I happened to catch “Role Models” one night, and in the movie, KISS was described as “4 jewish guys from NY”.
Is this true? Are the members of KISS all Jewish? Are any of them Jewish? The reason I ask is because
The “SS” at the end of KISS’ logo always reminded me of the “SS” logo from the Nazi uniforms. The lightning bolt “S” font (Runic) is very similar, and if the band members are Jewish, it would seem a strange font to pick.
I went to the KISS wikipedia page, and it states on that page that the nazi “SS” ia illegal to display in Germany, so anything that has anything to do with KISS in Germany has the “SS” at the end of their logo changed to look like backward “Z”'s to be in compliance with the law. So it appears I’m not the only one to notice the similarity of the KISS logo and the SS logo from the Nazi’s
Does anyone have any insight into this? And if the band has 1 or more Jewish members, why they would go with a logo like that?
Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons are jewish (check the wiki articles of them). The Ss are meant to look like lightnings, IIRC, and naturally has nothing to do with the SS of Nazi Germany; Simmons’ mother was in a concentration camp.
Gene Simmons, the driving force behind the band, was born Chaim Witz in Israel and is a self-described Jew. How religious he is, I have no idea. KISS originated in a period when the only bands to get attention had some shock value, like Alice Cooper and the Ramones (the latter of whom were also Jews who employed Nazi imagery for shock value, like swastika t-shirts). I don’t think the guy is committed to anything much beyond making a buck.
interesting. I can believe that they didn’t ***intend ***to design the logo to look like the nazi SS, but if Germany outlawed the logo, it must be close enough to remind people of its alternative meaning. Knowing this (or having it pointed out to them), I wonder why they never changed it?
If it was meant to be similar their designer didn’t push it very hard. The Kiss logo “SS” has the break one third or so down the character while the Nazi “SS” symbol has the break in the center. The Kiss logo has perfectly horizontal lines where the bolt bends. The SS symbol has angled points.
They did have songs called ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ and ‘Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World’ (lyrics: I’m a shock trooper in a stupor yes I am/I’m a Nazi schatze you know I fight for the fatherland), though. I don’t think they did it for shock value as much as to represent mindlessness.
Also, the Dictators, who were probably somewhat of an influence on Kiss, were all (more or less) Jewish, and they also took the mickey out of the whole thing with ‘Master Race Rock’ and Next Big Thing (We knocked 'em dead in Dallas, We didn’t pay our dues, We knocked 'em dead in Dallas, They didn’t know we were Jews)
May have been more to it than that. According to Wikipedia: “Johnny, who was fascinated by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, would sometimes torment Joey with anti-Semitic remarks.”
Johnny and Joey had their own psychodrama - Joey (Jeff Hyman) was barely functional in the normal bandwidth, given his OCD and other mental disabilities - see the doc End of the Century for comments from his brother, who loved him but until the Ramones wondered if Joey could even function in society. Johnny was a cool bully as a teen who (I got the impression from the stuff I have read) abused and teased Joey mercilessly - in a typical teenage way. Before he started trying to front bands, Joey was the overly-tall, mentally-challenged geek who wanted to hang out with the cool kids, like Johnny - typical and no surprise that Johnny messed with him. When Joey actually demonstrated singing and song-writing skills, Johnny had to figure out how to deal with Joey more as a band-mate - but never really did. Not to mention the fact that Johnny took the one girl Joey thought he had a chance of landing and married her - he and Joey never really spoke outside of band business again.
Johnny was into Nazi crap the same way that Lemmy of Motorhead is into it - a weird fascination. Eddie Vedder and Sean Penn were very close to Johnny before he died - Eddie was in the room - and there’s no way those two would associate with him if he was a believer of that crap.
As for Kiss - look, Jewish or not, Kiss is about one thing: money. Gene Simmons cared about a cool logo that had a powerful look - so he could market it and make money. I have never heard him reference the SS - that was stuff put out by watchdog groups after the logo was years old. Knights in Satan’s Service and all that crap. Sigh. Follow the money - period.
Well, for sure. Look at the era these guys started in – shock was the name of the game, with other acts such as Alice Cooper pretty much leading the way.
Kiss originally appealed to 12-year old boys and Japanese schoolgirls, both of whom thought their costumes were “cool”.
There were Kiss fans of both sexes much older than 12. They were kind of gimicky, but they were very very popular in the mid to late 70’s. They had their faces and logo slapped on anything that you could slap a logo on and sell. Comic books, trading cards, lunchboxes, all sorts of clothing, keychains, wallets, lamps, pez dispensers (not kidding) you name it. So they did have a lot of younger fans, but there were a lot of people in their 20’s and 30’s that were into them.
I’ve read one of Gene Simmon’s books (someone gave it to me for Christmas, stop looking at me like that), and seen a few episodes of his reality series, and I doubt if he’s a practicing Jew. He doesn’t talk about religion on his show or in his book, and he is, as others have said, mainly interested in money. I know his mom is still around, and it’s possible he might do the annual holiday stuff (passover, hannukah, etc) for her, but I seriously doubt it’s something he believes in. Paul Stanley and the other guys in the band tend to keep a bit of a lower profile than Gene, so I couldn’t venture a guess as to whether they’re practicing Jews or not.
I grew up with Paul’s neice, who was being raised by her granparents (Paul’s parents) so I knew them pretty well. They were also members of the same synagogue as my family was. The Eisens were secular reform Jews. In other words, not very religious. Very nice folks by the way.
p.s. Paul’s mom pulled off the best burn I’ve ever seen in my life. This happened in 1983 or thereabouts. Mrs. Eisen was a rather matronly looking older lady, and she wore a simple gold KISS pendant on a chain.
One day, this jerky kid named Brian Dworkin went up to her and started making fun of her for wearing it, accusing her of trying to be cool and telling her that KISS wasn’t even cool anymore anyway, etc. etc.
So Mrs. Eisen just looked at him and said “Do you know who Paul Stanley is?” Brian said “Yeah, who doesn’t?” Mrs. Eisen said “He’s my son.”
Brian Dworkin ran away so fast his sneakers smoked.
