Gene Simmons

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• Genre: Hard Rock
• Hometown: Haifa
• Gene Simmons Website

About

As a singer and bass player for one of the most successful hard rock acts of all time, KISS, Simmons has been famous for many things: face paint, high heeled boots, spitting blood onstage, the really, really long tongue (rumored by teenagers of the 1970s to be a surgically attached cow's tongue), the list goes on. When each member of KISS released a solo album in 1978, Simmons' entry was the most interesting one, with a bona fide great song, "Radioactive," and a shocking, left field take on the Disney classic "When You Wish Upon A Star." In 2004, sans makeup, Simmons released his first solo album in 24 years, winkingly titled *ssh*l*, a term that has long been associated with the rocker. Say what you want about him, Simmons is a brilliant businessman, and few of his endeavors (including a softcore porn mag called Tongue) have failed.

- Mike McGuirk