KISS performed what was billed as their final show last December at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The band also announced they planned to continue as digital avatars, which drew skepticism from many KISS fans.
KISS singer/guitarist Paul Stanley recently spoke with Ultimate Classic Rock about the avatars and said that fans “got the wrong impression” of the band’s next phase.
“One thing that’s interesting is people, I think, perhaps even understandably, got the wrong impression initially of the avatars,” Stanley told Ultimate Classic Rock. “Because at the Garden shows, we wanted to give people a glimpse of some of the things, or one of the things, that’s to come. But the avatars are really in their infancy. They’re far from where they’ll end up in terms of look and purpose. The purpose, ultimately, is not that we’re being replaced by flying avatars. It’s just another way of diversifying what KISS is.”
He continued: “Quite honestly, many times in the last 50 years, people have scratched their heads about what our plans were. And nine out of 10 times they’ve been successful, and other people have followed. So that’s nothing really new.
“We’re in a fortunate position and a unique position of being a band that can do things that other bands can’t do,” Stanley added. “So to not explore and take advantage of many of them would be, I don’t know, ridiculous, and also, really, at this point, mystifying. We’ve worked this hard to create four icons, and a band that’s iconic in so many different ways, and to not diversify and maximize what we’ve created, we’d be crazy.”
KISS guitarist Tommy Thayer previously told Guitar World about the avatars: “It’ll take some time to get the imagery where we want it to be. I haven’t really thought about what it all means in the big picture, but with technology evolving as quickly as it is, there’s no doubt that this is the direction a lot of entertainment is going.”
The band also previously announced that it would be more than three years before the avatars make their debut.
