Paul Stanley has addressed why no former members of Kiss were present or mentioned at the band’s final concert.
The Dec. 2, 2023, performance featured Stanley and co-founding bassist Gene Simmons alongside the group’s most recent lead guitarist and drummer, Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer.
Despite being occasionally shown in historical footage during the concert, founding members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, as well as former members Vinnie Vincent, Bruce Kulick, and the late Mark St. John and Eric Carr, were not acknowledged by name.
This omission upset some fans and former band members. “Kisstory was not represented for the final show,” Kulick told UCR. Frehley expressed his disappointment early in the band’s End of the Road farewell tour, saying, “I don’t understand. I’ve offered my services, and they just haven’t made the decision to bring me back.”
Stanley, however, has a different perspective. “To be somewhat diplomatic, there were people who made unrealistic demands of what they required,” he said on the Talk is Jericho podcast. “And it’s not about that. It wasn’t, for example, a celebration of the beginning of the band; it was a celebration of 50 years of a band, as opposed to a tribute to the start.”
He also questioned how such a tribute would be executed. “What are we going to have — videos up on the screen or draped photos? The fact that we were there, we were there because of everybody who participated, some more than others, but the tribute to everyone is us existing.”