Here is the 30th episode of Jan Müller’s “Reflector” column, in which he explains why the hard rock band Kiss is the most beautiful thing in the world for him.
During the long break of my very first day of school, a sixth grader spat in my face. To this day I don’t know if it was intentional or careless. But I remember he was wearing a denim jacket with an AC/DC patch on the back. All the more surprising that later, when I was in sixth grade, I started listening to AC/DC myself. This incredible music hadn’t opened up to the big market back then, it was made for really tough young men or just really soft kids like my friends and me. My friend Markus had played the POWERAGE album to me in the parents’ living room at the original volume.
My schoolmate Martin, on the other hand, thought Kiss was better than AC/DC. At least in Hamburg, fans of these two bands were not green at the time. Of course, that wasn’t the case for us children. So Markus, Martin and I decided to go to the Hamburger Magazin cinema together. Because there was a double performance of “AC/DC – Let Tere Be Rock” and “Kiss Chased by Phantoms”: Even in the foyer I had to secretly admit to myself that the clothes and hairstyles of the Kiss disciples were even better than those of AC/DC -fans. First was “Let Tere Be Rock”. The film was pure madness. However, he tore several times. Every time the Kiss fans cheered.
After the ultra-trashy Kiss film (especially recommended in the German dubbed version), I wasn’t the same anymore. Martin had proselytized me, and I had been converted to a Kiss fan while still in the cinema. Kiss weren’t musicians, they were superheroes. The music was kinda awesome, but it wasn’t the most important thing. The personal primal pop experience in the magazine cinema was to have a deep impact on me. A huge poster of Ace Frehley soon hung in the children’s room.
I guess that’s why I started listening to punk in 1983 because that’s when Kiss ditched their masks
When their super good album CREATURES OF THE NIGHT was released in 1982, Kiss even made it onto German television: “Caution, music”, Frank Zander announced. Kiss performed “I Love It Loud”. Gene Simmons had an ax-shaped bass, Paul Stanley introduced his guitar solo with a judo roll. I guess that’s why I started listening to punk in 1983 because that’s when Kiss ditched their masks. I immediately lost all interest in them. Only the grunge in the early 90s brought them back to my mind. Suddenly my passion for kissing grew just as wildly as it did in the early 80s.
In 1993, when I met my new friend Dirk for the second time, he wore a Kiss t-shirt. Bizarrely, it was the cover art of the 1985 album ASYLUM. unvarnished! Super cool and super comfortable from Dirk (if you look closely you can see that he is wearing this exact shirt on the cover of our Toco debut DIGITAL IS BESSER). I got into conversation with Olli Frank (once Taxi-Olli, now Bio-Olli) in the Hamburg school bar Heinz Karmers Tanzcafé because we discovered a common passion for kissing. That same evening we decided to move in together. Unfortunately, our legendary Kiss kitchen in Talstraße with approx. 666 Kiss posters, pennants and action figures did not make it into the Museum of Hamburg History.
This band is simply the most beautiful thing in the world
At some point I lost my passion for kissing. So I went to the Berlin Kiss farewell concert without too many expectations. At the first guitar chord everything came back. The firecrackers banged and Kiss floated from the ceiling onto the stage. This band is simply the most beautiful thing in the world. Even if his voice is weak: Paul Stanley can fly; his gender identity was already liquid in the 70s. Part of the reason Gene Simmons’ tongue-in-cheek gesture is so good is because it affirms that pop has the legitimacy to be completely ridiculous.
At the concert I didn’t even care that the original drummer Peter Criss wasn’t singing the cheesy and great ballad “Beth”, but some other guy who was made up like a cat. This is about more than self. When Paul Stanley, in his irresistible showy tone, tells us how much he loves Berlin and that his mother was born here, a chill runs down my spine. Precisely because he does not mention that she and her parents had to flee head over heels from the Nazis in 1933. Paul Stanley doesn’t just glitter. He glows. Kiss shine. And I wish that the farewell tour announcement was just a typical Kiss promotional move.
Regarding Jan Müller’s “Reflector” podcast: www.steadyhq.com/en/reflector
Jan Müller from Tocotronic meets interesting musicians for his “Reflector” podcast. He reports on these encounters in the Musikexpress and on Musikexpress.de. This column first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 09/2023.