On this day · 77 years ago · 1949
77 Years Ago Today: KISS Bassist Gene Simmons Is Born in Haifa, Israel
Gene Simmons was born Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel, and moved to New York at 8. By 1973 he was co-founding KISS, playing bass in fire-breathing demon makeup on an axe-shaped instrument he designed himself.
By Lowe, Bass desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Gene Simmons was born Chaim Witz on August 25, 1949, in Haifa, Israel, and turns 77 today. By 1973 he had co-founded KISS with Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss, taking on bass, co-lead vocals, and the band's fire-breathing 'Demon' persona. He's known for playing self-designed basses, the axe-shaped Axe Bass and the spikier Punisher, and for producing an early Van Halen demo tape in 1976 that failed to land the band a deal.
From Haifa to the Demon
Gene Simmons was born Chaim Witz on August 25, 1949, in Haifa, Israel. His family emigrated to the United States when he was 8, and he grew up largely in New York, per Wikipedia's account of his early life. By 1973 he had teamed up with Paul Stanley, and the two recruited Ace Frehley and Peter Criss to form KISS, a band built as much around visual spectacle, face paint, platform boots, pyrotechnics, and Simmons's own fire-breathing, blood-spitting "Demon" persona, as around the music itself.
KISS's early run produced a string of hard rock staples: the 1974 self-titled debut, Destroyer and Rock and Roll Over in 1976, and Love Gun in 1977. Simmons split lead vocal duties with Stanley and, later, Frehley and Criss, giving the band's catalog several distinct voices depending on which member sang lead.
Simmons is a member of the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame, the same institution that separately inducted Doug Stegmeyer, Billy Joel's longtime bassist, whose own story, on this same August 25 date, follows a very different arc.
The bassist who tried, and failed, to sign Van Halen
One of the stranger footnotes in Simmons's career: in 1976, he produced an early demo tape for a then-unknown Los Angeles band called Van Halen and tried to get them signed. It didn't happen. Warner Bros. producer Ted Templeman and executive Mo Ostin caught Van Halen live at Hollywood's Starwood club in February 1977 and signed the band within weeks, on their own, per CYS's account of Van Halen's early history. Eddie Van Halen would go on to become one of the most influential guitarists of his generation on a completely different label than the one Simmons had been chasing.
Self-designed basses: the Axe and the Punisher
Simmons has spent most of his career playing basses he designed himself rather than off-the-shelf instruments. His main stage bass since the mid-1970s has been the Axe Bass, built in the shape of a battle axe, an instrument as much a piece of stagecraft as a playable bass. In 1992 he introduced a second, spikier design called the Punisher; Cort Guitars turned it into an official production signature model, the GS Punisher-2, in 2011, with a mahogany body and diamond-shaped fretboard inlays matching the design Simmons plays onstage.
Simmons's current personal string gauge isn't documented in a source CYS can verify as of this writing. What's well established is the style behind it: he plays with a pick, driving an aggressive, cutting low end built for arena-scale rock.
Nickel Wound Bass EXL160 (.050-.105)
Why this one: Not a claim about Simmons's own current gauge, which isn't documented. A heavier nickel roundwound set built for the kind of aggressive, pick-driven attack his playing calls for.
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