Gene Simmons has announced his first solo concert after KISS’ retirement in December 2023.
Yesterday (January 18), Brazilian rock festival Summer Breeze released its 2024 line-up on Instagram, revealing the Gene Simmons Band as a headliner on April 26, the first of its three days, alongside Mr. Big and Sebastian Bach. According to Loudwire, the Gene Simmons band will include Sebastian Bach guitarist Brent Woods, Corey Taylor guitarist Zach Throne, along with drummer Brian Tichy, who sessions for Whitesnake, Billy Idol and Foreigner.
Gene Simmons last toured as a solo act in 2018 with a different backing band, performing gigs in North America, Europe and Australia. On that tour, he played an assortment of KISS classics, in addition to covers of Chuck Berry, The Beatles and Little Richard, and material from his solo albums. To date, Simmons has released two albums as a standalone act, namely his 1978 self-titled, and 2004’s curiously-named ‘Asshole’.
In December, KISS played their final show ever at Madison Square Garden, as part of their ‘End Of The Road’ farewell tour. The glam rock band notably ended that show with an announcement that the band was ending their stint as humans, fans would be able to “see [them] in all different things, all the time” in future, as virtual avatars. As the band walked offstage, their virtual selves performed ‘God Gave Rock And Roll To You II’ to close the night.
The avatars were co-developed by George Lucas’ VFX company, Industrial Light & Magic, and Pophouse Entertainment group, which was co-founded by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus. Simmons previously teased the band’s future as a virtual act by stating that their farewell tour only marked “the end of the road for the band, not the brand”, adding that the “KISS experience… is immortal”.
Shortly after the band’s final concert as humans, Simmons stated that “about 200 million” dollars had been invested into refining the technology utilised to develop a show based on their virtual avatars. In an interview with the BBC, Pophouse Entertainment CEO Per Sundin was quoted stating that the virtual versions of KISS’ members “have superpowers”, and wanted to be open with the lack of realism in response to the outlet’s observation that the preview of KISS’ virtual avatars were markedly less realistic than that of ABBA.
ABBA have themselves also been immortalised through virtual entertainment in a new show, ABBA Voyage, which premiered at the custom-made ABBA Arena in Stratford, East London in May. The show’s premiere was awarded five stars by NME, with Andrew Trendell praising the realism with which the iconic quartet was depicted: “Their movements, their shadows, their clothes, the way the sequins shimmer in the light… how can this not be real?”