The Real Reason KISS Started Wearing Makeup

As Gene Simmons tells it, the whole thing came down to machismo. In an interview dug up by Yahoo News, the bassist and KISS Koffin tycoon explained the glam rock scene in the '70s. "At the same time that we were forming in New York, there was a very big glitter scene, where boys were basically acting like girls... all the skinny little guys, hairless boys. Well, we were more like football players; all of us were over 6 feet tall, and it just wasn't convincing! The very first pictures we took when the band first got together, we looked like drag queens."

So the members of KISS did what anyone does when they want to distance themselves from the drag scene: they put on a bunch of makeup and rhinestones. Referring to how much easier it would have been for the group to go up in jeans and tee shirts, Simmons stated "...it just wasn't us. Getting up onstage was almost a holy place for us, like church, so being onstage looking like a bum wasn't my idea of respect. That's where the makeup and dressing up came in."