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Paul Stanley's autobio is an exercise in greatness


PowerButchi

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Have we many Kiss fans here? I'm not really one. I like Goin' Blind and Deuce but thats pretty much it. I find them as a band and their dynamics and shit fascinating though and recently foud the audiobook of Paul Stanley's autobio on youtube. It's great. He's such an absolutre fucking arsehole.

 

His parents? Wankers wouldn't give him material possessions

Peter Criss? Couldn't read, couldn't play drums, piss head, egomaniac, wanker.

Ace Frehley? Pisshead, druggie, delusional, anti-semite, food thief, possible Nazi, wanker.

Gene Simmons? Cunt, fat bastard, didn't go to my wedding, egomaniac, ripoff artist, literally a penny grabber, gloryhog, wanker. Best mate.

Eric Carr? Fan boy, not a rockstar, short, spilled wine on himself once, dead of cancer so free to be accused of drug addiction with no comeback. Wanker

Vinnie Vincent? Looked like a girl, had shit hair, short, played too long guitar solos, ethnic real name, wanker

Michael St John? Had a bad wrist, used to fart, wanker.

 

Its possibly my new favourite book of al time. The total twatness of Stanley is a joy to behold. Here's a flavour of it

 

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I'm currently reading Vince Neil's autobiography. The first thing he says is he doesn't really want to do it, his memory is terrible, he can't really read, he never read "the Dirt" (mötley crüe's joint book)and he'll never read this one either and he hopes it's good. The ghost writer then proceeds to make him look like a fucking idiot because I don't think he can be arsed with Vince's nonsense.

I love rock autobiographies, they're stupid and fun and I live music stuff. Will definitely check out Paul Stanley's.

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8 minutes ago, PowerButchi said:

Gene Simmons? Cunt, fat bastard, didn't go to my wedding, egomaniac, ripoff artist, litterally a penny grabber, gloryhog, wanker. Best mate.

That’s a great summary.

Never been a fan as such. But really fascinated by them as an entity. A handful of songs I’d possibly chuck on as a last option on a jukebox, but not a band that would make a playlist (maybe their version of ‘God Gave Rock & Roll To You’ because of Bill & Ted).

Their fans seem obsessive, a bit like wrestling fans, they seem to have A LOT of super fans.

Out of curiosity, was there anything sketchy mentioned, the kind of shit that could come back to haunt them? I get the impression there’s a lot to unearth.

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Nothing about Paul Stanley, he is God seemingly. His treatment of Eric Carr is especially galling. He died of cancer while still in the band, so has no recourse against any allegations. Then Stanley says he wouldn't be surprised if he was a drug addict, then decided he may well have been, then just flat out accuses him of being high all the time.

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10 minutes ago, PowerButchi said:

Nothing about Paul Stanley, he is God seemingly. His treatment of Eric Carr is especially galling. He died of cancer while still in the band, so has no recourse against any allegations. Then Stanley says he wouldn't be surprised if he was a drug addict, then decided he may well have been, then just flat out accuses him of being high all the time.

This is how all autobiographies should be written. It just sounds like a YouShoot episode. 

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14 minutes ago, PowerButchi said:

Nothing about Paul Stanley, he is God seemingly.

Love it when people write autobiographies and it miraculously turns out that they haven't done anything wrong in their life ever. 

Ken Livingstone is the undisputed king of this. 650 pages and one unqualified example of him getting something wrong. Richard Nixon's memoirs showed more self-awareness than Ken's.

As others have said, I don't give a shit about Kiss' music, but reading about them as an entity is fascinating. As wrestling a band as there has ever been.

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I started Paul’s book a couple of months back and haven’t been back to it yet, but I’ve read up to the extreme beginning of KISS. Everything up to that point has been either “I was a star in a band full of fuckwits” or “there were only 2 people in the band could play, me and Person X, who wasn’t as good as me”. Absolute gold and I’m looking forward to finishing it

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@PowerButchi Paul Stanley is of the small penis club, which makes for a fantastic autobiography. He cant take any criticism, he's massively insecure and we find out he only had one ear until the 90s! I was reading that going "fucking what?" Apparently he was born with a post-Vader match ear, and didnt get the full surgery until the 90s. So he always kept it hidden. He revealed that kids used to call him "Stanley the One Earred Monster" which is a better nickname than the "Starchild." Everyone gets it. Slash, Nikki Sixx, his Mam and Dad. He hates every fucker. The best bit is where he's planning on proposing to Donna Dixon only to find out she married Dan Aykroid while he was on tour.

The Ace Frehley thing is hilarious, because he spends ages accusing him of being a nazi, who showed up to Gene Simmons hotel door dressed in full costume doing the Hilter salute. Then after the book is released it turns out it was actually Ace, Peter and Paul himself who had done the deed. Which he brilliantly fails to mention.

nazikiss.jpg

In fairness to him, the "I was in a band full of fuckwits" is probably true. He had major star appeal, great showman in his day, but the gimmick overtook the band so he was never truly put up there with Bon Jovi and Steven Tyler. People just see him as the cliche-ridden clown man who is possibly gay. Simmons hasnt been a musician since about 1976. He took the 1980s off to do films with Tom Selleck and never quite got back on track. Ace and Peter are major fuck ups, and the the members who came into the replace them were all mostly good players, but are just employees. So essentially its been Paul Stanley at the wheel for decades. I get his frustration.

Stanley in 2018 is knackered, though. His voice is shot to shit. Shame.

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I've got a copy of The Dirt somewhere. It's hilarious in places. I've got a Kiss biography somewhere as well, but it disappeared when I moved house a few years ago.

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Glam metal sucks. That's not an opinion borne out of some "it goes against my metal code" bollocks, more something derived from the fact that the musicianship is usually a complete afterthought. It does books better than it does albums. Fuck me, though, does it produce some brilliant ones. Populated with the kind of unhygienic, misogynist creatures who make the po faced, actual theistic satanist Norwegian lads look like charmers. 

Rock books are my go to when I'm breaking up a spell of serious reading, or a big long fantasy series. I've read the Motley Crue ones as a teen, but I'll have to get stuck into this Paul Stanley excrement. I remember reading Manson's one years ago which somehow managed to be more rotten than I'd imagined yet also completely demystified him. There's some stuff in it about how their roadie in the old days would wrangle up vulnerable young fans so the band could videotape confessions out of them backstage about all the rotten stuff that had gone on in their lives. But then there's camp "I feel Christianity falling. Our scabbed wings spread ever further tonight" bits that are interluded with naff lists like what is or isn't gay, rules for drug taking etc. Who said goths can't be jocks?

Andrew O'Neill's 'A History of Heavy Metal' is a great one. The actual history of it is like a primer so you'd probably know it all. Kind of like watching something now about the Monday Night Wars. But it's funny as fuck and full of a genuine love for metal and all its craziness. 

Elsewhere I read Alex Jame's book on a flight once because they had it at the airport. It's all about how much champagne he drank with Damien Hirst. 

I think Julian Cope might have the best rock book ever, though. The two part autobio. Not the gnostic time travelling novel. Or the one about stone circles. I love Julian Cope. 

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KISS are everything and nothing at the same time, though. Its hard to call them glam when they basically tried to jump on every fad going.

Early 70s, they started as a hippy band called Wicked Lester. Turned into Alice Cooper style theatrical hard rockers. Became a stadium hit when they became the Osmands style cartoony band with TV movies, comic books and all kinds of gimmicks. Wrote a fucking Disco hit in 1978. Released a prog rock style concept album for a film that never got made. Tried to be a heavy act again to reinvent themselves and when that failed took the makeup off and put blusher on and tried to be an MTV video band around the time Bon Jovi, Poison and Motley Crue were kings. Then did a complete turn around and tried being a grunge band in their 40s, before settling on a nostalgia run of their most successful peroid.

There are no values in that band, but they've mad some great music. It gets lost because they chase the dollar and dont give a fuck about credibility, they have had some excellent albums. Funnily enough, their best work tends to be the ones when they are at their least commercial appealing. Hotter Than Hell (1974), Dressed To Kill (1975), Creatures of the Night (1982), Hotter In the Shade (1989) and Revenge (1992) were piss poor sellers when they were first released, but generally considered great albums. And rightly so.

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8 minutes ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

Hotter Than Hell (1974), Dressed To Kill (1975), Creatures of the Night (1982), Hotter Than Hell (1989

Surprised Hotter Than Hell wasn't a commercial success if they released it twice. 

Paul Stanley is ace. As previously recanted, I saw them on the Revenge tour and he said “I bet you guys are fed up with Americans coming here and saying BirmingHAM, so HOW YOU DOING, BIRMINGUM”. What a wonderful man.  

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28 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Surprised Hotter Than Hell wasn't a commercial success if they released it twice.

LOL! The album is actually Hot in the Shade, but I malfunctioned a bit. But really, they've released Hotter Than Hell way more than twice. I've got about 4 copies of it. They re-recorded it as well, for no particular reason.

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