Gene Simmons

Gene Simmons — bassist, vocalist and co-founder of Kiss — was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1949 as Chaim Witz, and emigrated to New York as a child, speaking no English. He is one of the most recognisable characters in rock history and probably the one who best understood that a band is also a business. Kiss, founded in New York in 1973 with Paul Stanley, started from a simple observation: audiences do not buy only music, they buy spectacle. Each member got a character, and Simmons created the Demon — tongue out, spitting blood, breathing fire, platform boots. The look was so effective that it survived five decades and every shift in musical fashion. Musically his role is less ornamental than the costume suggests. Simmons sings and writes much of the repertoire — from God of Thunder to Calling Dr. Love and Deuce — and his bass gives Kiss the low, simple foundation on which the band's hard rock works live. He is on the whole discography, from Kiss (1974) to Monster (2012), including the unmasked 1980s phase and the original line-up's 1996 return. Off stage he turned Kiss into a brand with thousands of licensed products, and that commercial mindset is now part of rock history itself — Kiss invented the model later bands would use. The farewell tour ended in New York in December 2023, fifty years after the beginning.