Gene Simmons

Gene Simmons is an Israeli-American singer, songwriter, and bassist whose five-decade music career — primarily as the co-founding bassist and co-lead vocalist of American hard-rock band KISS across 1973–present — has produced one of the foundational documents of 1970s and 1980s American hard-rock-and-glam-metal music. He was born Chaim Witz on August 25, 1949, in Haifa, Israel, into a Hungarian-Jewish family. His father Ferenc Witz was a Hungarian-Jewish carpenter who abandoned the family in 1957, and his mother Florence Klein was a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The 1957 family emigration to Queens, New York City (when Chaim was eight) launched his early-career path. He legally adopted the name Gene Simmons at age 14.

His teenage and early-adulthood career across the late-1960s and early-1970s — across multiple Queens-area garage-rock bands (particularly the Wicked Lester band with future KISS bandmate Paul Stanley) — preceded his January 1973 founding of KISS in New York City. The KISS lineup completion in late-1973 with Paul Stanley (rhythm guitar), Ace Frehley (lead guitar), and Peter Criss (drums) launched his career.

His February 1974 first commercial KISS album Kiss — released by Casablanca Records — and his subsequent 1974–1976 American hard-rock-touring breakthrough produced his mid-1970s American hard-rock-and-glam-metal public profile. The KISS theatrical-makeup-and-costume stage personas — across which Simmons performed as "The Demon" (with his characteristic black-and-white face paint and dragon-boot stage costume) — produced the 1970s American hard-rock-and-glam-metal stage presentation.

His 1976 sixth commercial KISS album Destroyer sold over 5 million American copies and produced his KISS American hard-rock-music commercial peak. His subsequent KISS career has continued through multiple commercial albums and the 2018–2023 KISS End of the Road World Tour. His 1982–1983 relationship with American actress Diana Ross's daughter Tracy Ross and his subsequent 1983–present relationship with American Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed (with whom he had two children, although they did not marry until 2011) shaped his later biographical narrative.

His name Gene is the English short form of Eugene (from the Greek Eugenios meaning "well-born"). Gene was a popular American boys' name across the early-to-mid 20th century.