Did they guys in KISS hate each other? Sometimes. But it’s not clear to me if any one person was wholly at fault for their problems.
PART of the problem is that the band was built by two guys who were tight friends and business partners (Paul and Gene) who had a plan for success… and two guys they probably regarded as hired side men along for the ride.
Sometimes, if you watch footage of old interviews, you’ll see that Ace was totally drunk or stoned. He’d be making stupid, unfunny jokes and cracking himself up while Gene fumed. IF Ace was like that all the time, I can easily understand why Gene and Paul would get sick of him.
Meanwhile, Ace and Peter had their own reasons to regard Gene as a jerk. I remember seeing Ace on That Metal Show, where he pointed to a guy in the audience dressed in Kiss makeup, and quipped, “Believe me, sir, if Gene could find ANY way to make you pay to wear that makeup, he would.”
If Gene thought Ace was a drunken idiot, and Ace thought Gene was a money-grubbing prick, I have a feeling they were BOTH right!
Shortly before Metallica released St. Anger, I saw an interview with James Hetfield where he said that the group recorded the album because they wanted to create an album that didn’t have a lot of “negative, fucked up energy” behind it. So, obviously there was a lot of friction behind the scenes.
When I bought the album, I quickly realized that the negative, f—ed up energy was a vital component of the band’s sound. (St. Anger is easily the worst Metallica album, by a wide margin.)
I thought Mackenzie regarded John as an drunk/stoned, clueless, inattentive, out-to-lunch Dad more than as a prick. Mackenzie, like her sister Bijou, could be out all night partying, drinking, taking drugs and getting into trouble because her Dad didn’t notice or care what she was up to.
Although… even as an adult, Mackenzie toured with John in a reformed version of the Mamas and the Papas (one that included Spanky McFarland in place of Cass Elliott). Hard to imagine why she’d keep working wiuth him after all he’d done.
I’m not sure anyone knows the full details, but the aptly named country/folk duo the The Civil Wars had a fabulously successful first album (by folk music standards) and then broke up citing irreconcilable differences.
The ironic thing is, Gene and Paul didn’t want band friction to become a distraction, so they did their best to portray the band as a united and equal front. They wrote up a contract during the early days giving all 4 band members equal profits (which lasted long after Ace and Peter were kicked out), and tried to run the band as democratically as possible, but Ace and Peter just weren’t interested and would show up for practices and meetings stoned, drunk, or not at all.
I haven’t read any of the other band members stories so I don’t have any other point of view, but Gene comes across as a colossal, soulless, money-grubbing, egomaniac prick. In his own book. Which is also reinforced by his television series. But no one in the band comes up smelling like roses. The wonder is that they stayed together as long as they did.
Simmons did an interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air many years ago that exposes his ego. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard Gross get majorly flustered.
No cite, but Billy Gibbons mentioned in an interview that there is a number of reasons each member of ZZ Top travel separately when on tour. He didn’t give any of those reasons, however.
Barry Gibb says that he wasn’t close to his brothers Maurice and Robin before their deaths. He regrets that they were no longer friends. He says he was closer to their youngest brother Andy than to either Robin or Maurice.
As for The Police thing, I had always heard it as Sting and Andy were best buds and lived close to each other and hung out together while Stewart was just the third guy in the band.
