KISS Lead Singer Gene Simmons: ‘I Don’t Have Friends’

Gene Simmons admitted that he doesn’t need friends.

The KISS rocker, 73, has opened up about his own solitude.

“Even today as I sit here, other than [KISS co-founder] Paul [Stanley], and we only get together when we do stuff for the band,” Simmons told Goldmine. “How do I say this without sounding inhuman? I don’t have friends. Yeah, if friends means, ‘Gee, I don’t know what I’m going to do this afternoon. Hey, you want to come over and hang out?’ I’m more interested in what I want to do, and I don’t want to pretend that I’m interested in what you want to do because I am not.”

Simmons and Stanley, 70, have been a team since 1973, even though they didn’t get along well at first.

“I didn’t like him,” Stanley told Oprah Winfrey. “I thought he was full of himself, opinionated, brash, insulting…”

But still, they teamed up through more than half of their lives.

“Look, the fact that we’re together 40 years is a testament… actually, we’ve been together 44 years,” said Standley. “It’s like a marriage. And, thankfully, I never see him without his clothes.”