Here's How KISS Really Got Their Band Name

Depending on who you talk to, KISS is either the best band, the worst band, or the best worst band. But, no one can dispute that they changed rock forever. KISS basically pioneered, normalized, and standardized big-stadium, rock-out, anthemic, pyrotechnical, party-hard rock-and-roll for all time. If you want to understand KISS and their legacy, then ignore the music and listen to the tongued one himself, Gene Simmons, on Loudersound, "Legacy don't matter to me. I get paid hideously well because I am one of the four guys in KISS." That's all there is to it.

But for such an iconic band with an iconic image, some might be surprised to learn that KISS wasn't always KISS – they started as Wicked Lester. By 1973, after bassist Gene Simmons and rhythm guitar Paul Stanley brought drummer Peter Criss and lead guitarist Ace Frehley on board, they changed their name to KISS. Ahead of the forthcoming 1980s Satanic Panic, rumors spread during the '70s that KISS stood for "Kids in Satan's Service," "Knights in Satan's Service," or some such thing. Bear in mind that Elvis had only gotten popular 20 or so years prior in the mid-50s, and some considered him scandalous.

As it turns out, the story behind KISS' name is way simpler than folks realize. As Stanley recalled on American Songwriter, "KISS" was a spontaneous decision of his when the band was hanging around New York City one day. As the story goes, Criss had been in a band called "Lips," and Stanley just blurted, "What about Kiss?" The rest is history.

Ace Frehley built on Paul Stanley's spontaneous name choice and added the lightning bolt "SS" to the band's name, creating the signature, all-caps "KISS" logo. This happened in January 1973, and by December of the same year they inaugurated one of their mainstay stage gimmicks when Gene Simmons did his fire-breathing trick and set his hair on fire. Judging by photos, the band already had their costumes and makeup locked down by then. And while album sales weren't great, word of their stage performances spread. 

The band has expounded on the rationale behind their name over the years. On Blabbermouth Stanley said, "I thought that it was something that would sound familiar no matter where you were in the world." He also mentioned that the name was open to interpretation and discussion, which he considered a huge plus. Even to this very article, he's been proven right.  

In an interview with Howard Stern on Sirius XM, Stanley similarly spoke of the benefits of using a common noun as the band name. "Kiss' was a word that transcended the English language. You could go almost anywhere in the world ... and people would go, 'Oh, I've heard of them.' It's like calling the band 'water." He also mentioned that interpretations included everything from a "kiss of death" to a "kiss of passion," the range of which encompassed the essence of the band. Most critically, such reasoning indicates that KISS had big, international popularity in mind from the very beginning.

[Featured image by Tilly antoine via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]

We mentioned the familiar "Kids/Knights/Kings in Satan's Service" story that's circulated for over 40 years now. Quoting quite a few sources, the fan blog Axeology Extended says that the rumor had gained traction by 1977 and took off by 1979. Concerned letters at the time allegedly read things like, "My sister also says that they burn a kid at the stake before each record is made," and, "Three [of the members] are known to be homosexuals and one had a sex change operation." 

The fervently Christian Peters brothers targeted KISS with a series of anti-rock sermons in the early '80s, the first of which ended in a music-burning bonfire. Their "Truth About Rock" video featured typical talk of backwards-masked Satanic slogans — the kind going back to the Beatles. Needless to say, KISS shrugged off all this noise.

Gene Simmons, in particular, was vocal about the matter, writing in his autobiography, "When I was asked whether I worshipped the devil, I simply refused to answer for a number of reasons: the first reason, of course, was that it was good press. Let people wonder." He continued, "whenever religious fanatics accosted me, especially in the southern states, and quoted the Old Testament at me, I would quote them back chapter and verse. They didn't know that I had been a theology major in school (via Snopes).

On a comically related note, Simmons also said to Howard Stern on Sirius XM that he once jokingly suggested that the band be named, "F***." The first album would be called "It," and the following album, "You."