The Three Stooges Inspired Gene Simmons to Write This 1977 KISS’ Hit Featuring ‘Married… With Children’ Star Katey Sagal

In 1976, while on tour with KISS, Gene Simmons was playing around with “Bad Bad Lovin‘,” a song that didn’t get released until decades later. “Nobody seemed to like it well enough,” recalled Simmons in the liner notes of the band’s 2001 compilation The Box Set. “So I kept refining it. ”

Holed up in a Holiday Inn in Evansville, Indiana, one evening, Simmons started watching the 1934 Three Stooges’ 1934 short film, Men in Black, and was drawn to a scene where Moe, Larry, and Curly sneeak into a hospital pretending to be doctors and announcing over the PA system: “Calling Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard.”

Inspired by the Stooges’ comedic ploy, Simmons started writing about his own “Doctor Love” and reworked “Bad Bad Lovin’,” released in its original demo form on The Box Set and again on Destroyer (45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition) in 2021.

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“And then I thought of rewriting the chorus idea into ‘Calling Dr. Love,’ who has a peculiar way of injecting his patients,” added Simmons, who took a cue from bandmate Paul Stanley‘s more pop-bent songwriting.

“By the time KISS had started earning gold and platinum records and filling every arena around the world,” said Simmons, “Paul [Stanley] and I naturally started kidding each other about our individual writing styles and song titles, both of us taking a turn at each other.” 

They call me Dr. Love
I’ve got the cure you’re thinkin’ of

‘Rock and Roll Over’ and Katey Segal

At the time, the band was also piecing together a fifth album, Rock and Roll Over, featuring Simmons’s harder “See You in Your Dreams,” “Ladies Room,” and “Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em,” which he wrote solo, along with “Calling Dr. Love,” his tale of a doctor with the cure.

They call me (Dr. Love)
They call me Dr. Love (calling Dr. Love)
I’ve got the cure you’re thinkin’ of (calling Dr. Love)

And even though I’m full of sin
In the end, you’ll let me in
You’ll let me through, there’s nothing you can do
You need my lovin’, don’t you know it’s true

[RELATED: 3 Songs You Didn’t Know ‘Married With Children’ and ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Star Katey Sagal Wrote as a Recording Artist]

Assuming Simmons’ “Dr. Love” treated female patients, he recruited some women to sing backing vocals on the demo, including a then-unknown singer Katey Sagal, who was singing in The Group With No Name years before she took on the role as Peggy Bundy on Married … With Children‘s, Futurama‘s Leela, and Den mother Gemma Teller Morrow on Sons of Anarchy.

“I cut the demo with me playing the guitars and Katey Sagal singing harmony,” said Simmons. “It was Gene Simmons with three girls singing. That was the original idea behind ‘Calling Dr. Love.’ They were originally singing the chorus to ‘Dr. Love,’ but Paul and I sang it falsetto. I thought that the demo had more of the feel that I wanted. I didn’t think we really captured it as a band.”

Though Sagal only appeared on the demo of “Calling Dr. Love,” she continued working with Simmons, singing backing vocals on Simmons’ 1978 self-titled debut solo album and joining Bette Midler‘s backup group. During the ’80s, Sagal also contributed vocals on the 1981 Molly Hatchet album Take No Prisoners, Olivia Newton-John‘s 1985 single “Soul Kiss,” and appeared in the music video for Harry’s “French Kissin’ (in the USA)” in 1986.

Released in 1977, “Calling Dr. Love” peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live version was also released on the band’s Alive II.

“Calling Dr. Love” continued to have a long shelf life in KISS’ live sets, and along with “Deuce,” remained on the band’s setlist for decades through their final show in New York City in 2023.

Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images