KISS has been out on their “End Of The Road” tour since January 2019, and the tour was originally scheduled to conclude on July 17, 2021. Due to postponements, the tour has been extended through at least the end of 2022. Now the band has also revealed that KISS Kruise XI, departing from Los Angeles on Oct. 29, 2022, will mark the band’s “last onboard performance,” according to a Facebook post. “We’re gonna have great bands. We’re gonna a great time,” singer/guitarist Paul Stanley said. “Everybody says, ‘When is it gonna be the last one?’ Well, this is KISS Kruise XI, and you don’t want to miss it for a whole lotta reasons. I want you there. You deserve to be there. Be there.”
In an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Stanley said that the band will call it a career by the beginning of 2023. “I believe strongly by the beginning of 2023 we will be finished,” Stanley said. “It seems only natural [for the last show] to be in New York. That is where the band started, and that was really the background for the band getting together and writing these songs, and played loft parties and played clubs starting with an audience of probably 10 people. It seems we should go full circle.”
Stanley elaborated saying that physically the band will soon be unable to perform to the level they want. “It’s a different time than we had pondered [farewell tours] in the past,” Stanley explained. “The fact is that, physically, it’s incredibly demanding to do what we do. Look, we played [recently] in Austin, an outdoor show, 100 percent humidity. We’re running around for two-plus hours, not only with guitars, but I’ve got 30-plus pounds of gear on. There’s a point where you go, ‘You know what? This is more challenge than I want.’ And I only want to do it as long as I can do it smiling. There’s really no thought about changing our minds. It has nothing to do with personalities in the band or tensions or a difference of opinion or musicality. It’s purely practical. You can play beat the clock, but ultimately the clock wins.”
There’s also no debate on what KISS’ final song will be just prior to their final curtain call. “How do you not end with ‘Rock And Roll All Nite’?” bassist/singer Gene Simmons said. “We will have played that song, probably without exception, more than any other song we’ve ever been involved with. You might say, ‘Aren’t you sick and tired of hearing that?’ But I will tell you the roar of the crowd, the smell of the grease paint, there ain’t nothing like it. When you hear everybody getting jazzed about that and you get off the stage… [it’s] like the fire in the belly. You’re dog-tired; you’ve just done a big show; and you get up on that stage, when you see the joy in everybody’s face… We’ve seen it all. We’ve been around for generations, but when you see a little 5-year-old kid in KISS makeup on his dad’s shoulders who’s wearing KISS makeup, next to his father… we’re badass kind of guys — nothing affects us much — but that stuff will put a lump in your throat. You have to turn around for a second. It gets me. Yes, it’s music, but it’s generational, and it brings families together.”
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