Is Kiss Truly Bidding Farewell or Plotting a Rock 'n' Roll Encore?
When Kiss graces the stage at Madison Square Garden this Saturday night, it marks the grand finale of their End of the Road farewell tour, kicking off in January 2019. Bassist Gene Simmons boldly declared, “We’re gonna go out on top,” in a 2022 interview with Los Angeles radio station KLOS-FM. Supposedly, this is it—no more Kiss tours, ever. But in the unpredictable world of showbiz, curtains drop and rise again, sometimes for an encore that lasts longer than expected. Kiss fans vividly recall the year 2000 when the band announced a yearlong Farewell Tour, with guitarist Paul Stanley asserting, “We’re the champs again, let’s retire on top.” (Consistency, it seems, is their forte.) Yet, music enthusiasts have reasons to be skeptical, considering the industry's penchant for income-generating tactics, from exorbitant ticket fees to extortionate parking charges. David Bowie's 50th-anniversary retirement in 1973, swiftly followed by a return to the stage, serves as a ca...