Gene Simmons

Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

Pushkin Industries

Music, Society & Culture

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What was meant to be an hour-long interview with Gene Simmons turned into one of the stranger conversations we’ve had on Broken Record.

As co-founder, bassist, and co-frontman of KISS alongside Paul Stanley, Simmons created one of the most outrageous personas in rock history: The Demon. On stage, he breathed fire, spit blood, and wagged his famously long tongue. Off stage, he and KISS became merchandising pioneers, selling everything from comic books and lunchboxes to KISS-branded coffins.

Now 76, Simmons remains as enigmatic as ever. This November, he’ll headline KISS Kruise XII: Landlocked in Vegas, a three-day fan gathering at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. In the lead-up, he joined Justin Richmond to talk about the Beatles’ unmatched songwriting, why KISS never chased radio singles, and to deliver a few of his trademark off-color remarks.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from KISS and Gene Simmons HERE.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin.
0:07.0	Gene Simmons is known for its theatrics, and man, did I get a concentrated dose of that in this episode.
0:17.0	Gene's the co-founder, bassist and frontman of Kiss along with Paul Stanley, and built an outrageous, maybe obnoxious persona dubbed the demon.
0:24.8	Now 76 years old and retired from touring, he's finding new ways to keep Kiss fans known as the Kiss Army engaged, including a three-day event this November called the Kiss Cruise Landlocked in Vegas.
0:37.0	I'd arranged for an hour interview with
0:38.4	Gene like I did with Paul Stanley a few months ago to talk about the event and Kiss lore.
0:43.5	I was excited to pick his brain since he has an almost encyclopedic memory for a certain era of
0:48.3	music. But things got off to a rough start, stayed rocky, and in the end, this may be the
0:53.7	strangest interview I've
0:54.6	ever done. We only talked for about 30 minutes, but it's still worth running to me because it is
0:59.7	a pretty good insight, I think, into the man they called the demon, Gene Simmons.
1:06.0	This is Broken Record. Real musicians, real conversations.
1:13.3	This is an I IHeart podcast.
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	...

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