Make-up, hi-jinks, and 5,000 sexual conquests, if Gene Simmons is to be believed, formed the stark constitution of Kiss. In today’s radical world, the band might not stand out that much, but when they arrived in 1973, the world had never really seen anything quite like them. While David Bowie might have previously heralded the new pantomime facade of music, Kiss turned this into a riotous play of debauchery.

At first, they were almost too divisive to take off. “It was like somebody pushing you into the deep end of the pool whether you can swim or not,” Simmons wrote in the End of the Road tour programme. “The early years of Kiss were far from glamorous. We rode in a station wagon hundreds of miles every day. We would take turns driving and sleeping in the back. We ate burgers at roadside taverns. We stopped and peed on the side of long stretches of a highway when we couldn’t find a town anywhere near. We ate beans and franks because we couldn’t afford better food as we were on an $85 a week salary”.

But since then, things grew far more comfortable for the rabble-rousing group. They have now sold over 100million records worldwide, amassing a global fanbase. And love them or loathe them, you can’t deny the impact that they have had on music. For some, that’s a regrettable occurrence that bellied the depth of music, but for others, it helped to break away from the stilted world of conservatism and unleashed lashings of day-brightening fun in these dire times.

Kiss fans are some of the most ardent in the world, but their detractors are often just as potent in their disparagement. So, with that in mind, we’ve looked at the most cutting comments levelled against the band in their long-running history and collated a list of the artists who never saw the fun in Kiss.

Five artists who hate Kiss:

Bob Dylan

In the early 1980s, a strange hysteria swept over the US. The trend that is now dubbed The Satanic Panic saw vigilante parents turf up the grounds around a preschool in search of secret tunnels; in the end, they were just digging for dirt. Judas Priest were then accused of inexplicably killing off their fanbase with coded messages urging suicide. And then Kiss’ Gene Simmons was suspected of having the tongue of a cow. Essentially, the only cause for this devilish meshuga was an increase in working hours. This resulted in parents spending less time with their children, and the guilt this induced manifested in a bizarre way amid the rise of the religious right.

However, Kiss didn’t just receive a barrage of abuse from worried guardians; a born-again Bob Dylan was at it, too. While performing at the University of Arizona, the audience grew tired of him purely singing songs praising Christ and began to demand a few hits. Dylan fumed and thought that the time had a-changed for the worse. He scathingly yelled: “If you want rock ‘n’ roll, you can go see Kiss and rock ‘n’ roll all the way down to the pit.” This was the start of his belief that Simmons and his satanic face-painted cohorts were on their way to hell, and their gimmicky rock sound was not to his taste either.

Pete Townshend

For Townshend, there was a stark difference between the showmanship of someone like Jimi Hendrix and the make-up and posturing of Kiss. Speaking to Hazy Rock in 2014, Townshend aired his gripe against the rock cats, ghouls and whatever else. He explained: “One thing that Kiss are absolutely, unquestionably not — in any sense, whatsoever — is European or English. They are straight out of Creem magazine meets Las Vegas. Or New Orleans, even. There is a bit of New Orleans in it, a very American kind of Mardi Gras thing.”

“They couldn’t have happened here,“ he added with a notable degree of pride. “They could maybe have happened in Berlin — in which case their music wouldn’t have been like their music. They would have looked like they looked. But they would have made a different kind of music. They’re a very American phenomenon.”

But finally, he made it very clear that he means a phenomenon in the destructive weather sense. He said: “The early years of Kiss were difficult because there was sort of a parody of rock inherent in what they were doing. Also, that business of wearing disguises. Not quite sure about it. You know, I think I’d have to do an academic study to try and work out what’s really going on there.” But he found it easier to conclude that they weren’t sincere rock in the same spiritual sense that he likes.

Carlos Santana

Santana’s musicianship has often been the subject of lofty praise. He has admirers in the form of B.B. King, Prince, Jerry Garcia and just about everyone in his native Panama. There has always been a sincerity to his art that he feels is lacking when it comes to Kiss and, most notably, Gene Simmons. “He’s not a musician, he’s an entertainer. Kiss is Las Vegas entertainment, so he wouldn’t know what music is anyway. That’s why he wears all that stuff,” he said.

Adding: “Simmons hides his talent beneath costumes and makeup. A musician doesn’t need the mask or the mascara. There’s a difference between an entertainer and a musician.” For a while, Simmons took this rare derision in his stride, commenting: “Not everyone likes the same meal.” But soon, he ditched the dietary analogy as Santana clearly etched further under his skin with further comments. “I’m sick and tired of these bands like Carlos Santana looking at his shoes and thinking that’s a rock concert. Get off the stage,” he soon remarked in retaliation.

Nikki Sixx

Nikki Sixx has always cited Kiss as a major inspiration. However, the rocker turned against the band after Simmons erroneously claimed that Prince’s dabbling in drugs was the cause of his death. “His recent heartless remarks shows why he’s not my hero anymore,“ Sixx commented. “I think that Gene is an overrated, lucky guy that dresses like a clown. He wrote some good songs, but hasn’t in a long time, and loves to brag about himself.”

He later admitted: ”I’ll just be honest with you. [When] I [was growing] up, I loved Kiss. They influenced me as a songwriter. Kiss gave Mötley Crüe one of their very first tours. They’ve done a lot of great stuff for me in my life. I’ve co-headlined tours with those guys, I’ve known ’em forever. Gene’s a very opinionated man, and so am I.”

However, he added that feuding was not becoming of them. ”I’ll be honest with you, I think we just kind of look like a bunch of old women fighting at this point,” he said.

Steven Tyler

When you’re wearing cat face paint, you set yourself up for questions about sincerity. However, you would imagine that a band like Aerosmith understand that not every band has been as solemn as ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, but Steven Tyler figured that even when it came to the fun side of rock, they were simply regurgitating platitudes.

“I sometimes get offended by their music I hear that and go,“ the frontman once commented. “‘What’s this all about? Do they really mean it?’ That’s why Aerosmith have been around forever. Because we take ourselves seriously.” He then took things a step further and called them a “comic book rock band (with) spackled faces and a couple of hits.”

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