{"id":2369,"date":"2012-08-11T22:27:55","date_gmt":"2012-08-12T05:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/?p=2369"},"modified":"2019-03-24T18:28:31","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T01:28:31","slug":"kdkb-phoenix-gene-simmons-is-rich-just-ask-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/2012\/08\/11\/kdkb-phoenix-gene-simmons-is-rich-just-ask-him\/","title":{"rendered":"KDKB: Phoenix &#8211; Gene Simmons Is Rich&#8230;Just Ask Him!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/facegene.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2371\" title=\"facegene\" src=\"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/facegene-300x298.jpg\" alt=\"facegene\" width=\"300\" height=\"298\" srcset=\"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/facegene-300x298.jpg 300w, http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/facegene-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/facegene.jpg 380w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s face it&#8230;Gene Simmons loves himself. It&#8217;s not a shocker. I&#8217;m not trying to badmouth him when I say it. Gene is an absolutely honest representative of pure, unadulterated, straight-up, P.T. Barnum hucksterism.\u00a0 He has built an amazing empire. There can be no doubt that he&#8217;s a classic, American success story. You don&#8217;t believe it?&#8230;just try to talk to him without having him mention how successful he, and KISS are. Hell&#8230;*I* owe him a debt of gratitude myself. Gene is partially responsible for my growth as an interviewer.<\/p>\n<p>It was July 3rd, 1988. I was 20.\u00a0 Just really getting my feet wet in radio. A friend who worked for their record company (Hello Mike if you&#8217;re reading this!), called me on the phone and asked; &#8220;What are you doing tomorrow?&#8221; I replied, &#8220;Getting shit-faced! What did you think I&#8217;d be doing on the 4th?&#8221; He said, &#8220;No! You&#8217;re not. You&#8217;re going to be at my house at 7AM. We&#8217;re going up to New Hampshire to see KISS! Bring a tape-recorder.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Long-story short&#8230;I got a chance to sit down with Gene Simmons, and absorb about 20 minutes of his opinion on everything from cars, to speed metal, to why he couldn&#8217;t care less about how credible people find KISS&#8217; music.\u00a0 It was a lesson in being prepared. If you&#8217;re going to sit down with someone who believes they&#8217;re more intelligent than you (and probably was), you&#8217;d better be prepared. You can&#8217;t say anything stupid (I did).<\/p>\n<p>24 years later&#8230;We had a chance to catch up.<\/p>\n<!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-2369-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/paulmuf\/KDKB\/Gene.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/paulmuf\/KDKB\/Gene.mp3\">http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/paulmuf\/KDKB\/Gene.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s face it&#8230;Gene Simmons loves himself. It&#8217;s not a shocker. I&#8217;m not trying to badmouth him when I say it. Gene is an absolutely honest representative of pure, unadulterated, straight-up, P.T. Barnum hucksterism.\u00a0 He has built an amazing empire. There can be no doubt that he&#8217;s a classic, American success story. You don&#8217;t believe it?&#8230;just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2369"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3786,"href":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions\/3786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neanderpaul.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}