Gene Simmons (born Chaim Witz; Hebrew: חיים ויץ [χaˈim ˈvits]; August 25, 1949), also known by his stage persona "the Demon", is an Israeli and American musician and songwriter. He was the bassist and co-lead singer of the hard rock band Kiss, which he co-founded with Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss in 1973. Simmons, alongside Stanley, remained a constant member of the band until their dissolution in 2023. Simmons is also known for his long tongue and for his reality television show, Gene Simmons Family Jewels, which aired from 2006 to 2012. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 as a member of Kiss.
Simmons was born Chaim Witz on August 25, 1949, in Haifa, Israel, to Jewish refugees from Hungary. His mother, Flóra Kovács (later Florence Klein, then Florence Lubowski) (1925–2018), was born in Jánd in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary. She survived internment in Nazi concentration camps from November 1944 to her liberation from the Mauthausen camp in Austria on May 5, 1945. She and her brother, Larry Klein, were the only members of the family to survive the Holocaust. Witz's father, Ferenc "Feri" Yehiel Witz (1925–2002), was a carpenter whom Klein married in 1946; the couple moved to Mandatory Palestine the following year.
Witz spent his early childhood in Tirat Carmel and was raised in a practicing Jewish household. He has said that his family was "dirt poor", scraping by on rationed bread and milk. At the age of seven, he began to pick wild fruit and sell it on roadsides together with a friend.
At age eight, after his parents’ divorce, Witz and his mother immigrated to the United States, settling in Queens, New York City. His father remained in Israel, where he had another son and three daughters. In the United States, Witz changed his name to Gene Klein, adopting his mother's maiden name. When he was nine, he briefly attended a Jewish religious school, Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, before transferring to a public school. He graduated from Newtown High School.
Klein attended Sullivan County Community College in New York. He was graduated from Richmond College in Staten Island, New York with a BA in Education in 1970.
Before his musical career began, Klein worked a variety of jobs in New York City. A proficient typist, he served as an assistant to an editor of Vogue. He also spent six months as a sixth grade instructor on the Upper West Side.
Klein chose his stage name, Gene Simmons, in tribute to the rockabilly singer Jumpin' Gene Simmons. In other interviews, he claimed his stage name was inspired by actress Jean Simmons; he used the title of her 1946 film Great Expectations for a song on the 1976 album Destroyer. He practiced playing his guitar for hours on end.
The Beatles had a significant influence on Simmons. "There is no way I'd be doing what I do now if it wasn't for the Beatles. I was watching The Ed Sullivan Show and I saw them. Those skinny little boys, kind of androgynous, with long hair like girls. It blew me away that these four boys [from] the middle of nowhere could make that music."
Simmons became involved with his first band, Lynx, then renamed the Missing Links, when he was 15 in 1964–65. Eventually, he disbanded the band to form the Long Island Sounds, the name being a pun on the Long Island Sound. In this band was also future Wicked Lester guitarist Steve Coronel, and future lawyer/author Alan Stuart Graf who convinced Simmons to buy his first bass as the band needed a bass player. In 1967, after losing Graf the band morphed into The Love Bag.
From 1968 to 1970, Simmons attended Sullivan County Community College in Loch Sheldrake, New York for two years. He joined a new band, Bullfrog Bheer. The band recorded various home demos including Leeta; this was later included on the KISS box set. The band existed until 1970 with various line-ups.
Simmons, Coronel, and Brooke Ostrander who was in their 1969 band Coffee formed the rock band first known as Rainbow and later Wicked Lester in the early 1970s with Stanley Eisen (now known as Paul Stanley). The band recorded one album, which was never released in its entirety. Dissatisfied with Wicked Lester's sound and look, Simmons and Stanley attempted to fire their band members. Met with resistance, they instead quit Wicked Lester, walking away from their record deal with Epic Records as they decided to form the "ultimate rock band" in its place.
Looking for a drummer, Simmons and Stanley found an ad placed by George Peter John Criscuola (known as Peter Criss), who was playing clubs in Brooklyn at the time; they joined and started out as a trio.
During this time, Criss and Simmons also appeared on an unreleased album by Captain Sanity together with members from Criss' previous band Chelsea. Paul Frehley (better known as Ace Frehley) responded to an ad they put in The Village Voice for a lead guitar player, and soon joined them. Kiss released their self-titled debut album in February 1974. Stanley took on the role of lead performer on stage, while Simmons became the driving force behind what became an extensive Kiss merchandising franchise. The eye section of his "Demon" makeup with Kiss came from the wing design of comic book character Black Bolt.
In 1983, as Kiss's popularity was starting to fade, the band decided to take off their iconic make-up in a bold move to reinvent themselves. The change paid off, sparking a renewed wave of success that carried through the 1990s. The band hosted its own fan conventions in 1995, and fan feedback about the original Kiss members reunion influenced the highly successful 1996–1997 Alive Worldwide reunion tour. In 1998, the band released Psycho Circus. The original lineup was once again dissolved, with Tommy Thayer replacing Ace Frehley on lead guitar and Eric Singer (who performed with Kiss from 1991 through 1996) replacing Peter Criss on drums.
In 1978, Simmons appeared with Kiss in the NBC made-for-television movie Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.
In 1981, Simmons auditioned at ABC for a role in a new Marcy Carsey-produced show called Grotus and was offered his own TV show, which he declined, as the pay was lower than what he made with Kiss at the time.
After turning down several other theatrical roles, Simmons made his feature film debut in the 1984 Michael Crichton thriller Runaway, starring Tom Selleck, Cynthia Rhodes and Kirstie Alley. In 1985, he appeared on the TV series Miami Vice in an episode titled "The Prodigal Son", the season premiere of the show's second season. In 1986, Simmons, along with Ozzy Osbourne, spoofed "Satanic panic" in the heavy metal-themed horror film Trick or Treat, starring Tony Fields. In 1987, he appeared in the Gary Sherman action film Wanted: Dead or Alive, starring Rutger Hauer.
Simmons created and executive produced the animated series My Dad the Rock Star with Canadian company Nelvana, which aired on Nickelodeon. In 2004, he appeared in the TV series Third Watch, playing a mob drug kingpin in the episodes "Higher Calling" and "Monsters".