Everybody has a KISS story. The first time they saw the band live, the first time they heard the band play, the urban legend of their wild tour stories – KISS are the quintessential rock band, and have been so for the past 50 years. Now coming to Dubai’s Coca-Cola Arena on October 13, 2023 – they are nearing to the end of their last ever tour: ‘End Of The Road‘, lead guitarist Paul “Starchild” Stanley dives deep in the stories behind the myths, revealing what he’s learned as a pivotal part of one of the biggest bands in history.
We’ve been on our final ‘End of the Road Tour’ for years now. Covid interrupted it all, so we actually should have been done a few years ago, but it’s been fantastic to continue touring and playing live. Although now it’s getting mighty close to the actual end of it—our final ever show in December in New York.
There was never a temptation to call the tour off after COVID. It wouldn’t have been fair to the fans, or us, because we still love touring. It’s getting mighty close to the night where we finally say goodbye—it’s really gonna be over.
KISS are looked up to as superheroes. People keep telling me, “oh you’ll go back out on tour again,” and the real truth is no, we wont. I think when people are saying that, they are really just saying: “Please go back out”
Our final show is a spectacular one. Is this the biggest show we’ve ever done? Yeah. Is it the best show we’ve ever done? Yeah. We know what we’re doing, and we’re going out with our fists up in the air. It’s a victory lap at the Olympics.
We set the swimming pool at Atlantis on fire the last time we were in Dubai. It was a New Year’s Eve show but it was in the midst of Covid. We were literally locked in the hotel, as were the rest of the guests and it was totally surreal.
We are fans of KISS. It’s great to be in the band, but first and foremost we are fans. As a fan I know what I want to see from a KISS gig. No one comes away disappointed.
We’re not a ‘blue hair’ band. So much of our audience is new. The people who come to our gigs aren’t just people who were there from the beginning, there are generations of new fans, and people who haven’t see us before but they’ve heard the legend of KISS.
Everyone seems to have a KISS story. There is an emotional connection that we make with the audience. People remember where they were when they first heard a song, or their first show—that’s not the norm with bands, but it’s part of what makes our band special.
Art that stands the test of time does so because it connects to you emotionally. It’s not an intellectual connection. What makes an Italian opera so amazing is that it can elicit a real
emotional connection from you, even though you might not even know what it’s saying. You can stand in a gallery looking at a painting and don’t know why you are so captivated by it—an emotional connection is much more primal than an intellectual one.
You can’t look like KISS, but you can feel like KISS. That’s why so many people come to our shows with the face paint on.
When we first came on the scene all the studded collars that we wore came from a pet store. You couldn’t buy a rock’n’roll choker in the 1970s, and a German Sheppard collar fits really well around my neck.
A lot of what we wore came from us being resourceful. Back then you could look like the Rolling Stones or Jimi Hendrix, but there weren’t shops where you could buy clothes that made you look like KISS. We would buy leathers from S&M shops.
Fashionwise, we were the black sheep of the music industry. We did what we liked doing, wearing shirts with metal studs on them. It was out there at the time, and eventually it
changed the way people thought about fashion in music.
When we took off the face paint [in 1983] and stayed that way for about 12 years, at that point we were very much a generic-looking rock band. We decided to take off the KISS gear because we felt like we had lost our way a little bit. We said to each other ‘if we’re a band worth surviving, then let’s see if we can survive without the make-up on.’ The thing was, it worked! After that our sales skyrocketed compared to our previous couple of KISS make-up era albums.
We re-embraced the make-up look in 1996 when we felt that we had proved to ourselves that we were more than just a gimmick. We wanted to go back and embrace our roots, and thought, hell, if the wheel ain’t broke…
People ask me if there is a ‘modern day KISS’ and, frankly, the answer is ‘no’. There are some great bands and acts out there doing great things – like the Foo Fighters, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift – but there’ll only ever be one KISS.
KISS: End Of The Road, Oct 13, 9pm, Coca Cola Arena, Dubai. coca-cola-arena.com