swear allegiance and so on and raise your hand.
Sorry, I get choked up when I think about this.
But my mother didn't know what the guy meant, so she did the only thing that she saw.
She started to do this.
And I didn't know what was going on.
My mother was kind of tearing up.
And the man quickly got off the pedestal, came over to her, and I'll never forget this.
God bless him.
He put his right hand above her left hand, pushed it down, and later my mother told me, he told her, you'll never have to do that ever again.
Wow.
And we came to America, and I never saw or dreamed anything like that.
The people were big, and everybody had cars.
And, you know, it was just, and because we came from dirt roads, it was a new country, and there wasn't even an infrastructure.
And we visited my aunt Magda, and she had a refrigerator.
She had a refrigerator, and she opened the refrigerator.
It was full of food.
We didn't have that.
You had a piece of paper, like the English fish and chips, you know, where you stick it in a piece of newspaper and stuff.
And you got your allotment for the week.
And I remember looking at a jar of jam and in Hungarian, I speak Hungarian as well, and asking my aunt Magda, in Hungarian, she too had been in the camps, what is this?
And she goes, you know, she gave me a spoon and opened the thing.
And she thought I was going to get a taste.
And as soon as I tasted it, I started eating it because I'd never tasted anything like that.
And both my mother and my aunt were laughing their heads off.
I'd never saw television.
I never saw people flying through the air with capes.
I never saw anything.
I still marvel at this amazing country.
Yes, it has its blisters, its racism, it's all kinds of bad things with it.
But I think clearly the UK and so on started with Guy Fawkes before he tried to blow up everything.
And I know, but the history of democracy is the only hope we have on this planet.
And you're a perfect example, you and your mother, of America taking in pretty much anyone and giving them the chance of a different, better life, which has always been, at its core, what the United States of America is about.
Ideally, it's a lot messier than that.
I do think that there is, and this always gets me into hot trouble, even though I'm a big proponent of giving people a chance.
The world is a very sad place.
There's a lot of things.
But you've got to have some kind of order, otherwise it's chaos, because the good comes in along with the bad.
So I believe in legal immigration.
Just slow down a little bit.
Let people at least know your names, where you are, social security number, and so on, so you can keep track of what's going on.
That goes for all the countries that take in, you know, sad, sad stories about immigrants.
Legal immigration is the right way to do it.
Several things happen to you.
One, you get bullied as a kid when you get to America, and eventually you fight back.
Tell me about that moment.
I'd never been in a fight in Israel.
I was sort of bigger than, but I'd never been in a fight.
I didn't pick on anybody.
You know, a live and let-live thing.
And I remember being, somebody was starting to pick on me.
And I don't remember what happened, but it was a snap.
It was this kind of Jekyll Hunt thing that happened right along.
And I didn't know about head-butting or anything, but I just hurled my body at this guy who was two or three years older than I am.
And as it happened, my forehead hit his face and he went down like an ultra.
And I don't know what happened.
It hurt me.
I was just holding my head up.
And I thought I was going to be in trouble with my mother.
And when I told her about it, she was proud, you know, because for the longest time, our people have been, you know, assimilationists and you just kind of don't cause troubles, don't fight back.
It didn't work out well in World War II.
You hate bullies, don't you?
I won't stand for it.
By the way, verbal bullies as well.
If you pick on people, I'm at the front line trying to stop that because there, but for the grace of God, if you allow a group of people or somebody to be bullied, you're next, pal.
Everybody is part of a segment of life and or religion or culture and so on that... that can be picked on and is picked on.
So I won't stand for it.
So you have this moment, you fight back, you feel good about yourself for doing that.
Your mother feels good about you.
Then you see, a little later, you see the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.
And a light bulb goes off again.
And you're thinking, not that you want to be exactly like them because they're a unique eyewitness.
You wanted that.
I must have been 13 or 14 years of age, maybe 13, and 1964.
And I'd always worked after school.
And it was even on Sundays.
And it was Sunday in New York, and there was the Ed Sullivan show, where half the population of the entire country in America at that time was 150 million population.
Now it's 330-something million.
75 million people watch that show.
And the Beatles come out.
Well, you think you've lost your love?
You know, all this sound that I'd never heard before.
And I was mesmerized.
And I thought to myself, gee, they look silly.
And, you know, what's this?
And they're smaller.
They're smaller and slight.
And they looked, you know, a little feminine to, you know, guys, because we're used to, you know, bigger guys.
And my mother comes in and basically verbalizes the same thing.
Oh, look how silly they look.
And at that moment, I thought, oh, they're cool.
That's when I started paying attention.
The girls were screaming, and these guys were having a good time.
And I said, gee, that's a good job.
Wish I could do that.
And when I first tried to do that, I couldn't do that.
But I will tell you, time to admit it, for a few years, I was 13 until I was about 15 years of age, I trekked like that.
I did.
I tried to convince everybody, oh, I'm not from here.
He goes, no, do you know the Beatles?
Yes, a bit of all right, you know?
Did you ever meet the Beatles?
Ringo, he sent me a birthday greeting.
And Paul, my partner, obviously has met Sir Paul.
Just the most lovely people of all time.
You want to see somebody with grace, class, after Beatle mania stuff.
You sit, talk with Ringo or Paul, and you see, that's the way you do it.
That should be the mark of how to be gracious.
I completely agree.
Oh, just watch.
I think he's an absolute God in that sense.
You formed KISS.
I'm not going to go over the whole KISS story again, except to say that there's a moment when it all kicks off and you become this huge band and you're living the dream that you have when you watch the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.
And you go to your mother and you have a check for a million dollars.
It wasn't a million.
How much was it?
Eight Million Dollar Check00:04:01
Say it.
Eight.
Eight million.
Eight million dollars.
And you show her that check.
Yeah.
And how does she respond?
She didn't understand it.
My mother never went to proper school or anything.
And in Hungarian, you know, she just saw the zeros and stuff.
And she literally didn't understand.
In fact, she used to ask me all the time, who pays you?
When do you go to work?
Where do you go to work?
Because she understood you go to work at a certain time.
Somebody pays you.
I said, you know, the people pay me.
Anyway, when I showed her the check, I wasn't giving to her.
I said, look, look, mom, look at this money.
She didn't understand.
Wanderfurt, wanderfur.
Now what are you going to do?
Literally.
Because she's worried that you may just stop working or...
Well, I don't know.
Was always yesterday, didn't matter.
Yes, and that's a profound point of view about life, which is there's nothing you can do about.
Yesterday, my mother bless her was in a concentration camp and yet never referenced that in her dealings with people today, which is incredible, because something you can do about today, and if you can fix today, you can make tomorrow better.
And my mother was the funniest person I ever met.
How is the orchestra?
That's how she called the battle.
Yeah, let's take another break.
When I come back, I want to talk about KISS, not just the band but the brand because, almost uniquely, you turned KISS into this money-making machine, globally as a brand as much as a band as we see there with your phone cover.
So back with Gene Simmons after the break.
Welcome back to my special with Gene Simmons from KISS.
So Gene, if you could only perform live on stage again throughout your life or have sex with all the women you had sex with, but leave it.
But you couldn't do both.
Which one would you go for, the women or the live performing?
Well, I'm married now, obviously Piers, and my lovely wife is right outside, I know, and I'm going to ask her the same question.
Oh, my god.
Well, look, doing what I do, wearing more makeup and higher heels than any female you ever met, literally has been just unbelievable.
But sex is pretty good too.
So which one?
Why do you have to pick?
Well, you've got to choose.
It's a binary question on stage, because I knew you'd say that.
Because you also get paid bam well, you certainly get paid.
So, from 76 to 79, KISS become the biggest band in the world.
You still hold the record for most gold albums by any battle.
You saw over a hundred million records worldwide.
You've toured the world dozens of times and now it's coming to an end, the touring.
How do you feel about that?
How do you really feel about that?
I really feel proud.
Uh, the best part was when I ran into my buddy, Paul Stanley who uh, we continue to have this astonishing relationship and i've always been so sad when Lennon, Mccartney and Jagger and Richard started.
You know, backbiting.
I mean, even Kane and Abel didn't get along so well.
Uh, it was always so sad to me and but Paul and I have this resilient sort of the brother I never had, uh kind of a thing, and we don't agree on very much at all, but there's an abiding uh, admiration and respect for the talent that he has, that I will never have and hopefully, the piece of the puzzle that I bring to it that he doesn't know, no question, so that one-on-one, You have an amazing chemistry.
Making The Big Deal00:14:38
It works.
One-on-one is three.
You don't know everything.
I don't.
And when you meet somebody that's a kindred spirit, you can rise and be bigger than you ever were.
And at any rate, to cut to the chase, all good things have to come to an end.
And you have to have the self-respect and pride, that's a big word, and the love of the fans to know when the hell it's time to get off that stage.
Do you see a lot of bands who just go on too long?
Look at that.
That wasn't so long ago.
I don't remember where that was.
This is in your farewell tour, yeah.
Yes, it is.
But all the shows are like that.
Just insane.
But do you see other bands go on too long?
They go too long.
And it's tough to give it up, you know, this kind of advance and it's godlike.
I would love this.
But at any rate, when you still look good, when you still have the physicality it takes to do that, get off the stage.
By the way, it goes for boxers too.
Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, who's a friend, and so on.
These are the greats of all time.
And you've got to know when it's time to get.
You've got to know when to leave the party, right?
I think it's Sinatra said.
You must, yeah.
So I got an insight into your marketing genius when we both appeared on Celebrity Apprentice back in 2008 with Donald Trump, obviously, was the host.
But what I remember most with my first insight into you as a businessman was we were told to do a hot dog challenge.
We literally had to sell hot dogs from a stand in Midtown Manhattan.
Actually, outside the fog stands.
Now, just a second.
Trump did not mention a stand.
All he said was sell hot dogs.
That's true.
That's true.
Which is why I'm going to come to your bit of genius.
So we were deliberating as a group whether to charge $10 or $100 for our dogs.
You picked your phone up and called a mate and said, Will you give me $5,000 for a hot dog?
$10.
Was it $10?
And he said, okay.
And then he said to me, I'll never forget this.
You said it's not the vacuum cleaner that gets sold.
It's the way the salesman sells the cleaner.
And I've remembered that ever since.
Yeah, it's true.
Because that's really the essence of where marketing takes a business and explodes it, right?
Well, if you can assess, and everything is about an assessment, you know, where you go, what road to take, and so on.
If you understand that it's not how many units you sell, but how much money you make, then it isn't always about units sold.
It's about, you know, I'd rather sell one Rolls-Royce than 20 Volkswagen, right?
So it's not how many units, it's how much money can I make.
And the rules were very clear.
I was listening.
Sell hot dogs, didn't say where or when or all that stuff.
And you can't call people you're in business with.
So I just called people I knew and I said, this is for charity.
I'm not going to get any of the money.
Give me 10,000.
I made a few of those calls.
In the very first phone call, we beat the female because it was.
With one call, with one dog.
Because actually, you understood how to play the game, which was brilliant.
Hold on.
But who won?
Well, I won, obviously.
But you know how I won?
Because I watched what you did.
I listened to what you said and I thought, yes.
And I then hit my roll of diggs.
And I then got a lot of other people who came to help me in the same way, particularly in the final action.
It was very interesting.
But you also took this, obviously, and had done before then to the rock business in a way.
I don't think anyone's ever done as well as you guys did with this.
Well, we make a living.
Rob, but you made an incredible franchise out of KISS where you have, I think, over 5,000 lines of merchandise.
I just want to stop you for a second because self-aggrandizement and other big words like gymnasium, I enjoy hearing nice things said about me, but it's never just about you.
Paul's my partner from the beginning.
You have to surround yourself with the right people who understand it so you can go forth together.
But thank you for the kind words.
5,000 different pieces of merchandise.
Should I do the joke?
We literally, no joke intended, we literally have everything from KISS condoms to KISS caskets.
We'll get you coming and we'll get you going.
There is a KISS toilet seat.
Oh, yeah.
We've got it here.
You know, the phrase sit on.
Does that sell well?
Sit on my face.
It says so right there.
Of course, these are semantics, but I'm not.
We've got a KISS lunchbox.
Oh, sure.
There are many generations, of course.
Yeah.
It's fantastic.
Well, I think the point about it is, you just understood how to sell the band, the business.
You guys.
I'm not just in the band.
I'm a fan of the band.
And I remember when the Beatles first came out, there were a lot of Beatle things, Beatle this, Beatle that, but then they never made the money.
They didn't understand the marketplace and so on because it was all brand new.
But we wanted to be Disney without the overhead.
Right.
You can make an awful lot of money if you understand everything.
By the way, I'm the only person on the planet that owns the pound sign.
It's trademarked recognized.
Yeah, I'll show it to you, including the Euro.
Because countries are smart, but not that smart.
They create trademark laws, but never trademark the word England, public domain.
Why?
Why do they trademark that?
So I do own all of them.
Well, you've also got one of these, which is a KISS coffin.
Casket, yeah.
Have you ordered one of these for the when the time comes?
No, I think I'll splatter, I mean, whatever it is, you know, the dust particles and so on.
But they also double, and the bars have them because they're moisture-proof.
So you put ice in it, and people reach in and have cold drinks out of it.
True, true.
How much money have you made from KISS?
Oh, come on.
That's the first question I was going to ask you.
Piers Morgan, how much money does it take?
Give me a number that's going to horrify me.
No, that's not fair.
I've read that you're worth $400 million.
Really?
Yeah.
You're very kind.
Up or down?
Up or down what?
From $400.
I always want to go up.
But I tell you what, here's a point for all you folks out there.
I'm kind of a big deal.
You go to your cell phone and you type in into Google and Schmoogle Gene Simmons gum.
When I was singing the national anthem here for the NFL football team, I was chewing gum the day before and doing soccer AM, the promotion thing.
And I was chewing gum and they said, Mr. Simmons, please take out your gum.
And I, because I'm a wise guy, I said, eBay, the next day they put it on eBay.
How much, Piers Morgan?
How much has he gone for?
I asked you first.
Let me guess, 5,000 pounds.
Would you like a tip?
If I went to the Empire State Building and pointed up, how much would that number be?
How much was it?
God, $247,000.
Opera piece of gum.
Chewed by you.
Gene Simmons car.
That's true.
You can Google and smoogle it.
Talking of Google, what do you make of the tech world we're now in?
What do you make of Elon Musk and artificial intelligence and all these things?
I'm a big fan.
And like all people, they're the ones that change history and make life better on Earth.
But they're the single people, the forward thinkers, the futurists, change life as we know it.
Elon Musk is undeniable.
He tried for years to get car companies to go away from diesel fuel and gas and so on.
They wouldn't listen.
So he did it himself.
It's always the individual, not the corporate entity, because you can move.
You can move fast.
You don't have to make decisions by committee.
I'm a big fan.
Twitter's going to be fine.
Yeah, I totally agree with you.
Are you excited or are you worried about artificial intelligence, particularly about the music business?
I am concerned, music business aside, I am concerned about the lack of legislation.
When you enter a new, let's say a new planet, you're about to land on new, well, clearly there's opportunity there.
There are minerals and things and so, you know, all kinds of opportunities.
Without rules of the game, it's like playing sports without rules.
Who's going to do what?
You need some rules that are, you know, kind and beneficial to mankind, women kind, trans-kind, all kinds of kinds.
Okay, does that cover everybody?
Probably not.
Probably not.
Well, there are always going to be new ones, and you have to respect all that.
Subject aside, the problem with AI is not, AI is here whether you like it or not.
So let's look at it smartly and let's pass legislation.
AI creates a song using my voice or what sounds like my voice with a new song and it sounds just like me and it definitely sounds like that kind of a thing.
So when you're buying it, who owns the copyright and the publishing if AI did that?
So is it me because it sounds like me?
You could swear it was me.
So these are unshaped.
And if it is you, do you then care if AI does that?
We can make a deal.
I love that.
Of course.
Of course.
We're talking about making a deal.
Let's come back after the break with the best deal I think you've made in your life, which is persuading your wife, Shannon, not just to marry you, but to stay with you.
That's after the break.
I've been joined now by my special guest wife, Shannon.
Well, Shannon, the boss, finally, we have you.
Boss tweet.
We have you right where I want Gene to be.
Let me ask you straight off the top.
Yeah.
He, when you met him, was one of the biggest rock stars in the world.
Yeah, I didn't know that, but yes.
Would it have mattered if he was a plumber?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I have to ask him.
I wouldn't have dated him.
I asked her, Shannon, if I didn't make a good living.
And I'm going to try not to exaggerate.
If I didn't make a good living, would you be with me?
And she said, see ya.
But you must have known when you met him, I guess, his reputation.
I did not.
By the way, no, I. Where did you meet him?
I grew up listening at the Playboy Mansion.
Really?
It was a party.
He came in with two girls.
And someone suggested, a producer friend of mine, that I go over and meet him.
My sister was like, come on, let's go meet him.
And I said, I don't know who that is.
He looks kind of a little smarmy to me.
And so I went over to meet him and, you know, we got to talking and we had a lot in common, actually.
But the next day, since there's no cell phones or internet and so on, we ran down to Tower Records to look him up to make sure he was real because I didn't believe a word he said.
You saw an entire section.
It was kiss, this, and kiss.
When you realize he was a musician.
I've never listened to that music before.
I was Motown Girl.
She's our love star.
Tom Jones.
That's it.
What was it that made you fall in love with him?
It's smart.
And that's it.
Smart and rich.
No.
And he's very romantic, actually.
And did you make him cry yet?
He cried.
Yeah, he did get emotional, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I like that.
I was surprised.
Yeah.
He's a really bad boyfriend, but very good husband.
Well, that's interesting.
It almost is like your relationship is two halves.
Yeah.
Up to it took 28 years for him to grow up.
Right.
Yeah.
So, but I waited.
Oh, my God.
Why did you wait?
Many would have gone.
I know, I know.
And a lot of people, like, once your husband cheats on you, once they ditch.
And I...
What about when it's 5,000 times?
There's more, but there's more to him than that.
Yeah.
And he's admitted this.
He said that there's two Gene Simmons.
Believe me, I've heard it, huh?
Yeah.
And you believe that?
Yeah, sure.
Oh, yeah.
But I mean, it's hard when you're, now that I have a young man as a child, I know that, you know, when a girl comes to your door wearing a raincoat with nothing under it, you don't just go, bye-bye.
So I understand that it happened and meant almost nothing.
I've got a picture of you on your wedding day.
Yeah.
Now, this took a long time, Gene, for you to persuade Shannon to get down the art.
What do you both remember of that day?
I have to tell you that I never wanted to get married and I never had kids.
At least consciously, I didn't want to become my father.
My father.
But he didn't know he was his father.
As far as I know.
Really?
You think that?
Yes.
My father.
In what ways?
Because his father was a philanderer and that's why his mother left him.
And so, but he was a philanderer.
And he came by it, honestly.
But you can't, I mean, I don't know how can you blame a musician where they're just knocking on your door and they're naked when you open it up.
But just you say, what do you say?
I didn't want to have kids because I didn't want kids feeling what I felt.
The world ended.
I felt like I felt guilty.
What did I do wrong that made my father get up and leave without explaining anything?
So I...
And yet.
Am I doing okay?
She's not letting you get away with it being here.
No, no, you're not getting off the hook.
But am I doing okay?
Well, let me ask you a different question here.
Gene, what would you say to your son, for example, or your daughter, if they ask you about these stories where you've given interviews and talked about having thousands of groupies and so on?
What do you say to your kids if they ask those questions?
At some point, you got to grow up.
I don't know what to say, except that there's no...
Look at that.
That's Nick.
He said it was fun, but it's over now.
Growing Up And Feeling Guilty00:05:52
Wow.
Do you believe it is, Shannon?
I didn't.
Oh, definitely over now.
Oh, yeah.
I cut off my Schmeichel and purple.
A formalda hot or she will put it in a formalda hot thing.
Put it on a formaldeal.
A pickle jar.
A pickle jar.
You see, I get, I now get what the thing is with you two.
It's humor.
It is.
Ultimately, it's humor.
I mean, I could probably wallow in sorrow for a long time, but I mean.
Has he broadly, though, made you happier than not?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And when you say he's romantic, how does that manifest itself?
What's the most romantic thing he's done for you?
Oh, my gosh.
I gave you some cash yesterday.
You know what he really does?
Just give me wags of cash.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That is quite romantic.
I told him, you know, did you sell any guitars today?
Yes.
I go.
Yeah.
And the cash.
And when she gets the watch, it goes like this.
Gene, what does true love mean?
Romantic part, though.
He did do the flower petals.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So what does true love mean to you, Gene?
Because obviously you found it with Shannon.
What does it mean to you?
Thankfully, I never confronted myself about that and barely said, I love you to my mother.
Shockingly and shamefully, I was always alone.
He thought it was a weakness.
Have you said it to Shannon?
Yes.
Yes, it happened much later.
It happened much later.
I was afraid of being weak.
Of being weak and not I never opened myself up to that.
You know, I always...
It's hard, you know, the knight in shining armor thing, at least you have protection around you.
And I never wanted to be hurt ever again.
Now she's about to say, no.
What can I say?
There's no school for life and there's no school that says, okay, this is what marriage is.
This is what a relationship is.
We were both learning as we went along.
He was also young when I met him too.
Right.
What have you really learned about yourself, Gene?
When you look back at your life.
I learned that I'm not so bad after all.
Shannon, would you agree?
I would, I would.
Yeah, I would say it's not so bad after all.
Yeah, I really thought I was going to, if it was going to be...
Look, I had been in only two other relationships of any kind.
Never wanted a...
Sort of.
You weren't faithful to them either.
Well, one was Cher, famously.
And Diana.
And Diana Ross, who you were with before you mentioned.
He was philandering at the same time.
He was?
Yeah, sure.
Come on.
With me.
Shannon, I mean, you've got to admit, I mean, going, Cher, Diana Ross, you.
Yeah.
It's not bad.
That's not bad.
Well, but older women with children than the me.
Oh, stop it.
That's fine.
Let me finish, Jim.
I want to show you again the picture of you and your mum when you're eight years old.
Because I think that she's obviously been this constant presence throughout everything in your life and really formed, I think, a lot of your life.
When you look at yourself there, what do you see in that little boy?
What was he hoping to be, do you think?
Oh, just always being a big dreamer.
You wanted to make her proud.
Yes.
Anything I wanted to do was always about my mother.
You never drank or took drugs because of her.
No, I believe our children are the same way.
Yes, no.
Oh, absolutely.
Wanting to make him.
And do you think you did make her proud?
Did she tell you that?
Yes.
She.
My mother...
She had a shrine to him in her house and said, welcome home to my favorite son.
It was up year-round.
But my favorite son, she only had one son.
What was she proudest of, do you think, of all the things you achieved?
No drugs, no alcohol, no smoking, be straight.
She didn't approve of the stupid stuff she kept telling me about.
Don't do that to Shane Khan.
But I want to say that my mother was bizarrely my biggest fan.
When we'd land in New York on the way to someplace else, my mother would be behind a pillar.
I'm not exactly...
Watching you deep lane.
Just waving.
Yes.
Chaim, that's my Hebrew name.
Chaim Kam, which is Hungarian, my chaim, my life.
She'd wave and go back behind the pillar just to chairs at the concert.
She would be amazing.
And do you feel, Gene, fundamentally, when you look back over everything you've achieved and had and everything, family, professional, do you feel an enormous sense of gratitude to your mother?
Because without her, it's highly unlikely that journey would have happened.
Nothing would have happened, which is why mothers are the most important life form on the face of the planet.
Without your mother, Pierce, you wouldn't have become who you are.
I totally agree.
All our mothers, our fathers mean well and so on, but there's only one person who gave you life and that's your mother.
And that's forever.
By the way, I did a paper in college about the end of life as we know it for bad guys who are on death row and so on.
The one word that keeps coming up or the phrase that keeps coming up is apologies to their mother before they go to death.
Isn't that interesting?
Gene, it's been brilliant.
I'm so glad we did a much bigger interview.
Chang, great to have you adding some stardust at the end.