“To Me, It Was Dishonest”: Gene Simmons Says KISS’ Worst Album Was His Fault

Being in a band is a collaborative effort, and the best kinds of collaborations require a healthy dose of humility. KISS bassist and rock ‘n’ roll icon Gene Simmons is no stranger to this concept, and his decades of being in the industry have granted him the hindsight to say the worst KISS album ever made was his fault.

To Simmons’ credit, the album was a byproduct of creative experimentation after back-to-back commercial flops and a disconnect with the band’s original masked image. Nevertheless, just because KISS’ experimentation had good intentions doesn’t mean it was successful.

And in this case, it certainly wasn’t.

Why Gene Simmons Says KISS’ Worst Album Was His Fault

A commercial album is never a one-person endeavor. From the band to the engineers to the producers to the management, there are a lot of people who could take the blame for an unsuccessful record. However, KISS bassist Gene Simmons says he’s willing to take the blame for the 1981 record Music from “The Elder.”

“I take the blame for it. It was my idea,” Simmons said in an August 2024 interview with 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.”

Ezrin, who had worked with Pink Floyd two years before to produce The Wall, helped KISS create an album that followed a young protagonist, The Boy, as he trained to combat evil at the behest of the Council of Elders. The band implemented their usual hard rock tropes: ripping guitar solos, powerful drums, and intense vocals. KISS wanted Music from “The Elder” to be their triumphant return to rock ‘n’ roll after two unsuccessful ventures into pop music with Dynasty and Unmasked.

“There are some fans who love that record,” Simmons told Classic Rock. “To me, it was dishonest.”

An Experiment Gone Wrong

The early 1980s was a period of tremendous change for many rock ‘n’ roll bands. KISS was no exception. As the genre continued to fracture into more distinct and polarizing subcategories, bands like KISS struggled to find their footing in a genre that spoke to them and would be commercially successful.

“It was a time of flux,” Gene Simmons recalled in a 2021 interview with Guitar World. “A lot of bands were trying to figure out who they were, and so were we. Sometimes, if you do the same thing forever, you think, like that Peggy Lee song, ‘Is that all there is?’”

“Music is best served hot but varied,” he continued. “If you keep eating the same thing all the time, I think you get bored. Music from “The Elder” was a chance for us to show we could do other things. But soon thereafter [and after overwhelmingly unenthused critical reception], within an album or two, we got back to business and did Creatures of the Night and all that stuff.”

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