After more than four decades on the road, Kiss started in 2019 their farewell tour and due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the concerts had to be postponed, returning in 2021. Since then the group toured all over the world, playing in North America, South America, Asia, Oceania and Europe. In 2023 they are returning to many of the countries they even performed already last year, what made fans think their farewell tour could go on for more time.
But in an interview with “Podcast Rock City” (Transcribed by Blabbermouth), the band’s manager Doc McGhee said that their final concert will happen in 2023. He also talked about the possibility of ex-members of the band performing in that final show.
Kiss manager says the band’s final concert will happen in 2023
“[The last show of the ‘End Of The Road’ tour] be finalized in the next few days, and we’ll be making an announcement probably in the next days.
“One thing about KISS, we’ve always been that band that went to places where most bands didn’t go. So we play everybody’s town… You name it, we’ve played there. So we always go where the people are anyways.”
“The reason why we’re continuing doing this last [run] is because obviously the pandemic has stopped us from finishing. And the fact that people just wanted to see us. But we had to end it at some time, which will be this year.”
He continued talking about the possibility of ex-members of the band returning for the final show:
“There’s a lot of talk about everything. And nobody knows what’s gonna happen in the future. So what we’ve kind of put in our minds is let’s go through this like this is the end of KISS as we know it. And whatever comes our way, with technology and everything else, we’ll look at it. Will be Gene and Paul out there in makeup. No. I can tell you that. They’re hanging their hats up after the [final] show, which is gonna be very, very difficult and very emotional for them after 50 years of doing this. And they love it.”
“A lot of my bands — most of my bands — [say], ‘I hate this. I don’t wanna be out there anymore. I don’t wanna do this. This is bullshit.’ That’s not [Paul and Gene]. They love it. They thrive on it. We have a great time on the road, or an extremely good time on the road. So, it’s, like, ‘Why are we ending this?’ And we’re ending this because this is the time to end it.”
He continued:
“This is it, 50 years of KISS. And let them move on to their next phase of whatever they wanna do, whether it’s Gene in business or having a country named after him, the Gene Simmons World; we don’t know, however that works. And Paul’s got a family. He’s got three kids — he actually has four kids, but he’s got three kids in the house.
“For us, we’re just kind of open. People are throwing ideas around to us, and then we’ll look at it. But, really, it has to be amazing. We don’t fall for gimmicks, as much as some people would think we’re a gimmick. But we don’t fall for ’em. We didn’t do NFTs, we didn’t do all that stuff, because we didn’t believe in it. We didn’t believe that people were gonna get anything out of it. And it wasn’t gonna be long-lasting,” Doc McGhee said.