Throughout KISS‘ 50-year history, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley have collectively written hundreds of songs for the band, from their 1974 eponymous debut through their 20th and final album, Monster, in 2012.
Along with all the KISS songs they wrote together, including hits “Rock and Roll All Nite,” “Strutter,” and “Shout It Out Loud,” Simmons also penned plenty of songs on his own like “Deuce” and “Calling Dr. Love,” along with co-writing songs for the late Plasmatics singer Wendy O. Williams and his two solo albums, Gene Simmons in 1978 and 2004 release Asshole.
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Outside of the pyrotechnics and Devil-ish menace of spitting blood and breathing fire around KISS songs throughout his career, Simmons also had more depth to his taste in music.
In 2014, Simmons revealed some of his favorite songs while hosting the radio show Celebrity Shuffle and discussed tracks by Barry White, Jackie Wilson, and ’60s Australian rockers The Easybeats, among others—and yes, even KISS, Van Halen, and Toad the Wet Sprocket.
In chronological order of each release, here are nine songs Simmons listed as his favorites.
1. “Sleep Walk,” Santo & Johnny (1959)
Written and recorded by sibling duo Santo & Johnny (Santo and Johnny Farina) of Brooklyn, New York, their rock instrumental “Sleep Walk” went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959 and also peaked at No. 4 on the R&B chart. “Sleep Walk” was also a greater family affair with the brothers’ uncle playing drums on the track.
“The early ’60s were a peculiar time because, at the same time, radio was figuring out how to play rock and roll, which was still in its infancy,” said Simmons. “Every once in a while you would hear very bizarre instrumentals by groups that would only come for one song, like The Tornados. At the same time that these instrumental bands were doing music to ‘Watch Girls Bye-Bye,’ the Bob Crewe generation. Instrumentals were big.”
Simmons pointed out that KISS even did their own instrumental in the ’70s, “Love Theme from Kiss” on their self-titled 1974 debut.
“But one of the unique songs of all time was this kind of Latin-flavored sleepy Hawaiian guitar by two guys (Santo & Johnny) who up until then had had no success whatsoever but immediately it grabs you.”
2. “Baby Workout,” Jackie Wilson (1963)
R&B singer Jackie Wilson released “Baby Workout,” from the album of the same name in 1963, it became one of his biggest hits. The song went to No. 1 on the R&B chart and No. 5 on the Hot 100.
“Jackie Wilson—one of the preeminent templates for lead singers,” said Simmons. “There would be nobody without Jackie Wilson. He was such an important figure in music that there were actually songs written about Jackie. He was a guy that was very acrobatic, he could do splits, jump up way before guys like James Brown came across and started doing that stuff.
Raised in the church, this was pure pop big band. A big band playing with a real pop background.”
In 1987, Wilson was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
3. “Concrete and Clay,” Unit 4 + 2 (1965)
Written by band members Tommy Moeller and Brian Parker, “Concrete and Clay” turned into a big hit for the British pop group by the mid-’60s, hitting No. 1 on the UK Singles chart and making it into the Top 40 (at No. 35) on the Hot 100. The band only released two albums together, 1st Album in 1065 and their follow-up Unit 4 + 2 in 1969 before disbanding in 1970.
“Unit 4 + 2 was an English band that had very strange influences: Bossa Nova, sort of cha-cha, South American beats with Jazz overtones,” said Simmons. “[There were] very ‘Beatle-esque’ melodies against a portal structure that defies logic.”
4. “Friday On My Mind,” The Easybeats (1966)
Monday mornin’ feels so bad / Ev’rybody seems to nag me / Comin’ Tuesday I feel better / Even my old man looks good goes the Easybeats’ 1966 hit “Friday On My Mind.” Also known for the 1965 hit “She’s So Fine,” the band’s “Friday On My Mind,” written by members George Young and Harry Vanda, became the first Australian rock song to gain international success and went to No. 6 on the Hot 100.
“When I first heard ‘Friday On My Mind’ by the Easybeats I didn’t know that there was gonna be a connection to AC/DC,” said Simmons. “The two guys in the band, Vanda and Young, then went on to form a band called Flash and The Pan.”
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Simmons added “But the Easybeats had this crazy song that quarterly eludes me—certainly not blues-based, these licks. Then right before the chorus, the chords move the way notes move. If you try to play those notes they’re hectic. Try playing at his chords.”
5. “Love’s Theme,” Barry White and Love Unlimited Orchestra (1974)
Simmons revealed that one of his wife Shannon Tweed’s favorite songs was by the late Barry White. “Barry White doesn’t even put his name up there,” said Simmons. “Barry White at the height of his popularity was not only going out there and doing sellouts to women who would clearly be swooning at a man who was approaching 300 pounds and yet had a voice of a fault phone porn star: ‘Yeah baby, you know you want it.'”
He added “You know, he hardly sang the songs but before rap, before anything, this guy cornered the ‘Oh yeah, come to daddy,’ type of music. He produced his own records, often wrote his own tunes, and actually got up like Jackie Gleason—but that’s another story—and was a maestro.”
White played with his 40-piece orchestra, The Love Unlimited Orchestra, from 1972 through 1983 before focusing more on his solo career.
6. “Magic,” Pilot (1974)
Scottish pop band Pilot released their debut single “Magic” in 1974, which went to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at No. 11 in the UK. Written by Pilot members David Paton and Billy Lyall, “Magic” was the title track of the band’s debut album.
“‘Magic’ by Pilot is a gem by the middle period of English music,” said Simmons. “The group had a big album that I was aware of and after that, they disappeared, but this song ‘Magic’ combines all the best things of English pop music—great songwriting, terrific production by Alan Parsons, who himself would go on to form his own band called Alan Parsons Project. And the engineer was a guy named Mike Stone who would later work with Kiss and with Paul [Stanley] on some of his projects, including a band called New England.”
In 2021, Pilot released The Magic EP, featuring four rerecorded songs, including the band’s “Magic,” “Over the Moon,” “Just a Smile,” and “January.”
7. “Goin’ Blind,” KISS (1974)
Among all the KISS songs in history, Simmons named “Goin’ Blind,” from KISS’ second album Hotter Than Hell as his favorite. The more lascivious song follows a 93-year-old man smitten with a much younger woman: And I know how it should be / There is nothing more for you and I / Some are young and some are free / But I think I’m goin’ blind.
“‘Goin’ Blind’ was a song I wrote with my school chum Stephen Parnell,” said Simmons. “In those days, I didn’t think much about lyrics, and I have no clue about why I sat down and wrote a letter called ‘I think I’m going blind.’ Except I thought it was terribly romantic. It was about an old guy; I remember a movie called ‘Hemingway‘s The Old Man and The Sea,’ and my vision of that was the old man and a mermaid.”
8. “Running with the Devil,” Van Halen (1978)
Van Halen’s second single, from their eponymous debut, “Running with the Devil” is another song that stuck with Simmons from its earliest inception. After first seeing Van Halen perform their earlier days at a club called Starwood in Los Angeles, California, Simmons was eager to produce the band, signed them to his production company, and flew them to New York City to record.
“They were the warm-up band to the headliner, and it was just a club band,” said Simmons. “I went backstage and immediately convinced the band, Eddie [Van Halen], Alex [Van Halen] and [David Lee] Roth, obviously that they should not sign with a yogurt manufacturing company guy who was gonna support them but that I would fly them to New York and produce their demo at Electric Lady studios, and I did.”
Simmons added, “I worked with the band trying to figure out what arrangement worked, what didn’t, and we picked 15 songs, and they were recorded on a 24-track, and this was their demo.”
9. “Rock and Roll All Nite,” Toad the Wet Sprocket (1994)
Technically a KISS song, Simmons said he preferred Toad the Wet Sprocket’s version of the band’s iconic 1975 song “Rock and Roll All Nite.” The cover was featured on the 1994 tribute album KISS My Ass: Classic KISS Regrooved, which also featured covers of KISS songs performed by Lenny Kravitz, Garth Brooks, The Lemonheads, Gin Blossoms, and more.
“I put together a Kiss tribute album because I didn’t wanna wait for anybody else to do it,” said Simmons. “I called everybody I could think of, and somebody offered up told Toad the Wet Sprocket, and they decided to record ‘Rock and Roll All Nite,’ which was a curious case, and they had complete latitude to do what they wanted with the song.”
He continued, “And what came out was a fascinating sound which changed the drumbeat and even had a different passage going into the chorus. But if anything, it reminds me of Jackson Browne.”
Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images for Race To Erase MS
