KISS

On 2 December 2023, at Madison Square Garden, KISS played for the last time.

They closed with "Rock and Roll All Nite", everything went dark, and an announcement came up on the screens: a new era begins. Then four digital avatars of the band walked out and played one more song.

Since that night, KISS exists as a drawing. It is the most consistent ending available to a band that had spent fifty years arguing that the character matters more than the person.

Someone else wears the make-up

That idea did not start in 2023. It had been in place for forty years.

Of the four founders, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley left. And their characters stayed: the Catman and the Spaceman kept coming out on stage, in the same make-up, on the faces of Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer.

Criss's exit was not friendly. He tells it himself: he sabotaged a show on purpose so they would fire him, and after a kick in the leg from Gene Simmons he went back to the dressing room, smashed a champagne bottle and came at him with the glass until they were pulled apart.

In 2014, when KISS were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the band did not play. There was no agreement on which line-up would go up, and Criss and Frehley warned that they would boycott the ceremony if other musicians walked on stage wearing their make-up.

The band's answer was that that line-up had not existed for a long time.

16 October 2025

Ace Frehley died in Morristown, New Jersey, at the age of seventy-four.

He fell in his studio and hit his head: a skull fracture, a haematoma and a stroke. The autopsy ruled it an accident.

What happened afterwards is worth telling, because you cannot write about KISS without it. Gene Simmons publicly suggested that some bad decisions had contributed to that death and cast doubt on the autopsy, even though Frehley had been sober for two decades.

Paul Stanley, his own partner of fifty years, said those statements were cold and tactless. In December 2025 Simmons apologised: he said that on rereading his words he could see how much they had hurt.

Of the four originals, Simmons, Stanley and Criss are left. Eric Carr, the drummer who replaced Criss, also died, as did Mark St. John.

The empire, with the part nobody tells

The business side is real and it is enormous: KISS has licensed its name to more than three thousand product categories. Dolls, comics, lunchboxes, pinball machines, credit cards, condoms.

And coffins, which people usually take for a joke. It was not. The KISS Kasket really existed, and in 2004 Dimebag Darrell, the guitarist of Pantera, was buried in one, donated by Simmons himself at the family's request. His brother Vinnie Paul was buried in another in 2018.

But the story of the infallible commercial genius needs a correction, and it comes from 1978.

That year they put out four solo albums on the same day, one per member. Casablanca spent two and a half million dollars on promotion and announced that it would ship five million copies to shops, guaranteeing platinum.

Shipping is not selling. The returns were bigger than the shipments. The line stuck in the industry: they went out platinum and came back double platinum.

"Beth", and who wrote it

Their highest-charting single in the United States is none of the party anthems. It is "Beth", a ballad with orchestra that reached number seven, sung by the drummer.

It is credited to Peter Criss, Stan Penridge and Bob Ezrin.

Simmons has stated that Criss had nothing to do with that song. Criss answered that the melody and the phrasing came out of an earlier demo of his, made with Penridge and titled differently.

Ezrin, who produced the record, backed Criss: he said he does not remember it the way Simmons tells it, and that the original song was by Criss and Penridge.

What they did invent, and what they did not

It is worth being fair in both directions.

They did not invent theatre in rock. Alice Cooper was already doing spectacle and make-up before them, and the New York Dolls had already gone out dressed the way they dressed.

What KISS did was industrialise it. Turn the costume into a system with four fixed characters, rules and continuity, and hold to the rule of never being photographed without make-up for almost ten years. They took it off on television on 18 September 1983, and it was news.

Everything that came afterwards — Van Halen filling stadiums, Poison with the hairspray and the lights — stands on ground they cleared.

What is worth remembering

KISS is the proof that a character can outlive the person who invented it, which is what they wanted from day one and also what gives it a certain chill.

Put on "Detroit Rock City", "Rock and Roll All Nite" or "I Was Made for Lovin' You" and you will hear direct hard rock, without pretension, made to be shouted in chorus. And put on "Beth", which is the one that sold most and sounds like none of the others.

But if you are going to tell their story, tell all of it. The band stopped playing in 2023 and now some avatars do it. Two of the four founders have spent decades watching other people go out with their faces painted. And one of them died in October 2025.

Remember them like this: the best in the world at mounting a show, and a story a good deal less festive than their songs.

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Sources

KISS, an American hard rock band formed in New York in 1973 by Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, with a character and make-up of their own for each member: The Demon, The Starchild, The Spaceman and The Catman. For almost a decade they kept to the rule of never appearing in public without make-up, which they abandoned on a television programme on 18 September 1983, coinciding with the premiere of the video for "Lick It Up". Peter Criss left the band in 1980, after an episode of confrontation with Gene Simmons that he has recounted himself, and Ace Frehley in 1982; their characters were later taken on by the drummer Eric Singer and the guitarist Tommy Thayer. At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2014 the band did not perform: there was no agreement on the line-up, and Criss and Frehley announced that they would not attend if other musicians played in their make-up. The band's last concert with its members was held on 2 December 2023 at Madison Square Garden in New York, and ended with the presentation of digital avatars of the group. Ace Frehley died on 16 October 2025 in Morristown, New Jersey, aged 74, from a head injury caused by a fall at his home; the autopsy determined that it was an accident. After his death, Gene Simmons made public statements attributing the outcome to the guitarist's personal decisions, which Paul Stanley called cold and tactless, and for which Simmons apologised publicly in December 2025. The drummer Eric Carr and the guitarist Mark St. John have also died. The band has licensed its brand to more than three thousand product categories, including the KISS Kasket, a coffin in which the Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell was buried in 2004, donated by Simmons himself at his family's request, and his brother Vinnie Paul in 2018. In September 1978 they released four solo albums simultaneously, one per member, with a two-and-a-half-million-dollar campaign and a shipment of five million copies to shops; returns exceeded sales. "Beth", their highest-charting single on the Billboard Hot 100, at number seven, is credited to Peter Criss, Stan Penridge and Bob Ezrin; Gene Simmons has publicly questioned Criss's authorship, and Criss has maintained that the song comes from an earlier demo written with Penridge, a version backed by the producer Bob Ezrin. The group were not pioneers of theatre in rock, a practice already developed by Alice Cooper and the New York Dolls, but they systematised it on an industrial scale. Van Halen and Poison have profiles of their own in this series. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from NPR, Variety, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Ultimate Classic Rock and other coverage.