Paul Stanley has shared his thoughts on life after Kiss and why he has been hesitant to pick up the guitar since the band’s farewell tour.
Last December, Kiss concluded fifty years of iconic, pyro-filled performances with the End Of The Road farewell tour. However, stepping away from the stage has been challenging, as Stanley recently explained.
“Last week, I was trying to figure out why I haven’t picked up a guitar,” Stanley tells Gibson TV [via Guitar World]. “I haven’t played much. And I couldn’t figure out why. And then I thought if I started playing, I was afraid that I would miss playing with the band and doing what we do.”
“It’s in my DNA that I just needed to back away for a bit. It’s 50 years with Kiss. That’s pretty phenomenal. And then to cut it off, at least in terms of being a live band, takes some acclimating to and adjusting to,” he admits. “So I needed a little time just to sit back and get my bearings.”
Reflecting on the band’s legacy, Stanley says: “It always felt amazing. And I think losing sight of that would mean you don’t deserve it – to the very last night, going out onstage, and doing what I aspired to do when I was a kid.”
“To end it the way we did was really exactly what I wanted. I wanted us to end in a way that was undeniable. I wanted it to end in a way that people can say once upon a time, there was a band. And certainly there were a lot of unique bands. But there’s only one Kiss.”
Although Kiss has ended their live performances, the band announced at their Madison Square Garden closing show last year that they would continue to entertain fans as virtual avatars.
Kiss’s avatar era follows the successful ABBA Voyage production in London, where members of the iconic Swedish pop group perform their greatest hits as realistic hologram projections.