A few years ago, The Financial Times named Kiss “rock’s greatest capitalists.” By the newspaper’s count, the band founded in 1973 had licensed its name to some 5,000 products, including Kiss Kondoms and Kiss Kaskets.
The “Kiss thing,” Gene Simmons, the band’s brash founding singer-bassist, once said, “has become this huge monster, despite the fact that critics say that doing games and slot machines and golf courses is not credible. Critics still live in their mother’s basement. We own the world.”
Kiss wrapped up its End of the Road (supposed) farewell tour at Madison Square Garden in December 2023, but not before introducing digital avatars designed to perform shows and, in theory, make money in perpetuity. (Actual members of Kiss will play together in November as part of the Kiss Army fan club’s 50th-anniversary celebration in Las Vegas.)
Early this month, Simmons started a solo tour with his Gene Simmons Band. And, at the age of 75, he’s still upsetting critics. For each stop, Simmons is offering a “Personal Assistant and Band Roadie for the Day” experience to one fan. The rocker’s website promises that the roadie and one guest will get to help set up for the gig, attend the soundcheck, have a meal with Simmons, get an onstage introduction during the show and receive a signed bass. V.I.P. experiences have become standard in pop, but it was the package’s price tag — $12,495 (show tickets not included) — that set the internet off. “‘Greedy’ Kiss rocker worth $400M is slammed for charging fans insane money to be his assistant,” blared a Daily Mail headline.
It’s not insane to everyone. “This is what I choose to spend my money on,” said Dwayne Rosado, a tattooed 52-year-old retired corrections sergeant from Middletown, N.Y. He and his soft-spoken son, Zach, a 5-foot-11 seventh grader into mixed martial arts, video games and electric guitar, were the roadies for the day at Simmons’s recent concert at the Count Basie Center for the Arts’ 1,500-capacity theater in Red Bank, N.J. On the afternoon of the show, father and son — both wearing the official Gene Simmons Band road crew shirts that had been provided for them — waited at the theater’s loading area for the rock star to arrive.
The elder Rosado purchased the experience as a birthday gift for Zach, who recently turned 13 and shares his father’s love of Kiss, but it was also a present to himself. Dwayne revealed that a year and a half ago he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “You only live once, and I want to experience life,” he said. “I’m not going to die with a lot of money. I’m going to die happy.”
A short while later, Simmons rolled up in a black S.U.V., wearing sunglasses and a black leather ensemble: pants, vest, fingerless gloves. There were introductory fist bumps, some small talk. “Just don’t touch my ass,” Simmons said as he pulled the Rosados in close for photos.
“You hungry?” Simmons asked.
“We waited all day to eat,” Dwayne replied. “We’re going to eat $12,500 worth of food, brother.”
Inside the venue, soundcheck was in progress. (Simmons’s current band consists of three relatively young hard rock vets.) Zach strapped on a guitar to play an original composition titled “Dad’s a Dork,” with accompaniment from the drummer Brian Tichy. Then Dwayne got behind the kit, launching into the opening of Kiss’s “I Love It Loud.”
“You know, that wasn’t bad,” Simmons said. “It wasn’t good, but …” Everybody laughed.
Simmons and his new assistants made their way to a low-ceilinged basement lounge for takeout dinner from a local Italian place. Dwayne brought up that he and his son had watched an interview in which Simmons — an infamous Lothario — recounted losing his virginity, at age 13 or 14, to a married woman on his newspaper delivery route. “She asked me to sit down on the couch,” Simmons offered. “And the next thing I knew, I was —” He paused, then asked Zach to cover his ears (he obliged) before finishing the story.
The conversation turned to the hefty cost of the roadie for a day experience. Simmons dismissed the haters. “There’s free market, supply and demand,” he explained. “People want to do it, you do it. You buy a Rolls because you want a Rolls, but a Volkswagen will get you there, too.”
For the next two hours, the Rosados had Simmons’s undivided attention, though he didn’t always have Zach’s. (The teen didn’t seem particularly interested in the rocker’s explanation of a limited liability corporation.) Simmons gamely answered all their questions about life and music, occasionally calling up a visual aid — including a photo of himself with the Dalai Lama and a portrait of his late mother, a Holocaust survivor — on his phone (protected by a Kiss-branded case, naturally).
When the subject of retirement came up, Simmons turned philosophical. “Life is a race or a journey,” he said. “I don’t care who you are, when you see the finish line up ahead, what do you do? Slow down and get in your rocking chair, or do you speed up and go as fast as you can before that finish line?” He added, “I’m closer to the finish line now than I was in the past. Why would you slow down, especially if everything’s working?” He indicated he was talking about his “schmeckle,” a Yiddishism young Zach wasn’t familiar with.
“Do I have money — by some standards, a lot of money?” Simmons continued. “Sure. And what, do you roll around in it? Yeah, you could do that once or twice.” He added, “We are social animals, and having a party is one of the best times you can spend on earth. But if you’re the only one at the party, how sad is that? So we have a lot of fun on that stage.”
Next up: a security briefing from AJ Fratto, Simmons’s bald, burly “MacGyver” and “good will ambassador,” who went over scenarios both serious (what to do in an active shooter situation) and mundane (watch out for those cables). His parting lesson: “The big thing is etiquette, etiquette, etiquette, etiquette, etiquette.”
Then on to the gig, a mix of Kiss songs and covers (Van Halen, Motörhead, Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles) frequently punctuated by Simmon’s borscht belt-inflected stage banter. The closest the roadies for the day got to actually working was when Zach brought Simmons a red Solo cup full of cream, a prop in an extremely off-color bit. Later, Simmons summoned father and son to the stage. “Zach, what do you think of Dad?” Simmons asked.
“The best dad ever!” he shouted, leaning into the mic. The crowd clapped and cheered. Dwayne, a big smile on his face, pumped his arms skyward and embraced his son.
Simmons countered with an imitation of his own son (“Dad, I love you. Can I have 20 bucks?”) before turning thoughtful: “My father wasn’t there when I was growing up, so I’ll tell you, it means the world to me to see a good father who stays with his family and makes sure his kids are raised right.”
The show closed with a rousing rendition of Kiss’s “Rock and Roll All Nite.” Afterward, Simmons debriefed with the Rosados in a tiny dressing room. “The most memorable thing for me tonight is to have a son publicly express his love for his father,” Simmons said. “That doesn’t come in a can in a supermarket.”
“It felt awkward, because I have a whole crowd in front of me, and all I wanted to do is hug him,” Dwayne recalled. “I didn’t care about anything else that was going on.”
In the end, was it worth the $12,000? “Absolutely,” Dwayne said.
“You forgot the $500,” Simmons chimed in.
“$12,495 to be exact,” said Dwayne, who was, as Simmons put it, verklempt. “Nothing can beat tonight. It’s cemented in Kisstory now, because it’s going to be on YouTube and everything else. So I’ll get to look back and see that moment forever.”
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