Face the Music: A Life Exposed Read online

  Dedication

  To my family

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part I: No place for hiding, baby, no place to run

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part II: Out on the street for a living

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part III: I’ve been up and down, I’ve been all around

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Part IV: Under the gun

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Part V: The highway to heartache

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Part VI: Forever

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Picture Section

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Collaborator

  Praise

  Also by Paul Stanley

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Adelaide, Australia, March 3, 2013

  I sit down and look in the mirror, staring for a moment into the eyes peering out at me. The mirror is surrounded by high-watt theater-style bulbs, and on the table in front of the brightly lit mirror is a small black makeup case. We hit the stage in about three hours, which means it’s time for the ritual that has defined my professional life for forty years.

  First, I wipe my face with an astringent, to close the pores. Then I grab a container of “clown white,” a thick, cream-based makeup. I dip my fingers into the tub of white goo and start applying it all over my face, leaving some space open around my right eye, where the rough outline of the star will be.

  There was a time when this makeup was a mask—hiding the face of a kid whose life up to then had been lonely and miserable. I was born with no right ear—I’m deaf on that side, too—and the most searing early memories I have are of other kids calling me “Stanley the one-eared monster.” It was often kids I didn’t even know. But they knew me: the kid with a stump for an ear. When I was out among people I felt naked. I was painfully aware of being constantly scrutinized. And when I came home, my family was too dysfunctional to provide any kind of support.

  Once the white is on, I take the pointed end of a beautician’s comb, one with a metal point, and sketch the outline of the star, freehand, around my right eye. It leaves a line through the white makeup. Then with a Q-tip I clean up the inside of the star. I also clean up the shape of my lips.

  The character taking shape on my face originally came about as a defense mechanism to cover up who I really was. For many years when I first put this makeup on, I had a sense of another person coming out. The insecure, incomplete kid with all the doubts and all the internal conflicts suddenly got painted away, and that other guy came out, the guy I had created to show everybody that they should have been nicer to me, that they should have been my friend, that I was someone special. I created a guy who would get the girl. People I’d known earlier in life were astonished by my success with KISS. And I understand why. They never knew what was going on inside me. They never knew why I was the way I was, what my aspirations were. They never knew any of that. To them I was just a fuck-up or a freak. Or a monster.

  Next, I get up and go into another room—there’s usually a bathroom adjoining the dressing rooms. I hold my breath and powder my entire face with white powder. This fixes the white to my face and allows me to sweat through it during the show. At this point I can touch the white and it doesn’t come off on my finger. I learned this part of the process by trial and error—early on I would be blinded by the makeup running into my eyes.

  As a young kid I used to dream that when I got older, I would become a masked crime-fighter. I wanted to be the Lone Ranger. I wanted to be Zorro. I wanted to be the guy up on a hill on a horse, with a mask on—that vision I saw in movies and on television. This lonely kid wanted to do that, and this lonely kid ended up doing that. I made my own reality. The character I created—the Starchild—would go up on stage and be that guy, the superhero, as opposed to the person I really was.

  I reveled in being that guy.

  But sooner or later, I had to go back down the stairs. I had to come off stage. When you come down those steps you are confronted with the totality of your life. For many years, all I could think when I left the stage was, Now what? Back then, home was a sort of purgatory. During the short periods when KISS was not on the road I would sit on the sofa in my New York City apartment and think, Nobody would believe that I’m home and have no fucking place to go. The band was my life-support system, but it was also a way to stave off establishing the types of relationships that constitute a real life. At home, all I felt was a hunger: an important need wasn’t being addressed, wasn’t being filled by anything else. In one sense, I was always on my own—remote and inaccessible; but in another sense, I couldn’t stand to be on my own.

  With time, the line between the character and the man blurred. I began to take part of that guy offstage with me. Girls wanted that guy. People just assumed I was that guy. Still, I knew I really wasn’t that guy. I could suspend reality onstage, but I couldn’t sustain it; getting through a whole day as the Starchild was difficult. Because I didn’t believe it. I knew the truth. I knew who I really was.

  I was also very defensive. When people around me poked fun at each other, I could dish it out but I couldn’t take it. I knew it must be much nicer to be able to laugh at yourself, to laugh about your own quirks and shortcomings, but I still couldn’t get myself to that place. I couldn’t let go—it was an instinctive reaction to having been constantly scrutinized and ridiculed as a child. I was still too insecure, too self-conscious. Though I didn’t fully understand it myself (and nobody around me did either, since I never revealed anything about my ear), I was still fueled by the bitterness of my past. I imbued my jokes with undertones of maliciousness at other people’s expense.

  Hit me once and I’ll hit you twice.

  It’s easy to live your life with your hand closed. But you get nothing with a fist that you can’t get in multitudes with your hand open. Unfortunately, that message was lost on me for a long, long time. And throughout that time, I felt a sense of struggle within, a sense of dissatisfaction, inad
equacy, and profound loneliness.

  After the white makeup is fixed with powder, I go back into the dressing room, sit down at the mirror again, and brush away any powder inside the shape of the star around my eye. Next, I trace the outline of the star with a black eyebrow pencil. Then I take black grease paint, which is a little waxier than the clown white, and use a brush to paint in the star. I go into the other room again and fix the black makeup with talcum-based baby powder, which is less opaque than the white theatrical powder on the rest of my face. I return to the dressing room and line my left eye and eyebrow with black waterproof eyeliner. As it dries, I look in the mirror.

  In earlier periods of my life, I didn’t necessarily like the person I saw when I looked in the mirror. But I was trying—trying to become the person I wanted to be as opposed to remaining complacent. The problem was, no matter what I tried, nothing seemed to get me where I wanted to go. As KISS endured its ups and downs, I realized at various turns that many of the assumptions I held about what would satisfy me—or perhaps just make me comfortable with myself—had been wrong. I thought the fix was being famous. I thought the fix was being rich. I thought the fix was being desirable. By 1976, with the success of the KISS Alive! album, we became famous. But I found that rubbing my fame in people’s faces didn’t make me feel any better. By the end of the 1970s, we had made millions of dollars. But I found that the money—and the clothes, and the cars, and the collectible guitars I bought with it—didn’t make me happy either. And as far as being desirable, from the moment of the release of our first album, sex was available any time and all the time. But I found I could be with somebody and still feel alone. I once heard someone say that you’re never more alone than when you’re sleeping with the wrong person. That’s true. And while there are worse ways to suffer than bedding Penthouse Pets and Playboy Playmates, the happiness of those experiences proved transient. Exhilarating, yes, but momentary. I learned that none of it—while enjoyable—could take the place of whatever I felt was missing inside of me.

  When KISS eventually took off the makeup in 1983, I occupied the Starchild character even more—or rather, the character occupied me. My own face became the face of the Starchild. I had banished to some extent the shy, defensive, unpopular kid inside, but I hadn’t replaced or rebuilt him. I was something of a shell, an empty vessel. I was still searching for the person I might become, and the Starchild—now without the visible star—remained very much the mask I wore to interact with the world. But I still found—or at least, I believed—that keeping people at arm’s length was easier than dealing with them in a more personal and intimate way. After all, in order to be comfortable with other people, you have to be comfortable with yourself. And I still wasn’t. As a result, my life wasn’t adding up correctly. Where was the family? Where were the friends? Where was the place to call home?

  There was simply no getting away from the fundamental truth that I still wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. When you can’t get away from the truth, you either numb yourself or fix yourself. It’s that simple. And it’s in my makeup—no pun intended—to fix myself, not numb myself. Even at the most painful moments of my life—when my band seemed to be falling apart, when people around me fell by the wayside because of drugs, when I lay crumpled on the floor in despair after I got divorced from my first wife—a sense of self-preservation and an urge to improve myself always overrode any other impulses.

  For some people, a near-death experience causes the epiphany that changes the course of their life. In fact, if you page through a stack of rock and roll memoirs, you might think every musician is required to have a close call with the beyond that becomes the definitive milestone in his or her life.

  But I never tried to kill myself. And I never did much in the way of drinking or drugs, so I can’t say I ever woke up in a hospital after being resuscitated, forced to take stock of my life. Still, I have had a few brushes with death. And in those moments the gravity of the situation certainly triggered soul-searching. But to tell you the truth, none of those near-death experiences had as powerful an effect on me as something that might not seem so rock and roll. Instead of coming when I had a gun in my mouth or a defibrillator on my chest, my epiphany came to me on the set of a Broadway musical.

  In 1999 I landed the lead role in the Toronto production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. The title character is a music composer who wears a mask to hide a horrible facial disfigurement. And there I was—the kid born without an ear, Stanley the monster, who had spent his life playing music with his face obscured by makeup—playing that character. One scene in particular touched a psychological nerve in me. In his cape and mask, the Phantom has a dangerous but elegant appeal. Just before he steals away his love interest, Christine, and takes her to his lair, he leans in close to her and she pulls off his mask, revealing his horrid face. Something about his being unmasked and her touching him in that moment of intimacy struck a deep chord inside me.

  One day during my run as the Phantom, I received a letter addressed to me at the theater. It was from a woman who had recently seen the production. “You seemed to identify with the character in a way I haven’t seen in other actors,” the woman wrote. She went on to say that she worked for an organization called AboutFace, which was devoted to helping children with facial differences. “Would you possibly have any interest in getting involved?” she asked.

  Wow. How did she pick up on that?

  I had never spoken about my ear. As soon as I’d been able to grow my hair long, as a teenager, I’d simply hidden my ear and never addressed my deafness. It was something I kept private, secret. It was too personal and too painful. But I decided to call the woman. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I wasn’t sure what to say. But I opened up to her, and it felt good. Soon I started working with her organization, talking with children and their parents about my birth defect and my own experiences, sharing in their experiences. The effect it had on me was amazing.

  I felt freed by talking about something that had always been so private and personal and painful. The truth had set me free—the truth and The Phantom of the Opera. Somehow, putting on the Phantom’s mask had allowed me to uncover myself. In 2000, I became a spokesman for AboutFace. I found that helping others helped me heal myself. It created a calm in my life that I had never known before. I had been looking for external factors to pull me out of the abyss when all along the problem was inside me.

  You can’t hold someone else’s hand when your own hand is balled in a fist.

  You can’t find beauty around you when you don’t find it inside.

  You can’t appreciate others when you are immersed in your own misery.

  I realized it wasn’t people who showed their emotions who were weak, but the ones who hid their emotions who were weak. I needed to redefine what it meant to be strong. Being a “real man” meant being strong, yes: strong enough to cry, strong enough to be kind and compassionate, strong enough to put others first, strong enough to be afraid and still find your way, strong enough to forgive, and strong enough to ask for forgiveness.

  The more I came to terms with myself, the more I was able to give to others. And the more I gave of myself to others, the more I found I had to give.

  Not long after this transformation, I met Erin Sutton, a smart, confident, practicing attorney. From the very start, we were totally open and honest with each other; there was zero drama. She was understanding, nurturing, stimulating, and above all, consistent and self-assured. I’d never met anyone like her. We didn’t rush into a relationship, but after a few years we both realized we couldn’t imagine not being together. “I never hoped for a relationship like this,” I told her, “because I didn’t know something like this even existed.”

  This is the life I was searching for.

  This is the payoff.

  This is what it feels like to be . . . whole.

  It was a quest, an unending push for what I thought I should have—not only materially, but in terms
of who I should be—that enabled me to reach that point. It was a quest that began with the aim of becoming a rock star, but that ended with something else entirely.

  And that’s really what this book is about. It’s also why I want my four kids to read this book someday, despite the fact that the path I took was long and arduous and meandered through some pretty wild places and times. I want them to understand what my life was like, warts and all. I want them to understand that it really is up to each one of us, that anyone can make a wonderful life for himself or herself. It may not be easy. It may take longer than you think. But it is possible. For anyone.

  I collect my thoughts and look into the mirror again. There, staring back at me, is the familiar white face and black star. All that’s left to do is empty a bottle or two of hairspray into my hair and vault it up to the ceiling. And put on the red lipstick, of course. These days, it’s hard to stop smiling when I wear this face. I find myself beaming from ear to ear, content to celebrate together with the Starchild, who has now become a dear old friend rather than an alter ego to cower behind.

  Outside, forty-five thousand people wait. I picture taking the stage. You wanted the best, you got the best, the hottest band in the world . . . I count in “Detroit Rock City” and off we go—me, Gene Simmons, and Tommy Thayer, descending onto the stage from a pod suspended forty feet above as the huge black curtain drops and Eric Singer beats the drums below us. Fireworks! Flames! The initial gasp of the crowd hits you like a physical force. Kaboom! It’s the greatest rush imaginable. When I get out there on stage, I love to look out and see people jumping, screaming, dancing, kissing, celebrating, all in a state of ecstasy. I bask in it. It’s like a tribal gathering. KISS has become a tradition, a ritual passed down from generation to generation. It’s an amazing gift to be able to communicate with people on that level and have so many of them out there, all of them, all of us, together, decades after we started. The smile will not leave my face through the entire set.

  Best of all, that smile will remain on my face as I walk off the stage to return to the totality of my life.

  There are people who don’t want to go home—who never want to go home. And once upon a time, I didn’t, either. But these days, I love going home. Because somewhere along this long road, I finally figured out how to create a home, a real home, the kind of home where your heart is.