Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons look back at KISS's 'Music From the Elder' album 40 years later

Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of Kiss look back at 'Music From the Elder' album 40 years later.

Video Transcript

LYNDSEY PARKER: I hope you will indulge me because this year is the 40th anniversary of a record that I think was not critically understood at the time but is kind of got in a renaissance, and that's "Music From 'The Elder'". "Classic Rock" magazine ranked it among the list of the 20 most underrated classic rock albums ever.

I know it was kind of in the middle of a transitional phase for Kiss. A couple of years later, the makeup would come off for a while. But what was the idea or the mindset going into such an ambitious project that was a big risk at the time?

PAUL STANLEY: We were lost. We were delusional. We had become complacent and kind of ungrateful for the success that we had and what it was based on. So we were lazy. I think we had all become very comfortable in a rich, so to speak, lifestyle and became more concerned with how our contemporaries viewed us rather than our fans. And I think the fans were forsaken.

And we couldn't make a rock album. We had no teeth. We were gumming at that point.

GENE SIMMONS: When you do anything, you want authenticity and honesty. That was a dishonest record. "The Elder" was misdirected. We were very popular and played stadiums and stuff, and we had a change in the lineup. Peter Criss had succumbed to some of the cliches in rock and roll, and all of us, Ace and myself, voted for him to be out of the band. So we got a new guy, Eric, God bless him, who unfortunately passed away.

And we had some time off, and I was at the Beverly Hills Hotel, of all places, because I started to fool around with movies and meeting those kinds of people-- go to Paramount Pictures, like all that stuff. And eventually I'd wind up doing a few movies and producing some but wasn't the real thing for me, and I started writing.

And the thing I wrote was on the Beverly Hills stationery, hotel, "The Elder." "When the Earth was young, they were already old," and it started with a story treatment that I wanted to turn into a movie, Tolkien-esque kind of a thing and inspiration from The Watcher from Marvel and so on.

We brought Bob Ezrin back, who had produced possibly our best record, "Destroyer," up until then. It was Bob Ezrin who said, let's do a concept record. Gene, I like your story. Let's craft songs based on your story.

PAUL STANLEY: When we got together with Bob Ezrin really hoping that he would help us save the ship, so to speak. We all just jumped on this idea of, well, we'll show people. We'll show them how smart and musical we are. That really came from going, well, at the moment, we can't rock. Well, you can't get away from Bob's discography and his credits.

And whether it was really shaping Alice and the band into what they were-- I mean, I saw that firsthand when we worked together on "Destroyer," and all of a sudden I went, oh, now I know where that bass part comes from or that drum figure. Bob was intrinsic and so important, certainly, to Alice, and "The Wall" is a testament to his brilliance.

And "Destroyer" was a real boot camp for us. Quite honestly, I think we were all hoping to do something great. And, you know, sometimes you fall. And when you fall off eight-inch heels, you fall far.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Yeah, I always wondered because right around the same time that "Music From 'The Elder'" the album came out, there had been "The Wall" movie, and Bob Ezrin had worked on "The Wall." So I always wondered if Pink Floyd's "The Wall" was at all an inspiration for you to sort of have your own "Wall."

GENE SIMMONS: Well, the real story behind "The Elder" was this kind of self-deluded notion. Hey, The Who had Tommy. Let's have our own Tommy. And it's like Zeppelin didn't have Tommy. They did fine.

PAUL STANLEY: It was lunacy.

LYNDSEY PARKER: You did work with Lou Reed, though, which is pretty damn cool. I mean, a lot of rock bands would be pretty happy to be able to say that.

PAUL STANLEY: Well, Lou came to some of the rehearsals, and Lou also lived across the street from me, and Bob also lived across the street from me. So, you know, it was a neighborhood project.

GENE SIMMONS: We got Lou Reed to come up for a day, and we started fooling around with lyrics. And it was written sideways on one of Lou's papers was "a world without heroes," and immediately all of us-- might have been me or Paul or any of us-- that's a cool title. That's a great-- what about a world without heroes? Well, a world without heroes is no place to be, you know, and so on.

So the song wrote itself based on some of the stuff Paul had, which was every little bit of your heart. Paul always writes more sort of romantic kind of things. It's what you guys want to hear.

PAUL STANLEY: What came out was-- I don't particularly think it's very good. At times, it's hammy. Most of my vocals on there, if you've ever seen "The Little Rascals" and Alfalfa would sing in this pseudo operatic voice, or try to.

- (SINGING) Poems are made.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Was it ever envisioned to be a stage production or a film? Were there any plans of that and that never came to fruition?

GENE SIMMONS: Yes, we actually had Christopher Makepeace-- was an actor at the time who had just come off "My Bodyguard." And he was actually cast in the lead role, and we started to actually cast it. I don't remember if Patrick Stewart was involved as Morpheus. He might have been.

But it started to get some legs, and we were going to do a, you know, motion picture. But like most movies, over 95% never get made even though there are scripts and everything. So we had a treatment based on, I mean, my treatment, but it stopped there, and we kind of gave up on it.

PAUL STANLEY: Well, that's how delusional we were. We could just as easily talk about launching a rocket to Mars. You know, I mean, you can talk about it, but actually there's so much that goes into it. And, quite honestly, if you were going to send a rocket to Mars, you'd need a rocket and fuel. And as far as "The Elder," I don't think we had either. It was forced, and I think the songs were not great, and we were full of ourselves.

GENE SIMMONS: There are a few songs I like. I like "I," which was semi-autobiographical about my sense about anti-drugs. I believe in me. Why would I hurt my body and my mind? I believe in me. There were a few decent songs on there.

But the thing that was missing was the honesty of it. It was a misdirected album.

PAUL STANLEY: There were a lot of problems within the band, and Bob was having his share of problems. And it was an album that, to me, was just a picture of a bunch of people who were lost. You had to be there to know just how difficult it was to see it through to the end, and that was nobody's fault in particular. It was all of us. It was just symptomatic of all of us not being in a good place.

LYNDSEY PARKER: I appreciate it for what it was.

PAUL STANLEY: And that doesn't mean that your opinion isn't as valid as mine. If "Classic Rock" or somebody wants to think it's underrated, God bless them. That means we sold six copies.