KISS Says It Won’t Play At Rock HOF Induction

The 40-year-old group is unable to agree on which lineup should perform during the April 10 ceremony in New York City, and has decided not to plug in at all.

The dispute concerns whether original members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss would join Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley in a live performance, or whether the current lineup of Stanley, Simmons, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer would play instead.

In a message on its website, KISS said it won’t perform with any lineup, calling it “an emotional situation where there is no way to please everyone.”

“Our intention was to celebrate the entire history of KISS and give credit to all members, including longtime present members Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer, and additionally Bruce Kulick and Eric Carr all who have made this band what it is, regardless of the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame’s point of view,” the band wrote on its web site. “Although KISS has moved forward far longer without them, Ace and Peter are at the very foundation of what we have built and this would all be impossible had they not been a part of it in the beginning.”

The band made no mention of former guitarists Vinnie Vincent, who helped kick off the band’s unmasked era, or Mark St. John, who was with the band briefly in 1984 and who died in 2007.

“It is over 13 years since the original lineup has played together in makeup and we believe the memory of those times would not be enhanced,” KISS wrote on its site. “To bring this to a quick end, we have decided not to play in any line-up, and we will focus our attention on celebrating our induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.”

The festering dispute was brought to a boil when Frehley called into Eddie Trunk’s syndicated radio show Friday night to say that Simmons and Stanley had rejected a reunion with the original four members for the induction.