GENE SIMMONS Shares Story Of His First Recording Session In 1966

In the latest episode of “The Pods & Sods Network”, Gene Simmons of KISS shares memories of his first recording session in 1966 on a song called “My Uncle Is A Raft”. The track is one of a hundred and fifty previously unreleased cuts contained on his new release, “Gene Simmons: The Vault Experience”.

When asked specifically about the 1966 recording, Gene shared the story. “That’s my two school chums, Mark Nyberg and Larry Martinelli,” he said. “We went to school together and all that stuff. One played drums, kinda. And the other one played electric guitar, kinda. And I kinda played bass.

Gene continued: “I went over to Larry Martinelli‘s house and his mom used to make Italian dishes and sausages and stuff. So after school, I’d go over and eat at his house. And Mark Nyberg, this other guy who I used to know and go to school with, they were curious about, ‘You mean you write songs?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ve got this… uhh… thing..’ ‘Well, play it.’ So I was able to kind of sketch it out. And they said, ‘Why don’t we record it?’ I go, ‘Record it? What do you mean?’ ‘Well, downstairs in the basement, we have a two-track reel-to-reel thing.’ And that’s where we recorded it. It was that fast. We went downstairs, kinda worked it out within a take or two. And, you know what? It doesn’t sound half bad.”

Gene also shared details of some other songs found on “Gene Simmons: The Vault Experience”, including early versions of “Journey Of 1000 Years”, “Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl”, “It’s My Life” and more. When talking about the 1986 song titled “Hunger”, Gene said: “That was recorded by Eric Carr, Bruce Kulick and myself on New Year’s Eve in Atlanta, Georgia. Everyone else went out whoring around and we decided to go into the studio.”

Gene also discussed the potential retirement of KISS, his journey and thoughts creativity and on songwriting and much more.

The episode “Conversation With Gene Simmons” can be downloaded and streamed directly on “The Pods & Sods Network” at this location.