With a career that spans six decades, Mick Rogers – best known as the lead guitarist and vocalist of Manfred Mann’s Earth Band between ’71 and ’75, and again since ’84 – has seen his fair share of bands come and go, and with that, a boatload of anecdotes. One such band was a nascent Kiss – who joined his group on their first tour, in support of their self-titled debut album.
“I had to use the same microphone that Gene Simmons used with all the blood coming out of his mouth,” Rogers tells Guitar World. “Can you imagine that! I remember Simmons saying to me: ‘We’re [Kiss] either going to be the next biggest thing, or we’re going to die on our ass!’
“They came on stage with all the makeup and stuff. I think people were quite silent because they just couldn’t believe what they were seeing… nor could we! They were scary, I mean, Gene Simmons was a scary-looking image, but he was lovely.”
Between May 16 and June 1, 1974, Kiss opened for Manfred Mann's Earth Band and Savoy Brown, hitting cities such as Vancouver, Portland, Seattle, San Diego, and San Francisco – an experience Simmons later described in the 2019 End of the Road World Tour program [as per by Far Out Magazine] as one that finally made the band feel “like we were taking off.
“It was like somebody pushing you into the deep end of the pool whether you can swim or not. 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,” he continued. “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! Becoming a rock star was better than anything and beyond anything I ever imagined.”
Despite wrapping up their second farewell tour in 2023, Kiss just announced a one-off unmasked show in November – with a “special live performance” from former Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick.
Guitar World's full interview with Mick Rogers will be published in the coming weeks.
