Gene Simmons (born Chaim Witz [Hebrew: חיים ויץ, pronounced /ˈxɑː.im/] on August 25, 1949) is an Israeli American rock bassist, vocalist, and actor. He is best known as "The Demon", the blood-spitting, fire-breathing, and tongue-wagging bassist and one of the lead vocalists in the hard rock band Kiss, an act he co-founded in the early 1970s. Simmons also contends that he has "never been high, drunk, or smoked in [his] life". (However, in Kiss: ...
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Gene Simmons (born Chaim Witz [Hebrew: חיים ויץ, pronounced /ˈxɑː.im/] on August 25, 1949) is an Israeli American rock bassist, vocalist, and actor. He is best known as "The Demon", the blood-spitting, fire-breathing, and tongue-wagging bassist and one of the lead vocalists in the hard rock band Kiss, an act he co-founded in the early 1970s. Simmons also contends that he has "never been high, drunk, or smoked in [his] life". (However, in Kiss: Behind the Mask, former Kiss drummer Peter Criss states, "It was dirty of us but we just wanted to get Gene high [...] Someone made hash brownies [...] And he ate 'em." Simmons also refers to this incident (although he does not explicitly mention that the brownies contained marijuana) in his biography, KISS and Make-up.)
Simmons was born in Haifa, Israel in 1949, and emigrated to New York City at the age of eight, with his mother Florence Klein — a Jewish Hungarian immigrant. Florence and her brother, Larry Klein, were the only two members of...
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