Kiss’s Gene Simmons claims that he once had to talk Eddie Van Halen out of leaving Van Halen and joining Kiss. Gene has repeated this story several times over the last 25 years, but here’s what bandmate Paul Stanley has to say about it, in the video above.
So there you have it straight from Paul… he says Eddie never almost joined KISS.
But wait, there’s more. The Van Halen News Desk once dug up a rare interview in which Eddie himself responds to this rumor.
And a fourth person weighs in… VHND interviewed an old friend of Van Halens’ who says that back in the late seventies, Gene was constantly asking Eddie to join KISS.
Lastly, in his autobiography, ‘Crazy From The Heat’, David Lee Roth concurs that Gene Simmons tried to recruit Eddie Van Halen for KISS. Here’s what Roth had to say in his book about Simmons and his manager.