Gene Simmons Takes the Blame for Kiss’ Worst Album

In a recent interview, Gene Simmons not only quickly identified Kiss‘ worst studio album but also took full blame for its creation.

His choice, 1981’s Music From ‘The Elder,‘ will come as little surprise to the band’s fans. Originally intended as a back-to-basics hard rock album that would undo the fan base damage caused by the disco and pop flirtations of 1979’s Dynasty and 1980’s Unmasked, The Elder instead transformed into an extremely ill-fated attempt at earning critical acclaim with a high-minded, medieval times-themed concept album.

Read More: 10 Things That Went Wrong with Kiss’ Music From ‘The Elder’

“I take the blame for it, because it was my idea,” Simmons told Classic Rock. “I remember telling [producer] Bob Ezrin that I was writing a movie script, we were making a concept album based on that, and he said: “Let’s do our own Tommy!” I said: ‘Yeah. If the Who can do it, why can’t we?’ Well, the straight answer is because we’re not the Who! There are some fans who love that record. To me it was dishonest.”

Gene Simmons Says Kiss Never Spent Enough Time in the Studio

In the same interview, Simmons declared that The Elder wasn’t even Kiss’ “most dishonest” album, instead giving that dubious honor to 1997’s grunge-influenced Carnival of Souls (The Final Sessions) while admitting, “we were trying to follow a trend instead of just being ourselves…. In hindsight, Kiss never really spent enough time in the studio. [1976’s] Destroyer is okay, and I like [1992’s] Revenge, but Kiss was always more about the live experience.”

Simmons won’t get much argument about Carnival of Souls from his longtime band mate Paul Stanley, who declared that he was “dead-set against doing that kind of an album” in the band’s 2001 book Kiss: Behind the Mask. “I never believed the world needed a second-rate Soundgarden, Metallica or Alice in Chains.”