Gene Simmons has confirmed to Rolling Stone that David Lee Roth is no longer the supporting act for KISS’s rescheduled End Of The Road World Tour dates.
Roth had been supporting KISS up until the concert industry shut down due to COVID-19. With KISS about to resume its tour Wednesday night in Mansfield, Massachusetts, Simmons was asked by Rolling Stone‘s Joseph Hudak if Roth would be returning:
Before the pandemic halted the tour, David Lee Roth was opening for Kiss. Now it’s the performance painter Garibaldi. So David is not back?
Not. But it bears noting that during Dave’s heyday, nobody did what he did. He was the ultimate frontman. Not Plant, not Rod Stewart, nobody. He took being a frontman way beyond anything. And then, I don’t know what happened to him… something. And you get modern-day Dave. I prefer to remember Elvis Presley in his prime. Sneering lips, back in Memphis, you know, doing all that. I don’t want to think of bloated naked Elvis on the bathroom floor.
In a January 2020 interview on the “The Blairing Out With Eric Blair Show”, Paul Stanley said he was looking forward to Roth opening for KISS.
“Well, Dave’s got so many great songs. All the Van Halen catalog is terrific, and that’s what he’s doing,” said Stanley. “So, people get to hear all those great songs, and it was something that really appealed to us.”
During a February, 2020 interview with Mitch Lafon, KISS manager Doc McGhee was also happy to have Roth part of the package.
“[I called Dave’s] manager up and I said, ‘Listen I got these dates, whaddaya think? She says, ‘Well he wants to do it.’ I said, ‘If you’re gonna do it let’s go do it,'” McGhee told Lafon. “Like you, I was sitting there listening to (Dave’s) band play ‘Jump’ and ‘Panama’ and all the rest of ‘em and I was sittin’ there goin’, ‘Fuck, this is cool! I get to see this happen!”
“I just thought, ‘What a great package,’” added McGhee. “We were already up on sale, we were already out and [David] Garabaldi was gonna [continue to open for KISS] then he couldn’t do it, the first part [of the leg], so then I just got David to do it all. From listening to (Dave’s) band play, which was really good, I think this is gonna be another dimension for the fans to say, ‘Wow, what a great package. I got more than my money’s worth,’ because that’s what we try to do.”