Kiss and Make-Up (32 page)

One of the funniest incidents in my life happened not onstage but in the audience. It was in the mid-1980s, and I had gone to La Cage aux Folles, a drag nightclub in Los Angeles. It was a real show-business crowd—Milton Berle was on my left, with his wife, and other celebrities were there as well. The lights went down, and the music started for the pageant of drag queens. The first one to come out was dressed as Cher. The drag Cher paraded around and finally went offstage right. The next drag queen was dressed as Diana Ross. And right after that was a drag Liza Minnelli. That’s the trinity for gay men, the ultimate divas, and all three of them were important in my life.

I had first met Liza when I went with Cher to a party at Halston’s. In 1979 I met her again. She was playing a few nights at Radio City Music Hall. I had no romantic aspirations, and I certainly didn’t think of getting into the Liza Minnelli business. We became friends and would go to dinner occasionally. Liza, Judy Garland’s daughter, had been a star of stage and screen for decades.

Whenever we got together, our conversation would turn to music. Liza would ask about KISS. She wanted me to explain to her how it had all happened, how we had gone from obscurity to worldwide fame. I explained that it wasn’t just one person—it was a huge confluence of record labels and management. She said there was nothing Madonna had that she didn’t have, except for the right songs. I basically told her the lay of the land as I saw it. The Ethel Merman style of singing, with a wide vibrato, was a thing of the past. It wasn’t going to fly. The average teenage girl didn’t know a thing about that world. If she was interested in letting go of her past and recreating Liza Minnelli, then I could help her out. I became her music business manager.

I took her up to Columbia Records and introduced her to Walter Yetnikoff. He gave us the green light right away. He didn’t waste time looking at bottom lines or consulting with vice presidents. He was a classic mogul. A young A&R guy named Michael Goldstone came up with an idea to put Liza with the Pet Shop Boys and do a modern Euro-disco album. I explained this to Liza and told her what it would require.

As I got more and more involved in Liza’s recording career, we were seen together. Some of the gossip magazines started reporting “KISS star captures Liza’s heart,” which wasn’t the case at all. Liza and I had a totally professional relationship. I would meet with her at her apartment and then we would meet at the Fifth Avenue penthouse where I lived. We talked endlessly about movies, music, and her aspirations to break into the pop field. I enjoyed her company. I enjoyed going to events with her, like the grand opening of the first Hard Rock Café. I respected her as an artist, and I wanted to help her with her career. But that was all I wanted.

The single she cut with the Pet Shop Boys was a huge international record. In America it didn’t sell, but it gave her something more important: momentum. At that time Dean Martin had fallen out of a tour he had undertaken with Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra. Liza joined that show, and in the middle of it she played twenty-three shows at Radio City Music Hall straight. That must be some kind of record: 6,500 people for three weeks straight.

I wasn’t the only one who liked Frank Sinatra. When I started working with Liza, Peter Criss kept telling me how much he loved him. I contacted his road manager, who got me front-row tickets to see Sinatra in Los Angeles. Sinatra looked at us and winked. Peter was in heaven. He had just gotten the
Good Housekeeping
seal of approval from the Chairman of the Board.

Liza had her ups and downs in life. Just as I was starting my own record company, Simmons Records, she and I decided to part ways. She wanted to go back full into the high-stepping-and-belting tradition of singing. I wasn’t in favor of it; I thought people would think she was just putting on a mask as a modern pop singer. She couldn’t break free of Broadway. To some people, that may have
been important stuff. To the record-buying public, it meant nothing. In the end we couldn’t make it work. I met with Mickey Rudin, one of the top lawyers in the entertainment business, and we dissolved our agreement.

Around the same time Liza left my life, Neil Bogart, the president of our label and the man who had helped us so much in our early years, who had supported us as we rocketed to fame, was stricken with cancer. One night I went to a music industry charity event at the Hilton in New York City. I was sitting with Neil, who had become very puffy, and I was joking with him, telling him, “I love pastries too.” I didn’t realize he was sick. My heart sank when I realized later on that the physical changes had to do with the illness.

A few years later our business manager called and said, “Would you like to go to the funeral?” What funeral? “Well,” he said, “Neil Bogart just passed away.” We flew out to Los Angeles and stood there, numb, while everyone from Neil Diamond to Donna Summer delivered eulogies. He was clearly well loved by lots of people. Astonishingly, his son, Timothy Bogart, wrote a script I’m now producing for a movie. Life seems to go in circles.

By 1983, KISS had dropped Ace Frehley and then Vinnie Vincent. We had gone from the biggest band in the world to a band seemingly on its last legs. We ultimately brought in another guitarist, Mark St. John, for
Animalize
, but he lasted for only one record. He developed something called Reiter’s syndrome, a hardening of the muscles in the hands. They blew up to the size of balloons, so obviously he couldn’t play. The Reiter’s syndrome had started to accelerate during the making of the record and we were worried, but Mark insisted that it wouldn’t affect him. We actually started a tour with him and played a smaller hall in Poughkeepsie, New York. It was clear from that show that his medical problem was significant, and that he wasn’t the right guitarist for KISS.

Paul and I had decided to produce
Animalize
ourselves. After we finished the basic tracks and I finished my vocals, I told Paul that
I would trust him to finish the album. He wasn’t pleased, but I had a film opportunity I didn’t want to pass up, so Paul ended up doing the work.

I had wanted to act in movies for a long time. It dated back to my earliest interests, which were oriented more toward science fiction and fantasy films than to music. Whenever I saw movies, I read the credits. On one film it said that the casting directors were a firm named Fenton and Feinberg. I called the operator and found out where Fenton and Feinberg were. I didn’t even know their first names. I called them up and said, “Hi, I’m Gene Simmons from KISS. Can I come in and talk with you?”

“Sure,” Mike Fenton said.

We set a time, and I showed up for my appointment and immediately announced, “I’d like to be in movies.” Just like that. I didn’t see the point in wasting time with a big wind-up. Mike Fenton called Michael Crichton, the director, who was a novelist and a screenwriter—and who would go on to write
Jurassic Park
and
Twister
and to create
E.R.
—and within thirty seconds they had offered me a job.

Actually, I had to pass one small screen test. Michael Crichton turned to me and asked me to do something strange. “Look me in the eyes,” he said, “and don’t make any expression. Don’t grimace. Don’t contort your face. And without saying anything, convey with your look that you’re going to tear our hearts out.” I stared at him with murder in my heart, and it seemed to work. I got a costarring part in
Runaway
, starring Tom Selleck. I hadn’t even read the script. I was told that I would be playing the villain.

On the first day of the shoot, in Vancouver, the part called for me to walk up and ring a doorbell and say a line. I was supposed to pretend I was a repairman coming to fix something. I was supposed to communicate a certain untrustworthiness and threat. I read my line, and then afterward Michael Crichton yelled, “Cut!” I walked over to Crichton and said, “Look, I really apologize. I’ll do anything you want me to do. I’m so sorry I messed it up. What did I do wrong?”

“No, no, no,” he said. “Let me explain something to you. In movies, if the director says ‘Cut’ and you move on to another scene, that means good. If I say, ‘Let’s do it again,’ that’s bad.”

With Cynthia Rhodes, my costar in
Runaway.
(photo credit 13.2)

Movies had a completely different dynamic than rock and roll. It was like pulling teeth. You sit around for sixteen hours a
day. The only thing I could do was try to figure out which of the female extras I’d like to take home that night. There were always interesting-looking girls on the side. And I’d be flying in girls left and right from California. It was a busy time and also an interesting time, because I met a whole new group of people and tried many new things. Kirstie Alley played my girlfriend. I got to stick a knife through her neck in the movie. That made me a real likable fellow. I tried coming on to the actress Cynthia Rhodes. That didn’t work out, so I tried her sister. That didn’t work either, so I went for one of the extras on the set, a real knockout of a Canadian girl. That worked. If at first you don’t succeed …

When I was in Los Angeles on one occasion, I hooked up with Stan Brooks, who was working with the Guber/Peters film company. I had first met him in 1981 during the
Grotus
experience. He introduced me to Jeff Loeb and Matt Weissman, and at the Beverly Hills Hotel we came up with an idea that would eventually become
Commando
, a breakout film for Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was going to be a starring role for me, but when I showed the script to Michael Rachmill, who was the producer of
Runaway
, he dissuaded me. I believed him and let it go. I later revisited the script with the intention of trying to have someone else take a look at it, but it was too late. Producer Joel Silver had bought it, and it was being made. That was the last time I would let someone else decide for me what worked and what didn’t.

In 1984, during the making of
Runaway
, I would have enough time off during weekends that I could fly into Los Angeles and run around to the parties. The best parties were at the Playboy Mansion, especially the Midsummer Night’s Dream parties, which were big summer bashes with hundreds of girls in corsets and underwear and a select group of eligible bachelors. Guys were not allowed in unless they were dressed in pajamas, and girls had to wear as little as possible. The ratio was something like four hundred girls to one hundred guys. That’s how Hugh Hefner liked his parties. At this point Diana and I had adjusted our relationship—we were still together,
but we had our freedom. Before the party I told her that I was going up to the Playboy Mansion and that I was planning on flirting and having a good time.