Kiss played their final show in 2023 after 50 years on the road, but although Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley won’t get back together on stage to tour, their avatars will. The band’s co-founders gave more details in an interview with Pollstar about the upcoming avatar shows, which are scheduled to debut in 2028.
Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley talks about upcoming Kiss avatar show
Paul Stanley said: “It will be a true immersive experience that really magnifies the band and the iconic nature of what we’ve built for 50 years. It’s very different from anything else that’s been out there. It has really no connection to some of the experimental holograms that were tried in the past, which were really very primitive. This will be virtually seeing us. My avatar looks just like me, not a cartoon or an artist rendition. The great thing about being an icon is you can stay young forever,” he said.
Gene Simmons also talked about the upcoming project, saying: “Pophouse is a terrific bunch of entrepreneurial futurists. They did buy our makeup and the tunes, yes, but what they’re deep into is planting seeds for the future to make it even bigger. I’ll tell you what I mean. But the big move now is what we’re calling, as a place card, ‘the avatars’. The fans should start to think about this as not the end of anything. This is the phoenix rising out of the ashes. As a form of life, caterpillars aren’t very impressive, but they survive, and then it looks like they’re dying as they go into a cocoon. But then you get a beautiful butterfly that sprouts wings and goes to places and soars above that the caterpillar never imagined. This is not the end. This is the beginning,” he said.
One of the most influential Rock bands of all time, Kiss was formed in New York City in 1973 by Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, Peter Criss and Paul Stanley. During their 50 year career, only Simmons and Stanley remained in the band the entire time, and they have sold an estimated 100 million records worldwide.