Gene Simmons

This article is about the rock bassist Gene Simmons. For his album of the same name see Gene Simmons (album) . For the country and rock & roll singer, see Jumpin 'Gene Simmons .

Gene Simmons (2012)

Gene Simmons at the KISS concert in Munich (2008)

Gene Simmons (born August 25, 1949 in Haifa , Israel as Chaim Witz, Eugene Klein after emigrating to the USA) is an American musician , record producer , actor , author and entrepreneur . He is the bass player for the hard rock band Kiss and co-owner of the LA Kiss arena football team .

Life

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His parents come from Hungarian - Jewish families. His mother Flora Klein was liberated from Mauthausen concentration camp on May 5, 1945 . She married a carpenter in Hungary in 1946, with whom she emigrated to Palestine in 1948 , after all other family members had died in German concentration camps .

After his parents divorced, his mother emigrated with him to New York in 1958. There he took his mother's maiden name, Klein. Since his Hebrew first name Chaim, which means "life", sounds like Shame ("shame") in English , he officially received the new first name Eugene. After graduating from high school, he worked for a while as a sixth grade teacher and assistant to a Vogue editor. After participating in various bands, of which Wicked Lester was the best known, he founded the rock band Kiss in 1973 together with guitarist Paul Stanley . Since then he has been called Gene Simmons, which he derived from the actress Jean Simmons .

He also devoted himself to acting in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1988 he founded his own record label, Simmons Records , on which he released four albums by three bands ( House of Lords , Silent Rage and Gypsy Rose) before ceasing work in 1990. After 2000, Simmons also became active as a writer. His autobiography was published in 2001 under the title Kiss and Make-up ; In 2003 he published Sex, Money, Kiss and in 2008 Ladies of the Night - A Historical and Personal Perspective on the Oldest Profession in the World.

He revived his music label Simmons Records. He also founded the clothing label Moneybag . As a publisher he was the magazine Gene Simmons Tongue out. After five issues in 2002, it was discontinued. He developed the cartoon series My Dad the Rockstar , promoted the Indy Racing League with partner Richard Abramson , was the star of two seasons of Rock School and designed his own perfume series for Kiss.

Simmons achieved his greatest success outside the band in 2006 with his reality television series Gene Simmons Family Jewels , in which he and his family were followed by cameras for 61 episodes. The first season of the series, which consisted of 13 episodes, was a huge success. The broadcaster A&E then commissioned a further 22 episodes for 2007 and a further 26 episodes for 2008, and 35 further episodes in 2009. The series is now in its seventh season, with seasons 1-5 released on DVD. In Germany, the series was broadcast on the pay TV broadcaster The Biography Channel and on Das Vierte ; in Austria the series ran on ORF1 .

In addition to English, Simmons also speaks German, Hebrew and Hungarian. The animated series Mein Dad ist'n Rockstar ( My Dad the Rock Star ) has been produced by Disney since 2003 . Gene Simmons himself came up with the idea for this series, and the main character Willy Zilla is very similar to him. In 2008, Simmons starred in the celebrity version of The Apprentice , but dropped out in the third episode. In August 2008, Simmons attracted attention when a sex video of him was leaked showing him having sex with an unknown woman. At the beginning of April 2011 it was announced that Simmons had accepted a position as press spokesman for the social media company Intertainment Media Inc.

In June 2011, Simmons was inducted into the Factual Entertainment Awards Hall of Fame for Personality of the Year and Forbes Magazine recognized him with the Lifetime Achievement Award . In 2016 he had a cameo appearance with Paul Stanley in the American comedy film Why Him? , in which they sing the kiss song I Was Made for Lovin 'You in one scene .

Private life

In the 1970s he was in a relationship with Cher and Diana Ross . He is the father of a son born in 1989 and a daughter who was born in 1992. Both children come from the relationship with Shannon Tweed , whom he married in October 2011 after 28 years of relationship. He lives with his family in Beverly Hills , California .

Discography (solo)

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Albums

Gene Simmons   US 22nd 01/06/1979 (22 weeks) Asshole   US 86 06/26/2004 (1 week)

Singles

Radioactive   UK 41 01/27/1979 (4 weeks)   US 47 12/02/1978 (8 weeks)

Albums

• 1978: Gene Simmons
• 2004: Asshole

Singles

• 1978: Radioactive

Filmography (selection)

• 1978: Kiss in Attack of the Phantoms (KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park)
• 1984: Runaway - Spiders of death (Runaway)
• 1985: Miami Vice (TV series, episode 2x01 On the War Path )
• 1986: Ragman (Trick or Treat)
• 1986: Lance Never Too Young to Die
• 1986: Wanted: Dead or Alive
• 1990: Red Surf
• 1998: Detroit Rock City (Detroit Rock City)
• 2002: The New Guy
• 2004: Third Watch - Operation at the Limit ( Third Watch , TV series, 3 episodes)
• 2008: Detroit Metal City (Detoroito Metaru Shiti)
• 2008: Ugly Betty (TV series, 2 episodes)
• 2009: Squeezed (Extract)
• 2011: Castle (TV series, episode 3x22 Love and Die in LA )
• 2014: CSI: Vegas ( CSI: Crime Scene Investigation , TV series, episode 14x17 Tangerine dreams )
• 2015: Scorpion (TV series, episode 2x01 The Comeback )
• 2016: Why Him?

In addition, Simmons was the beginning of the 1990s a cameo appearance in the video clip of Stuttering John to I'll talk My Way Out Of It (along with Sting and Nuno Bettencourt ).

Audio books

• Kiss and Make-Up [UNABRIDGED] (2002)
• Sex Money KISS (2003)
• Speaking in Tongues (2004)

Books

• Gene Simmons: How to become a rock star and millionaire - My recipe for success . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2014, ISBN 978-3-85445-473-1 (Original edition: Me, Inc .: Build An Army Of One, Unleash Your Inner Rock God, Win At Business And In Life )
• Ken Sharp with Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons: The Story of KISS - Our Early Years . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2014, ISBN 978-3-85445-443-4 (Original edition: Nothin 'To Lose - The Making Of KISS 1972–1975 )
• KISS and make-up. Crown Publishers, New York 2001, ISBN 0-609-60855-X .
• KISS: The Early Years. Photo book. Three Rivers Press, New York 2002, ISBN 0-609-81028-6 .
• Sex Money Kiss. New Millennium Press, 2003, ISBN 1-893224-86-4 .
• Ladies of the Night - A Historical and Personal Perspective on the Oldest Profession in the World. Phoenix Books, Beverly Hills 2008, ISBN 978-1-59777-501-4 .

Web links

Commons : Gene Simmons  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of Gene Simmons
• Gene Simmons at Biography.com (English)
• Gene Simmons in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• “I'm too rich to get upset!” - Interview & commented photo series, Alex Gernandt, one day , March 9, 2017
• Florian Russi Gene Simmons in Berlin - Honor for a child and peace promoter . In: Berlin-Lese.de
• Media by and about Gene Simmons in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Arena Football League, KISS Bring Pro Football Back to Los Angeles . (No longer available online.) Arena Football League , August 15, 2013, archived from the original on February 9, 2017 ; Retrieved November 27, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Hans-Wilhelm Saure / Sven Kuschel: Here the world star learns the history of his mother in the concentration camp , in: Bild, May 2, 2020.
3. ↑ Hans-Wilhelm Saure / Sven Kuschel: Here the world star learns the history of his mother in the concentration camp , in: Bild, May 2, 2020.
4. ↑ Hans-Wilhelm Saure / Sven Kuschel: Here the world star learns the history of his mother in the concentration camp , in: Bild, May 2, 2020.
5. ↑ International Rock Legend Gene Simmons and Ortsbo.com to Host First Interactive Global Fan Chat in 5 ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Article on pr-usa.net, accessed April 26, 2011. 
6. ↑ Bethenny Frankel , Gene Simmons and Kardashian's Top Celeb Entrepreneur Awards, accessed June 10, 2011.
7. ↑ Biography ( Memento of the original from September 6, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 27, 2011 from genesimmons.com. 
8. ↑ People, article Gene Simmons Is Married, October 1, 2011.
9. ↑ Kleine Zeitung, article on the wedding. October 2, 2011, archived from the original on September 27, 2014 . 
10. ↑ Kronen Zeitung, article on the wedding. September 2, 2011, accessed January 22, 2011 . 
11. ↑ ^{a b} Chart sources: UK US