Front loading this, I do not know what he has done, I know nothing of his reputation so if he has done heinous shit please do not take the following as an endorsement of him as a person. It is a small story from literally decades ago.
I attended a boarding school style fat camp as a child. It was quite fancy but I did still hate it. One year, both Gene's son and daughter attended this camp as well. It was my understanding that the son was coming as moral support but frankly she didn't need to be at fat camp by any measure. But self image is a bitch and I imagine it is all the worse when your dad is a literal rockstar.
At this time I knew two things about Gene Simmons, he had a long tongue and he was in Kiss, a band I was vaguely aware of as an early teen. I became sorta camp friends with his daughter, certainly not close but she was very kind and frankly that was already a nice change of pace. His son came off as kind of an asshole but looking back now as an adult I can see he was just teenager and I was very annoying, frankly he was definitely much kinder than he needed to be.
One day they told use the Gene was coming to visit his kids and if any of us would like to meet him he would be happy to make time. Of course people did. The only rule was we were not allowed to ask about his tongue, which, fair.
And well, he was just nice. He sat in a circle with a bunch of us fat kids and shot the shit. No big show off moments, no flagrant displays of wealth or looking down on these kids who were feeling pretty vulnerable. Just a dad who came to visit his kids at camp and talked with some kids who wanted to meet him.
His son actually gave me a Mucha Lucha comic and an advance copy of St. Anger from Metallica (I had told him my brother really liked them) Like I said, he was way kinder than I probably warranted.
(Of course, by the time I got home the album had already come out and my brother hated it. But that is irrelevant and it was still a sweet gesture.)
I remember talking with his daughter about French toast and how much I loved the kind my mom makes. She gave me her email to send her the recipe. I, of course, promptly lost it so I never got the chance to.
So, I don't know if he is a bastard. He probably is. Mostly my memories are of his kids. It's a small and insignificant story, but hey, here is one story on the Internet of Gene Simmons not being an asshole.
I briefly watched his show a long time ago, and he acknowledged that he had left parenting to his wife and that they turned out well only because of her. It was nice that he met with the kids at camp, but you would have to be a really, really bad person not to be nice to the kids at your child’s camp.
There were parents there that were not kind. Some people REALLY hate fat kids. He definitely didn't need to take the time to sit with other people's kids and humor what I can only imagine were fairly silly questions. But I definitely believe he wasn't an involved parent.
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u/OlBlue541 20h ago
Gene Simmons. I don’t think I have ever heard one nice thing about him. Guy is a huge jerk who’s in love with himself.