You Pulled The Trigger Of My Love Gun, Pt. 2
A date that changed the world - - and created my near-miss with the God of Thunder
As mentioned in Part 1, it was way back in 1995 when I dug in to research the state of KISS fandom during their fallow no-makeup era — and, yes, you had to dig a bit back then to find the fans who’d hung in there.
I connected with the co-founder of an entity called the New England KISS Collector’s Network, Karen Lesniewski, who’d co-authored a book called Kiss Collectibles: Identification and Price Guide along with her then-husband, John.
At the tail end of one of our phone conversations, she offhandedly dropped in the comment: “Oh, and Gene will want to talk to you.”
Not for a moment did I think she meant Gene SIMMONS, but that was exactly to whom she was referring. She didn’t sound incredibly enthused about it, either. I detected a bit of a sigh as she added, “He likes to get involved in these things. So, we’ll set up a time that works for both of you.”
This was, remember, 1995, well before the emergence of the Family Jewels reality show in 2004, which made Simmons and his family universally famous and palatable as white bread. I was a Gen X former KISS fan — to me he was still a fire-breathing comic book beast with a lizard tongue, so this was a bit unnerving.
It was, as I recall, a Monday when Karen mentioned Simmons. I told her to let him know I’d be available all week.
“Probably not this week,” she said. “They’re taping an episode of MTV Unplugged on Wednesday.”
An Auspicious Date
The Unplugged concert was recorded on August 9, 1995.
Also occurring on that very same date:
An initial public offering (IPO) was executed by a company called Netscape, a startup tech firm aggressively entering an emerging space called “the Internet.” This, and their “Netscape Navigator,” made the the previously abstract Internet accessible to the general public, lit the fuse of the “dot-com boom,” and began our slide into a Facebook world.
Welcome to the internet: the Netscape Navigator window circa August, 1995 The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia died.
Who says things happen at random?
Also on this date, the post-make-up version of KISS — Simmons, Paul Stanley, Eric Singer, and Bruce Kulick, assembled onstage to play some KISS songs on acoustic instruments for a taping of MTV’s UNPLUGGED concert series….
…And, for the second half of the show, they invited original band members Peter Criss and Ace Frehley onstage.
This was a big deal. The original lineup hadn’t appeared together onstage since 1980. You did the math right — that’s FIFTEEN YEARS. Many hatchets had to be buried.
And, as it turned out, the reunion was received with open arms. The energy in the room was palpable — particularly during the “reunion” section of the show — and the gears turning in Simmons’ head were very likely audible. Even in the environment of a studio stage and audience, it was obvious that the kids who bought vinyl and KISS action figures in the mid-to-late 70’s were now more than willing to pay for some nostalgia (the KISS Unplugged album was released on March 12, 1996).
So, no — Gene Simmons did not call me that week, or ever. From that moment on, the God of Thunder had much, much bigger fish to fry — which we explore in the next installment.