KISS Says Farewell at Madison Square Garden, Before Passing the Torch to Band’s Avatar Successors: Concert Review
variety.comA.D. Amorosi To paraphrase David Mamet’s caustic sales pitch from “Glengarry Glen Ross,” KISS has always been closing. That’s fine.
From the start of the band’s mega-success with 1975’s “Alive!” and its crunching live single, “Rock and Roll All Nite,” through to bassist/demon Gene Simmons’ sales campaigns moving KISS condoms and coffins, everything the quartet has done has been geared to move product in a fashion harder and faster than its way-contagious music.
And like many of its fellow rock elders — the Who, Elton John, the Eagles, variations of the Grateful Dead — KISS has repeatedly sold (and stretched) the idea of a finale, starting with the 2019-commenced “End of the Road” tour.
Co-founder Simmons has sworn on a veritable stack of bibles that this farewell is for real, giving it some extra weight by staging the finale where KISS was born, New York, with a week’s worth of events across the city before the group’s would-be last-ever show at Madison Square Garden Saturday night.
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