Having big dreams is risky; it’s dangerous business. We all had them as children, but for many of us, those dreams died somewhere along the way. In essence, a creative adult is a child who survived.
There is a big difference, however, between dreams and fantasy. Dreams are something that we can accomplish, but only when we know ourselves, our actual gifts and real limitations, and have a passionate plan to get from point A to point B. Fantasy, or magical thinking, on the other hand, is an escape from reality. It’s enjoyable—and can even be an important part of the creative process that leads to an achievable dream, like writing a song—but it can also distract us from making real progress.
If we want to succeed, it’s important to dream within the realm of the possible—but that doesn’t mean what’s possible for someone else or what someone else has accomplished. It means intrinsically and innately and honestly knowing what’s possible for ourselves.
Dreaming becomes the blueprint for reality. Not someone else’s reality, but our own.
Self-delusion is self-defeating. I made a conscious decision decades ago not to fool myself. That doesn’t mean I saw things accurately, but I wasn’t going to deceive myself. The idea of not being honest with oneself is strange to me. I can’t understand why people would bullshit themselves. For better or worse, I want to know who I am, what I do, why I do it, and if it needs to change.
My struggle has always been to be the best me. It is ongoing every day. So I’ve always been hard on myself, and maybe that’s the best way to accomplish what’s important. Because it’s so easy to please other people, but we go home every night and we’re the ones who have to live with ourselves. Compliments and attention are pretty hollow and last only as long as another person is talking to us. The core of true success is within. If we stumble into a type of success where others love what we’re doing but we don’t, that success is fleeting and hollow. The core of enduring success, as in contentment, comes from loving what we do—because loving what we do will make us love who we are.
I will say this: the heart has always been the same.
My dream—and the collective dream I shared with Gene, Ace, and Peter back in 1973—started from the premise that we were going to become the biggest rock band around. Of course, that’s ridiculous—to many people, including many around us at the time, it didn’t seem realistic. But we figured somebody was going to do it—so why not us? why not me?
If we go with the status quo, we tend to live in mediocrity. I was never cut out for that. I always knew that I couldn’t work nine to five—it was unthinkable. I would have slit my wrists. Hard work and routine are fine, but that hard work and routine had to be exciting to me—something I had a passion for.
Starting with the notion that KISS was going to succeed and we were going to become big rock stars was not following anybody’s safe path. I didn’t want to go on somebody’s safe path. And anyway, the traditional paths hadn’t opened up. All the kids I knew in my neighborhood in Queens became dentists and lawyers. If I’d tried to follow that path, I would have ended up homeless.
Everything changed when I saw the Beatles. Their performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 changed my life. The August 1964 release of their first movie, A Hard Day’s Night, also changed the game. I loved the mythology of these four guys who were all for one and one for all. We pictured them all sleeping in the same bed, and the movie offered us a new image of what a band could or should be. The Beatles embodied the idea of four individuals making a band, and you not only loved the band but also loved each individual. As KISS came together, that became our goal as well.
But as far as dreaming big, I never wanted to be the best band on the block. I never wanted to be the best band in the neighborhood. We were keenly aware of the true playing field.
In other words, our goal wasn’t to be better than the New York Dolls, who were the hot band in New York City when we were coming up. Our goal was to be as good as our heroes. We refused to judge ourselves on a small scale. Perhaps what helped us succeed was that our vision was far beyond what some of our local competition could conceive.
I hate to use the analogy of the box, but in order to succeed outside the box we have to see the box. And not be trapped by it. There’s a balance, because we don’t want to be limited solely by what we know or don’t know. It’s a fine line.
I never fooled myself into believing I could do it the same way the Beatles did it, but I was acutely aware throughout my life that I could touch a nerve. The bands and artists I admired set a standard for me to aspire to. I didn’t try to imitate them; the influence I was looking for was inspirational, not literal.
Back then, we saw the people who had succeeded—like the Beatles, the Who, or Led Zeppelin—but we didn’t necessarily see our competition. We saw the people who were our goal, but not the other contenders. We couldn’t see a band in Finland. We couldn’t see a band in Dallas. And they couldn’t see each other. We saw only the bands we were aspiring to be, but not the other bands that were also aspiring to be them. That had some advantages. It made for individuation. It made for a less homogenous kind of music scene—everybody wasn’t just borrowing from one another. Nowadays everybody’s aware of everyone else, but that wasn’t the case when KISS started out. Until bands got media attention and national or international exposure, they were left to their own devices, and all anyone was aware of were the local bands or the bands they ended up touring with.
When I talk to young bands or young musicians, I sometimes tell them, “If the music you’re making isn’t of the same standard as that of the bands you love, then you’re not good enough. There’s only one measuring stick, and that’s not the local competition but the top ranks. If you’re not up there, you need to keep working. And if you don’t want to, then you shouldn’t be doing it.”
Any great talent right now is keenly aware of their competition—thanks to the internet, it’s easier to size up the global arena of competition as opposed to the local competition. And what’s happened over the years and decades is that the standard has been upped exponentially, because we’re now able to view the world’s best from any computer on the planet. A band in Austin knows what a band in Oslo is doing, and vice versa. So being the best singer on your block doesn’t cut it.
I really believe that the talent pool has upped its game. The days of Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour—which was on TV when I was a kid—or even the first generation of national talent shows, like Star Search, seem quaint now. What we saw on those shows was just horrendous compared with the level of The Voice.
The truth is, back when KISS started, we weren’t aware of what was going on around us or around the world. We had no way of gauging ourselves against a broad pool of talent when we were coming up. Now people go on the internet and think, “Geez, I suck.”
The internet can be terrific, because the talent that’s uncovered is pretty amazing. Whether or not the people succeed ultimately or whether the entertainment is all that survives is another question. But raw ability? If someone is talented and willing to work at it, that person can really raise the bar. The internet also allows people to see who they’re up against and be influenced or inspired by that—it’s something we simply didn’t have when we started KISS.
There’s always some mimicry in creative work, and there are now apparently an infinite number of singers out there emulating some of the greats and misguidedly doing vocal runs that border on histrionics. Their vocal stylings often end up more like gymnastics as opposed to being used to communicate emotions. The downside to being able to do all these vocal runs is that it means nothing if there’s nothing behind it. Sometimes I hear people singing and I’ll say to my wife, Erin, “That person might as well be singing in Mandarin because they have absolutely no clue what they’re singing about.”
So many elements separate the pretenders from the contenders. Sure, Mariah Carey can sing five octaves or whatever, while Leonard Cohen could sing only half an octave. But time will tell which of their music lives on. It’s not what we’re capable of doing; it’s what we do with our capabilities.
You’ll find guys now, unfortunately, who think their favorite blues guitar player is Eddie Van Halen. To do something with depth, with real weight and substance—whether that depth is lost on others—you need roots, you need experience. Someone might say, “Well, KISS is superficial, so who’s this guy to be talking?” Well, not superficial to the 100 million people who’ve bought our albums so they can listen to them over and over. So when I say that roots are essential to whatever you’re going to do, I say it in part because I grew up seeing Otis Redding and listening to Dion and the Belmonts and Irving Berlin and Puccini and Jerry Lee Lewis and Muddy Waters, and the list goes on. The point is: it all adds to the stew.
I was a huge Byrds fan. I could play all their songs. I was a fan of Tim Hardin, Phil Ochs, David Blue, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. I went to the Gaslight down in the Village to see Dave Van Ronk. Those artists may seem superfluous to what I do, but they’re all in there. I saw the Temptations. I listened to and watched Jackie Wilson, who was a phenomenal singer and an incredibly magnetic performer. I was a huge fan of Eric Andersen—the idea that, stripped away of everything, someone could sit and mesmerize you with a story or a point of view was a revelation. To hear Eric Andersen sing “Thirsty Boots” was a romantic notion of a different kind of life where somebody incessantly traveled and needed to move; if nothing else, things like that make you aware that there’s a whole other world out there. How much of it you want to see is up to you, but I always found that music was a portal into a life that I wasn’t part of but on some level wanted to experience.
We can only be as deep as our experiences. We draw from our musical travels, and in my case, even if on the surface some of those places may seem irrelevant, they’re all part of it. All the various pieces contribute to a mosaic that represents the richness of our lives and experiences. It’s all there, adding to the detail and color.
In food circles, people talk about layers of flavors and a flavor profile. Well, you don’t get that from one ingredient; you get that from a balance of many. And God knows I’m not original in the sense that I created something new as a vocalist. The proportions and balance of those who inspired me are what created me.
In the lore of rock and roll, there are legendary, almost tragic-heroic figures who were said to be can’t-miss talents but who never made it—people like the 1960s British singers Frankie Miller and Terry Reid. Terry was rumored to have been the first choice to front Led Zeppelin and later to have been offered the vocalist slot with Deep Purple. Instead, nobody’s heard of him. Frankie Miller sounds like the blueprint for Rod Stewart. And sometimes I wonder: Could I have lived like Frankie Miller or Terry Reid? Could I have maintained the same passion if it hadn’t led to commercial success along the way? Well, the truth is, I had no interest in not having commercial success.
I suppose everybody wants to be famous. But what are we doing to reach that goal?
Don’t kid yourself, the bands that have done the best didn’t fall into their success, and they certainly didn’t sustain it by accident. Nobody who’s around for decades stays there by chance. It’s work, it’s thinking things through, and regardless of what they say, it’s a hunger and thirst to stay successful. If you don’t have that from the start, you won’t achieve success, and you certainly won’t sustain it. You have to be clear about what you want and how to get it. Without a plan and a work ethic, you might as well say you want to fly.
What separated Robert Plant from Terry Reid? What separated Rod Stewart from Frankie Miller? Probably everything other than their talent. It’s how hard they worked.
The playing field is not level. I don’t think it is in any aspect of life. But opportunities are there for the person who works hardest. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying it’s fun. It’s that much tougher for somebody with a facial difference or a physical disability. Even so, it’s possible.
Is it fair? No. But if we let “fair” hold us back, then we become victims. And that’s not acceptable. No matter how much we cry foul, only we will suffer in the end.
We can’t win if we don’t fight. We can’t win if we don’t play. So for me, at the worst times, it’s always been about fighting to get through it.
I’ve never had a feeling of hopelessness. I’ve had feelings of despair, but I’ve never believed that any situation was permanent. We have to take control and acknowledge our pain and then move through it. Hope is based on shaping the future, not on seeing today as permanent. And that is the key to being able to dream big.
Of course, the future doesn’t happen on its own. We make it happen. And hope is just acknowledging our own role, our own agency. The future is never set in stone, and for that reason alone, there is always hope.
I can’t imagine giving up. It’s so against my nature.
Because I really believe that we are the masters of our own destiny.