Original Kiss Lineup Reunion ‘Doesn’t Make Sense’

Don’t expect to see original Kiss members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss joining the band for their final performance. During an exclusive conversation with UCR, Paul Stanley admits a reunion with his former bandmates is not in the cards.

“This tour is a celebration of the band and the life of the band over the past 50 years. It’s not a celebration of the original lineup,” he explains. “As important as the original lineup was, I can say that we wouldn’t be here today if not for them, and we wouldn’t be here today with them.”

While some fans may be disappointed by Frehley and Criss’ absence from Kiss’ farewell tour, it’s certainly not a shock. Earlier this year, Stanley told Howard Stern that he refused to play alongside his former bandmates at the band’s 2014 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction “because if you saw people onstage who looked like Kiss but sounded like that, maybe we should be called Piss.” Frehley demanded an apology soon afterward, but instead received a “fuck you.”

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Similarly, Frehley and Criss refused to give new interviews for the 2021 KISStory documentary, at which time Stanley said the pair’s demands for compensation and creative control were unreasonable.

“It doesn’t make sense to allow anybody to come in and call shots,” Stanley explains to UCR. “We are in great shape. The band is fantastic. I don’t want to mar the celebration [of the farewell tour]. I don’t want to mar the situation. It’s been too good.”

Kiss Will Play Their Final Show in December

Kiss will close the End of the Road tour with a pair of shows on Dec. 1 and 2 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Stanley confesses he has “very mixed” emotions thinking about the final concert.

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“Playing the Garden will be exhilarating and full circle, and yet it’s also the end of the band as it exists, and that’s something in so many ways that’s different,” he says. “Certainly, the skeptic might draw comparisons to the Farewell Tour we did [in 2000-01], which was done under very different circumstances. This is based on reality and limitation of doing something indefinitely. There’s a reason that there are no 70-plus-year-old basketball players or football players or players in any sport. That we’ve made it this far is extraordinary. We’re the exception to the rule as far as being a rock band.”