Paul Stanley revealed that KISS indeed do have an ‘expiration date’ in a new The Pit interview. Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his comments.
The interviewer said, “You mentioned setlist, I had a question that is very much me taking one for myself – when you put that setlist together with no limitations at all, if you’re completely in charge of KISS and there’s a song that you can add to that setlist that isn’t currently in there, is there anything in there you wish you could put in there?”
Stanley responded, “The problem with changing the setlist for us – it’s not, I was gonna say, ‘It’s twofold.’ It’s not twofold, it’s twentyfold.
“Part of it is that you have all these lights, and all these computerized gear that’s synced so the bombs go off at the right time, and so you don’t have that flexibility to suddenly throw in songs.
“And also I just believe that if the setlist was great last night, it’s going to be great tonight, and look, it works for some bands, but I don’t believe that we should go out there and change it up just because we’re bored.
“We’ve got an enviable amount of classic songs, and for the few people – and they are there – who want to hear some obscure tunes, the fact is that mostly the people there want to hear ‘Love Gun,’ ‘Detroit Rock City,’ ‘Shout It Out Loud,’ the list goes on…
“So when somebody says, ‘Oh, you’re playing the same setlist that you did at the beginning of the tour’ – yeah, you’re right. If you come to see us four times, I understand.
“That’s your choice, but you’ve seen the show four times, someone else is seeing it for the first time. That’s how we have to concern ourselves, and there are so many hours you can play, we’re not going to the marathon.
“Look, part of the reason and the vast majority of the reason that we’re calling it quits is that there’s only so long you can carry 40-50 pounds of gear around running around on stage.
“It has nothing to do with people not liking each other or people being tired of doing this.
“The fact is, hey, you can only do this for so long. If you took, I guess, Elvis and crossed him with Superman, maybe that’s what we’re doing, but it does have an expiration date, so to speak.”
