KISS frontman says original lineup will never reform 

Paul Stanley of Kiss (right): ‘If someone else can be a great frontman and reflect the philosophy of Kiss, it doesn’t have to be me’ Photograph: Miguel Sierra/EPA

Last modified on Thursday 19 March 2015 06.12 EDT

Anyone hoping to witness one last performance from the original members of Kiss might be out of luck. Paul Stanley, the band’s frontman and co-founding member with Gene Simmons, has said that sharing a stage with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss for Kiss’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction last year would be the closest he would get to a reunion appearance.

“Frankly, I have too much pride in what I do than to create a moment of nostalgia for someone else,” Stanley said, in an interview with Australian news site news.com.au. “To get on stage with Ace and Peter was an interesting, surreal moment but nothing I wanted to prolong. Someone asked me before the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame ‘Couldn’t you just play with the original line-up again for one night?’ And I said ‘How about spending a night with your ex wife? What’s the point?’”

Stanley’s reluctance to reform the original band was further detailed in his 2014 autobiography Face the Music: A Life Exposed. Frehley and Criss weren’t up to the task of playing the songs, Stanley wrote – and he stood by those statements in the interview.

“I didn’t write anything to assassinate anybody’s character. I wrote the truth,” he said. “If someone asks you a question you have to tell the reality as you know it. As you live it. I gave examples. I’m the first to say I didn’t throw anybody under the bus but some people walked under it.”

As well as likening his former bandmates to an ex-spouse, Stanley spoke about the Kiss brand extending beyond even his involvement. He said the group was immortal, and that “if someone else can be a great frontman and reflect the philosophy of Kiss, it doesn’t have to be me.”

The face paint connoisseurs have not existed in their original form since their hugely commercially successful Alive/Worldwide tour in 1996. Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer now make up the rest of the band, alongside Stanley and Simmons.

Kiss are due to embark on a 40th anniversary world tour in April, taking them to South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

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