Backstage Pass Read online

  Any great talent right now is keenly aware of their competition—thanks to the internet, it’s easier to size up the global arena of competition as opposed to the local competition. And what’s happened over the years and decades is that the standard has been upped exponentially, because we’re now able to view the world’s best from any computer on the planet. A band in Austin knows what a band in Oslo is doing, and vice versa. So being the best singer on your block doesn’t cut it.

  I really believe that the talent pool has upped its game. The days of Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour—which was on TV when I was a kid—or even the first generation of national talent shows, like Star Search, seem quaint now. What we saw on those shows was just horrendous compared with the level of The Voice.

  The truth is, back when KISS started, we weren’t aware of what was going on around us or around the world. We had no way of gauging ourselves against a broad pool of talent when we were coming up. Now people go on the internet and think, “Geez, I suck.”

  The internet can be terrific, because the talent that’s uncovered is pretty amazing. Whether or not the people succeed ultimately or whether the entertainment is all that survives is another question. But raw ability? If someone is talented and willing to work at it, that person can really raise the bar. The internet also allows people to see who they’re up against and be influenced or inspired by that—it’s something we simply didn’t have when we started KISS.

  There’s always some mimicry in creative work, and there are now apparently an infinite number of singers out there emulating some of the greats and misguidedly doing vocal runs that border on histrionics. Their vocal stylings often end up more like gymnastics as opposed to being used to communicate emotions. The downside to being able to do all these vocal runs is that it means nothing if there’s nothing behind it. Sometimes I hear people singing and I’ll say to my wife, Erin, “That person might as well be singing in Mandarin because they have absolutely no clue what they’re singing about.”

  So many elements separate the pretenders from the contenders. Sure, Mariah Carey can sing five octaves or whatever, while Leonard Cohen could sing only half an octave. But time will tell which of their music lives on. It’s not what we’re capable of doing; it’s what we do with our capabilities.

  You’ll find guys now, unfortunately, who think their favorite blues guitar player is Eddie Van Halen. To do something with depth, with real weight and substance—whether that depth is lost on others—you need roots, you need experience. Someone might say, “Well, KISS is superficial, so who’s this guy to be talking?” Well, not superficial to the 100 million people who’ve bought our albums so they can listen to them over and over. So when I say that roots are essential to whatever you’re going to do, I say it in part because I grew up seeing Otis Redding and listening to Dion and the Belmonts and Irving Berlin and Puccini and Jerry Lee Lewis and Muddy Waters, and the list goes on. The point is: it all adds to the stew.

  I was a huge Byrds fan. I could play all their songs. I was a fan of Tim Hardin, Phil Ochs, David Blue, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. I went to the Gaslight down in the Village to see Dave Van Ronk. Those artists may seem superfluous to what I do, but they’re all in there. I saw the Temptations. I listened to and watched Jackie Wilson, who was a phenomenal singer and an incredibly magnetic performer. I was a huge fan of Eric Andersen—the idea that, stripped away of everything, someone could sit and mesmerize you with a story or a point of view was a revelation. To hear Eric Andersen sing “Thirsty Boots” was a romantic notion of a different kind of life where somebody incessantly traveled and needed to move; if nothing else, things like that make you aware that there’s a whole other world out there. How much of it you want to see is up to you, but I always found that music was a portal into a life that I wasn’t part of but on some level wanted to experience.

  We can only be as deep as our experiences. We draw from our musical travels, and in my case, even if on the surface some of those places may seem irrelevant, they’re all part of it. All the various pieces contribute to a mosaic that represents the richness of our lives and experiences. It’s all there, adding to the detail and color.

  In food circles, people talk about layers of flavors and a flavor profile. Well, you don’t get that from one ingredient; you get that from a balance of many. And God knows I’m not original in the sense that I created something new as a vocalist. The proportions and balance of those who inspired me are what created me.

  In the lore of rock and roll, there are legendary, almost tragic-heroic figures who were said to be can’t-miss talents but who never made it—people like the 1960s British singers Frankie Miller and Terry Reid. Terry was rumored to have been the first choice to front Led Zeppelin and later to have been offered the vocalist slot with Deep Purple. Instead, nobody’s heard of him. Frankie Miller sounds like the blueprint for Rod Stewart. And sometimes I wonder: Could I have lived like Frankie Miller or Terry Reid? Could I have maintained the same passion if it hadn’t led to commercial success along the way? Well, the truth is, I had no interest in not having commercial success.

  I suppose everybody wants to be famous. But what are we doing to reach that goal?

  Don’t kid yourself, the bands that have done the best didn’t fall into their success, and they certainly didn’t sustain it by accident. Nobody who’s around for decades stays there by chance. It’s work, it’s thinking things through, and regardless of what they say, it’s a hunger and thirst to stay successful. If you don’t have that from the start, you won’t achieve success, and you certainly won’t sustain it. You have to be clear about what you want and how to get it. Without a plan and a work ethic, you might as well say you want to fly.

  What separated Robert Plant from Terry Reid? What separated Rod Stewart from Frankie Miller? Probably everything other than their talent. It’s how hard they worked.

  The playing field is not level. I don’t think it is in any aspect of life. But opportunities are there for the person who works hardest. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying it’s fun. It’s that much tougher for somebody with a facial difference or a physical disability. Even so, it’s possible.

  Is it fair? No. But if we let “fair” hold us back, then we become victims. And that’s not acceptable. No matter how much we cry foul, only we will suffer in the end.

  We can’t win if we don’t fight. We can’t win if we don’t play. So for me, at the worst times, it’s always been about fighting to get through it.

  I’ve never had a feeling of hopelessness. I’ve had feelings of despair, but I’ve never believed that any situation was permanent. We have to take control and acknowledge our pain and then move through it. Hope is based on shaping the future, not on seeing today as permanent. And that is the key to being able to dream big.

  Of course, the future doesn’t happen on its own. We make it happen. And hope is just acknowledging our own role, our own agency. The future is never set in stone, and for that reason alone, there is always hope.

  I can’t imagine giving up. It’s so against my nature.

  Because I really believe that we are the masters of our own destiny.

  4

  A Fighting Optimism

  Sometimes people say to me, “I’m thinking of pursuing music.”

  And I say, “Don’t.”

  If you have to think about it, you shouldn’t do it. Do it only if you are compelled to do it.

  I didn’t really have a say in what I was going to do. I did it and do it because I have to. If you’re considering a career in music, don’t bother. You need to have a passion, an insatiable passion that you won’t compromise.

  There’s a gap between feeling compelled to do something and making it happen, though, and the bridge is an empowered sense of hopefulness. Ultimately I have an outlook rooted in optimism—but a fighting optimism, not a passive optimism. An optimism of agency. An optimism that I have the power to make my life what I want it to be—as opposed to just wishing
everything turns out okay on its own.

  The difference between someone who wants to be something and someone who’s actually going to accomplish it is also a sense of structure and a sense of steps—a process. It’s not enough to want something. We can want it all we want, but if we don’t have a sequence or a battle plan, it won’t work.

  Take my friend Chris Jericho. Chris was told he was too short to be a professional wrestler. But he decided to ignore the rules. He decided he would work harder than anybody else—and he made it.

  The rules only stand until they’re broken—and that is the essence of dreaming big.

  I’ll never have the foundation, background, or technique necessary to be a great chef, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t go forward. The idea that I paint or don’t paint based on my knowledge of painting is self-defeating; whether I cook or not should also not be based on actually knowing what I’m doing. Again, that’s self-defeating—after all, who knows anything when they first start? We can’t get anywhere without taking that first step.

  It’s been said that the secret to getting ahead is getting started. Though that doesn’t mean we can’t ask questions when we need to.

  I like stumbling around when I get started on something. Actually, that’s kind of how I approached the guitar. I took a few lessons and then went off on my own. Later I tried another teacher, but I found that she didn’t want me to go ahead of her lesson plans. So if I was supposed to practice one particular thing before a lesson but ended up working on additional stuff, that wasn’t okay with her.

  But that kind of approach just isn’t in my nature. I like people to be there if I have questions, but don’t tell me to slow down.

  If we acknowledge, identify, and embrace who we are and what we are, then the potential is that much greater. I’ve painted entire pieces with a palette knife. In a sense, I wanted to tie one hand behind my back, not have the ability to add detail but rather to give the impression of things and then let the viewer’s eye fill in the rest. I did that purposely to steer myself away from what I don’t do well anyway. I’m not going to paint photorealistic pieces.

  Identify who you are and what you are, and then embrace that rather than fight it in order to be something else.

  If we define what we’re incapable of, then we embrace what’s possible. We eliminate the waste of going after what’s futile or the things that don’t represent who we are. By removing that waste, we embrace our full potential. It goes back to this: if I had decided to become a mathematician or a rocket scientist, I’d be broke. By eliminating the things that were out of the question, I gave myself that much more potential to do what was possible.

  Of course, there were things I thought at one time were impossible for me, only to find later that my assessment had changed. For example, there was a time when I genuinely thought it would be impossible to be a good father, and yet I evolved.

  Part of learning, part of exploration, is changing our horizons.

  In the beginning, I just wanted to be happy. Simple, right? Well, that turned out to be pretty complex. And when I thought about being a parent, I knew I wanted to be a good parent, but I didn’t believe I had the wherewithal. Both of those things came with time and work—and, in fact, informed each other. After all, how good a parent can we be if we don’t know ourselves and aren’t comfortable with who we are?

  Those sorts of transformations don’t happen overnight, but becoming a good parent and a fundamentally happy person have been perhaps the most rewarding accomplishments of my life. And they are also the sorts of transformations that led me to other possibilities: painting, theater, cooking, writing—whatever it is. I pursued becoming a famous musician with everything I had because, for one thing, I knew I was capable of it. When I saw the Beatles, I said to myself, “I can do that.” Well, based on what? I couldn’t play the guitar. I was deaf in one ear. And yet, without intellectualizing it, I innately knew: I can do that. The other thing pushing me along was that I was desperate to be happy. But I found out once I had achieved music stardom that I still wasn’t happy—and that realization moved me ahead of where I’d been.

  Accomplishing whatever we set out to do is the stepping stone to another level. It’s another rung on the ladder. We never know where we’re going to end up. We can only start, and once we start, every step we take, we can see a little more clearly ahead of us.

  Of course, oftentimes we need a guide. We need somebody to show us options, show us techniques.

  When it came to singing in The Phantom of the Opera—when I took over the lead in the production in Toronto in 1999—I saw the challenges. I had difficulty figuring out how to remedy certain things vocally, so I met with a few vocal coaches until I finally came across somebody who got it. He understood, and he said to me, “They hired you because of the way you sing. Don’t change the way you sing.” Which was a relief, because another coach I’d seen had foisted a completely new technique on me. His technique changed my tone dramatically, which was difficult with only two and a half weeks before I opened in the show. Thankfully, here was somebody who said, “They hired you because they like what you have. Let’s just deal with the little issues. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let’s address what needs to be addressed.”

  Experts in various fields can tell when someone is eager to learn something, and maybe they take that as an appreciation of what they do. It’s very inviting when somebody else is interested in what you do and wants to learn. I know it’s always appealing to me. I helped a young man get into college a few years back. He wanted to pursue music, and his family asked if I could help. I sat down with him, and he played me a song to impress me. My role, I felt, was to be constructively critical—not to demean him or to discourage him, but to help him. After he got over the shock of my not being bowled over by his music—he said to me later that everybody always told him how great he was—he wanted more. That quality is hard to turn away from—when somebody looks to you as a mentor. It’s not about my ego; it’s more about paying it forward—and another way to live on in another generation. With this young man, I got to help somebody achieve what he wanted.

  These kinds of situations aren’t forgotten—by us or by the person we’re helping. They are opportunities for us to share our knowledge with somebody else to help them achieve their goals, their dreams.

  5

  The Only Rule Should Be: No Rules

  We have a choice in life. We can choose whether to spend life saying “Why?” or to spend it saying “Why not?”

  I’ve gotten the most out of life when I’ve said “Why not?”

  Honestly, we can’t know what’s behind a door if we don’t open it. Unless there are insurmountable, irreparable consequences, we have far more to gain than we have to lose by taking a crack at something.

  Unlike some people, I’d rather fuck up than not try.

  Thinking there are finite goals in life narrows our potential to take the ultimate journey, to take the ultimate trip. It limits us in what we’re looking for or looking at. We don’t get to absorb what’s going on around us, which may affect where we ultimately want to go. The work we do to get where we think we want to go should get us where we actually go. Because life is fluid, and the goal we’re pursuing shouldn’t be finite. In the process, we may decide that where we’ve gone isn’t where we want to be, so we decide to go elsewhere. We can’t be too fixed in what we see as necessary accomplishments, because along our way we may find something more important, and if we have tunnel vision, it may blind us to our potential. Something that may appear to be a diversion could actually be the more rewarding path.

  It’s a problem when we set goals for ourselves that constrict us from changing course. The goal of KISS in 1973 was: find a manager. But if we had stuck to the well-trodden path, we’d never have found Bill Aucoin. And without Bill, who knows how things would have gone? Maybe a different manager would have tried to push us toward conventional decisions, and we never would have b
ecome the KISS that is recognized and loved forty-five years later.

  When it came to realizing our dream as KISS, we broke every rule in the book. Most of what we’ve done is contrary to what would seem logical. When people say, “Why did you choose Peter or Ace?” or “Why did you choose to work with Gene?” the answer is surprisingly simple: because it felt right.

  Honestly, nothing about the four of us would’ve necessarily put us all in the same band. If we had tried to put together a band of like-minded people, we would’ve ended up with different people in the band. There’s no way we would’ve come together.

  Once we joined forces and started to write songs and play out, it didn’t seem strange to us to go with Bill Aucoin—who had no experience in management—as our manager. It was no more strange than wearing white makeup and making our own T-shirts. We knew exactly what we were doing. Going with the status quo or listening to people say “Be like us” is something I’ve never had any interest in—whether it was putting on the makeup, taking off the makeup, having a manager who had never managed, signing with a record company that had no real experience with a rock band—the list goes on. Just doing things the way that felt right, as opposed to the way that everybody else did them, seemed totally natural.

  I’m glad that following the rules works for some people. But it doesn’t work for me. Never has. And that’s one of the keys to my success.

  Why not?

  Even though our manager had never managed anybody, he clearly understood the band. We were a band with white makeup and eight-inch heels. We weren’t what was currently popular at that time—we weren’t John Denver. There had never been a band like ours, so why shouldn’t we try a manager who wasn’t like existing managers? The normal way of doing things can give normal results. Extraordinary ways of doing things can give extraordinary results.