Kiss and Make-Up (28 page)

By 1981 my relationship with Cher had changed. We were still seeing each other, but we had moved on.

Even though its shape had shifted, the relationship had changed me permanently. Up through my late twenties, I had been dead set against anything and anyone getting in my way. As much as I loved women, the idea of a relationship struck me as impossibly confining. When you have a serious girlfriend or a wife, life is full of commands: sit, stay, roll over. I didn’t want to learn new tricks. I wanted to grow to be an old dog and lift my leg and pee anywhere I chose. I thought I knew myself well enough to say that I would never “give in,” or be in a relationship that limited my happiness, or never have children. I wanted to be completely selfish because, in some ways, I wanted to be fair and not start something I wouldn’t finish. A lot of men get in relationships, have children, and then walk out. Like my father. I didn’t want to become my father.

Then came the relationship with Cher, and it hit me like a truck. I was so taken off guard that I started doing everything I thought I wouldn’t normally do. I wore shorts. I pulled my hair back. I allowed myself to be happy in simpler ways, with simpler things. When Cher and I decided to change things there was no pain or anguish, because neither of us had tortured the other. From what I have seen, so many relationships are based on intense extremes of love or hate. The first phase is all about love and devotion, this feeling that you would do anything for the other person. Then things go wrong, and couples become venomously vengeful, and anything and everything is fair game. That wasn’t the way Cher and I were, ever. When it began to end, I reminded myself how wonderful she was and how lucky I had been to have known her, and prepared to go back to my whoring ways. The last thing I expected was to meet another woman and start another serious relationship.

It was Christmastime, and I had to return to New York from California to audition new drummers to replace Peter. I was talking to Cher, because we were still close, and she asked me to get her a Christmas present.

“I don’t know what to buy you for Christmas,” I said.

“Go and talk to my friend Diana. She’ll show you what I like. We shop at the same places.” This was Diana Ross, who had begun her career with the Supremes, become not only Motown’s biggest star but one of the biggest stars in the world, and then had gone on to an immensely successful solo career, both in music and in movies. She was more than a singer. She was an icon.

When I came into New York, I tracked down Diana on the phone, and she invited me over to her place. I remember coming in and immediately thinking two things about her: first, that she was very sensual, and second, that she was in firm control of her career. At that point she was taking steps to leave Motown, and she seemed to know a lot about her career. I sat there and we talked. She wanted to know how KISS worked since our success didn’t rely on hit singles. I tried to explain our philosophy, of playing concerts and creating a fan base that was founded on loyalty, not on hit songs. This was the polar opposite to the kind of career Diana had built, but I could tell that it interested her, and she wanted to understand it better. While we were talking, she made coffee, and then she offered me a piece of chocolate cake. This isn’t a euphemism. I inhaled it so quickly that she offered me a second piece, and that one went away too.

Over the next few weeks, Diana and I became friends. We talked and I took her to dinner a few times. We even played racquetball. I was a pretty good player, and Diana had never played before, so we spent most of our time on the floor of the court laughing about how fast the ball was going. We didn’t think much of it, and I’m not sure that either of us had any hidden agenda, but pretty quickly it became apparent something was happening between us.

Diana was a strong woman and there wasn’t any real pressure on me to be the centerpiece of her life. I admired how she conducted her personal life. She had been married to Bob Silverstein, and I was
struck by the fact that she was still close to him. He was a good guy and we got along.

Being with Diana was a combination of joys. That is, I’d like to think, everyone’s hope—that a relationship can exist on more than sexual energy, like the ability to sit and actually like being with each other. Diana and I would talk about lots of things. I confided in her early on how I was scared of having kids and that I thought I would never get married. She seemed to know something I didn’t but never preached to me. She clearly loved her children and, I would like to think, wanted the same joy for me, but she never pushed the idea that I should become a father.

In the back of my mind, perhaps to justify my fear of commitment, was the notion that men don’t seem to go through their lives agonizing over when it is time to have children. We don’t have a biological clock. If we have any kind of clock, it probably goes off within a day or two if we don’t have some kind of “companionship.” Women, on the other hand, are reminded of wanting children all the time—culturally and, I think, biologically.

Being in KISS afforded me the opportunity of an inexhaustible supply of beautiful girls who simply wanted to be with me—perhaps only because I was in KISS. And the only thing they wanted was what I wanted too. Society’s rules didn’t apply in my hotel room, or on the bus, or wherever I would have liaisons. In another environment a girl might first want to get to know a prospective suitor and be taken out to dinner; inside my bedroom it was clearly “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.” No what-does-it-all-mean sermon. No dinner. Just dessert. And they didn’t mind sharing. The more the merrier. If I took one of these ladies with me for a week, it would start beautifully, but within a few days it would become clear that lust is one thing, companionship another. I wanted not only to bed a beautiful girl, but I also wanted to talk to her. I wanted her to have something to say back to me. To disagree with me. To give me a run for my money. Well, let’s not go that far.

If I was in the studio, she would wait for me. If I wanted to go someplace, she would want to go there too. Now, mind you, this sounds like the kind of situation any guy would dream of, but aside
from the joys of having some young, lusty girl share my bed, the waking hours tended to grow stale with her.

There was a constant pull and tug inside of me. On the one hand, I craved and clearly loved being in bed in the arms of a beauty, but I also loved to cuddle. I always wanted to be with girls, but I didn’t want them to want me—not too much, at least.

I had invented myself. I had come from another culture and had experienced a totally different reality than others I knew. Once I came to America, I soon discovered the secret of the great melting pot: I had been born in Israel, spoke a gutteral language, wore a yarmulke, and was of the “chosen” persuasion. If I was to get everything I ever wanted out of life, I would have to “dress British, think Yiddish.”

Gene Simmons was
my
name. I gave myself that name, I wasn’t given the name. There are many things in life that we don’t have control over. We are born into a race and nationality. We are raised to follow a certain religion. We are raised to speak a certain language. We are given a first and last name by our parents. We don’t have any choice in the matter. And then we are expected to marry and have children, within our religion and our race.

I would have none of it. I would decide how I would live my life. Who I would share my bed with. And I damn well couldn’t care less what anyone else thought. At the end of my life, I will have done or attempted anything I ever wanted to do. I will have no regrets. I will not think “I woulda, coulda, shoulda …”

Life should be about choices, and only I was going to choose what was right for me. The only problem was that by the time I met and fell for Diana Ross, I had started to like the idea of having children. I didn’t admit it to myself. Not then. But I remember walking into Diana’s home in Connecticut and feeling the love she and her three girls shared. I liked being there.

It felt safe. I was surrounded by children. I was living with a woman I loved being with, day and night. But they weren’t my children and we weren’t married. Being with Diana was liberating. She didn’t need me to fulfill her life. She was a mother and a superstar. We were together because we wanted to be.

I brought Diana and the kids over to my mother’s house for Passover dinner. We spent one summer together at Martha’s Vineyard. It was the first time I didn’t think about work. Not all the time, anyway.

The guys in the band thought I was completely insane by now. I was. I was the guy in the band who was constantly on the hunt for skirt, but here I was settling into domestic life. For the second time!

After
UNMASKED
came out
in 1980, we started to look for a new drummer. Auditions were held in downtown New York City. Hundreds of people auditioned. Finally we got in this guy who was a stove cleaner in White Plains, New York, whose name was Paul Caravello.

Paul answered one of the ads, and I’ll never forget his audition. He came in and he had the biggest head of hair I’d ever seen. He almost looked like a Muppet. And he was shorter than any of us. Peter had been the shortest too, but Paul was even shorter, maybe five-five. Still, he was great from the start, cute as a button, with a heart of gold. At the end of the audition, he actually got up and thanked us and said, “Before I leave, can I have your autograph?” It struck us all, even Ace, as being a sweet thing. He wanted this break so badly, in such a pure way. While working as a stove cleaner, he’d been in bands on and off and was actually a much better drummer than Peter and sang with good pitch. He was an all-around better thing for KISS than Peter was at that point.

I found it more interesting talking to John Reid, who was Elton John’s manager in 1980, than to anyone else. As a performer I knew one side of the music industry, but I wanted to learn more about the business side as well.

Once he left the audition, we immediately decided he should be in the band. We called him up and offered him the job, and he couldn’t believe it. We changed his name from Paul Caravello to Eric Carr, and we even went out and bought him a Porsche so he wouldn’t feel substandard. We wanted him to know that he was in the fold, that he was one of us.

On the Australia tour in 1980 we took over a restaurant. I really wasn’t as sad as I looked, sitting there next to that lovely lady.

Bringing Eric into the band the way we did—just before a tour, with very little preparation and tons of enthusiasm—was like living the beginning of our careers all over again. It was an astonishing thing to watch him take on his new role, and to watch ourselves try to integrate him. First, there was the matter of his personality within the band: What was his character going to be? What was his makeup going to be? Was he going to be an elephant or a giraffe? For an ordinary band his personality might have been an issue; for KISS it was an issue times ten. For a while we decided that Eric would look like a hawk, but later he came up with a fox persona. We introduced him by playing at the Palladium in New York City, to a crowd of about three thousand people. That was the trial by fire, and he passed with flying colors. Then we went off to Europe, taking Bon Jovi on their first European tour.

Everything was brand-new for Eric. He was wide-eyed as we started our European tour and not used to the kind of fame we were experiencing. One night we were in a hotel in England, and he was downstairs in the bar. There were girls there, as always. One of them introduced herself as a photographer for
Melody Maker
, a British music industry paper. Eric talked to her for a while and gave her the complete new-rock-star rap. At one point he asked her if she wanted to come up and take nude pictures of him. She said, “Sure.” So they went up, and apparently he had told her, “Look, these pictures are just for you.” She said that she understood completely. Eric got into a bathtub nude, holding a champagne glass with shades on and this big mop-top head of hair. Apparently they didn’t spend the night together—after she took the pictures, she took off. The next day Eric related the story to us. We doubled over laughing. It was like Trust on the Road 101. “Are you out of your mind?” we said. “This girl is going to print those photos.” Eric protested for a second, but then the truth dawned on him. “Oh, my God!” he said. “You think she will?” Of course she did.