If Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley are to be believed, KISS, as a touring entity, will cease to exist following the final two shows on their five-year End of the Road tour this Friday and Saturday at Madison Square Garden in their hometown of New York.
The tour started on January 31st, 2019 in Vancouver, Canada and has gone around the world for a total of 13 legs and 250 shows.
COVID caused most of the shows in 2020 to be rescheduled in 2021, and Stanley having the flu caused them to cancel three shows in the last week.
KISS have released 20 studio albums, 13 live albums, and countless compilation discs. They were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, but Stanley and Simmons refused to perform with Frehley and Criss.
Frehley and Criss were also not invited to take part in the End of the Road tour, despite Stanley and Simmons wanting you to believe they were. Neither one has been asked to join them at the two Garden shows on Friday and Saturday, and have no plans to attend.
Saturday's show will be available on Pay-Per-View, and, once the curtain comes down, KISS will have done just under 3,000 shows in 50 years.
Starting at dusk this Thursday until 2 a.m. ET on Friday, the Empire State Building in New York will be lit in silver in honor of the band’s logo, and red, purple, blue and green, representing the colors of each band member’s character.
And, starting at 7 p.m., the light show will be soundtracked to “Rock and Roll All Nite.”
The display will also be on both the KISS and the Empire State Building social media pages.
So, while it supposedly spells the end of KISS on the road, the question remains if there will be one-offs to come, or even another residency. Or, as Simmons and Stanley have often said, KISS continuing without them.