Date: Feb 01, 2022,
News Release
In a major interview discussing Kiss’s classic ‘Destroyer’ album Paul Stanley admits that he had a really hard time dealing with producer Bob Ezrin’s decision to give the Stanley-penned classic song ‘God Of Thunder’ to Gene Simmons to sing.
“Let’s put it mildly,” Stanley says in the new issue of Rock Candy Mag. “It was crushing and devastating! We’d understood and agreed that the role of the producer on ‘Destroyer’ was to have final say and make decisions. When I played ‘God Of Thunder’ Bob immediately said, ‘Oh, that’s great, that’s for Gene!’
“I was just devastated. The idea of a song so quickly being passed off from me to someone else… It was difficult, and it remained a sore point, even when I heard it finished.”
When the ‘Destroyer’ album was first released in March of 1976 ‘God Of Thunder’ was quickly recognised as both a Kiss classic and Gene’s signature song. Soon Stanley was forced to admit that Ezrin’s decision to give the bassist and vocalist the tune was absolutely right.
“It’s so much a Gene song,” says Stanley. “It’s truly a highlight of who Gene is, and it would never have been as great a song if I’d sung it. Never. Bob was right and Gene did a great job. And at least I have the satisfaction and the joy of knowing that the song that personifies Gene is mine!”
In the Rock Candy Mag cover feature Stanley and Simmons go deep into the mechanics of making their breakthrough album, while also revealing the concerns they had at the time after some of the first people they played the album to weren’t crazy about it.
“They didn’t find it heavy enough,” admits Stanley. “And coming on the heels of ‘Alive!’, which really captured the rawness of the band, I understand. But we did what we needed to do.”
Read this 12-page Kiss feature and many other fascinating stories including Scorpions, Anthrax, and Steve Vai in issue 30 of Rock Candy Mag.
