Billy Corgan launched his new podcast series with a bang by welcoming Gene Simmons to the show, and the God of Thunder was typically forthcoming on all matters KISS, revealing that the digital afterlife he and Paul Stanley envisaged for the band was “already being done”.
Never mind the Industrial Revolution 4.0 and the threat of a robot apocalypse, sooner or later we could be living in a world with a virtual KISS. And those AI-generated avatars that were launched at the denouement of their final shows? Those are just a taste of what’s to come, like “a sketch on a piece of paper of what the 50-storey skyscraper is gonna look like”.
“The future of entertainment is here,” says Simmons.
“Kids are going to go see Virtual KISS?” asks Corgan.
“It doesn’t matter if you think it will or if you think it won’t,” replies Simmons. “The future is here. Already being done.”
Corgan’s podcast takes the KISS story back to the start, Simmons, at home, and like thousands others of his generation, having his pop-cultural epiphany when seeing the Beatles on TV. “My mother walked in and told me how silly they looked,” he recalls. “Precisely, at that moment, a singularity hit me – that’s when I knew they were cool. Because all of a sudden I heard my mother say they looked silly.”
Simmons discusses the impact of disco, pissing off the KISS fanbase fanbase with the disco-influenced I Was Made For Lovin’ You, his restless entrepreneurialism. Corgan’s conversation brings out two sides to Simmons.
There is Simmons, the business man. In April 2024, it was reported that KISS’s IP, catalog and likenesses had been sold to the Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment Group for an estimated $300 million. Simmons says the reported figures were not accurate, smiles and jabs his finger to the sky. They made more.
Then there is Simmons, the kid who grew up up in NYC playing his final shows there and being overcome when with emotion when making eye contact with fans. “I’m supposed to be Darth Vader and the Big Bad John and all that,” says Simmons. “I’ve got to turn my back often so that they don’t see.”
The fans who keep Kiss Kondoms in their wallet, play the pinball machine in their spare time, and have the KISS Kasket lined up for their final curtain call, might they might need their own KISS virtual reality headset? Simmons doesn’t say. Though he does hint that an AI headset might not be necessary, that he has something else planned.
“Most people, young people especially, have had the goggles on where you’re falling off a cliff, and all of a sudden you actually feel like gravity’s gone and your senses aren’t working anymore,” he says. “That’s a mindfuck, as they say. Now imagine if you weren’t wearing the glasses.”
But it turns out that this brave new world is as hard to describe as it is to imagine how it might look in practice. There simply isn’t a frame of reference to communicate what this AI-generated KISS experience might look like.
Simmons argues that it’s like someone from the PanAm era trying to explain to a Neanderthal what the view of the Earth is like from a cruising altitude of 45,000 feet.
“When I start to explain to people what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced, you understand the words, but you have no idea,” he says. “You will be blown away.”
In the here and now, we’ll have to take Simmons at his word. It remains to be seen whether that same cohort of rock fans who found a KISS disco-rock song a touch too much would see the art in something so overwhelmingly facilitated by digital technology. Or if anyone would.
Even for a band that has blurred the line between art and commerce, making a career out of its own comicbook reality, this digitalised theatre could be a step too far. It seems preposterous that an AI KISS – or anyone – is going to inspire the next generation to pick up the electric guitar just as the Beatles on Ed Sullivan did, or Nirvana on MTV. Simmons, however, sounds bullish, envisaging a music industry in which live performances and shows featuring virtual AI avatars will co-exist.
“I will tell you that AI, and the avatars and so on are – even by today’s technological standards – about as close to reality as you can ever imagine,” he says.
You can check out the full conversation above, and subscribe to The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan at iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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