KISS Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This KISS trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and runs the whole 50-year story of the band, from a first gig for fewer than ten people in Queens to the last bow at Madison Square Garden. It covers the four original personas, the Alive! breakthrough, Destroyer and Beth, the four simultaneous solo albums, the Marvel comic printed with the band's blood and the gloriously odd TV movie Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. The non-makeup years are here too: Eric Carr and the Fox, Vinnie Vincent's ankh, the 1983 unmasking, Animalize, Forever, Revenge and the 1996 reunion, then the Farewell tour, Sonic Boom, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the End of the Road tour that ended in December 2023 with digital avatars waiting in the wings. There is a run of Kiss Army, Kiss Kasket and other merchandising lore for the completists. About a third of the questions are easy warm-ups for casual fans; the rest climb toward the detail only a lifelong Kiss Army member would know. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing. No lyrics are quoted anywhere.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which comic-book-style persona did Gene Simmons take on in Kiss?
The Demon
The Demon breathes fire and spits fake blood, and the fire has bitten back: at a New York show on New Year's Eve 1973 Simmons set his own hair alight, the first of many times.
Q 02Kiss traces its roots to which earlier New York band led by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley?
Wicked Lester
Wicked Lester recorded a whole album that Epic Records refused to release; unhappy with its soft, unfocused sound, Simmons and Stanley abandoned the band in 1972 to start Kiss.
Q 03Kiss's first-ever show, in January 1973, drew fewer than ten people to a club in which New York borough?
Queens
Queens: Gene Simmons had cold-called the Popcorn Club and talked it into booking his unknown band for three nights, and the four earned $50 for two sets on the first.
Q 04Just before Kiss formed, drummer Peter Criss played in a New York trio with which apt name?
Lips
Lips folded in 1972, so Criss placed a Rolling Stone advert as an experienced rock and roll drummer looking for an original group; Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley answered it.
Q 05What do the four members of Kiss wear, along with their makeup, on the cover of 1975's Dressed to Kill?
Business suits
Business suits, and mostly borrowed ones: drummer Peter Criss was the only member who owned a suit, and photographer Bob Gruen says the one squeezed onto Gene Simmons was his.
Q 06Which Kiss anthem flopped as a 1975 studio single, then hit big in a live version?
Rock and Roll All Nite
Rock and Roll All Nite stalled at No. 68 until the concert recording from Alive! carried it to No. 12 in early 1976, and it went on to close almost every Kiss show.
Q 07Which producer, once Jimi Hendrix's engineer, made Kiss's 1975 live album Alive!?
Eddie Kramer
Eddie Kramer later admitted the 'live' album was patched up in the studio with overdubbed guitars, something Kiss denied for years before owning up on VH1 in 2003.
Q 08Kiss's Destroyer producer had made his name with which act's early-1970s hits?
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper's producer Bob Ezrin ran the Destroyer sessions like boot camp: he wore a whistle round his neck, called the band 'campers' and told them they knew nothing.
Q 09Which Kiss single won the band a People's Choice Award in 1977?
Beth
Beth was tucked away as a B-side until radio DJs started flipping the single over; the ballad, sung by drummer Peter Criss with an orchestra and none of his bandmates, reached No. 7.
Q 10On which TV show did Peter Criss and Ace Frehley rejoin Kiss on stage in 1995?
MTV Unplugged
MTV Unplugged: the two originals joined in for the last songs of the acoustic taping, the founding four's first set together since 1979, and the fans' reaction led to the 1996 reunion tour.
Q 11Kiss's song Detroit Rock City tells the story of what?
A fan killed driving to a Kiss show
A fan killed driving to a Kiss show: Paul Stanley wrote it after someone died in an accident on the way to one of their concerts, struck that a night so full of life could end that way.
Q 12Which polling firm named Kiss the most popular band in America in 1977?
Gallup
Gallup's poll caught Kiss mania at its peak: that fame put the band's painted faces on lunch boxes, dolls, board games and pinball machines.
Q 13Which comics publisher printed a 1977 Kiss comic using red ink mixed with the band's own blood?
Marvel
Marvel: a notary public watched the blood being drawn, and the four flew to the printing plant to see it go into the ink for a story that pitted them against Doctor Doom.
Q 21Which persona did drummer Eric Carr take on when he joined Kiss in 1980?
The Fox
The Fox made his debut in July 1980, weeks after Carr auditioned as, in Paul Stanley's words, a guy who cleaned stoves for a living.
Q 22Kiss drummer Eric Carr died on November 24, 1991, the same day as which rock frontman?
Freddie Mercury
Freddie Mercury's death filled the news, and Carr's, from heart cancer at 41, drew so little coverage that his bandmates wrote to Rolling Stone to say they were shocked and disappointed.
Q 23Vinnie Vincent's Kiss makeup was designed around which symbol?
An Egyptian ankh
An Egyptian ankh: with a new guitarist to fit into the act in 1982, Paul Stanley designed the looped-cross face himself, and the character went by the Ankh Warrior or the Wizard.
Q 14Which animation studio produced the 1978 TV movie Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park?
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera, a cartoon studio, made the live-action film, and the band so despised how buffoonish it made them look that for years nobody who worked for them was allowed to mention it.
Q 15Kiss voiced cartoon versions of themselves in a 2015 animated movie alongside which franchise's characters?
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo and the gang head to an amusement park called Kiss World for a Halloween concert, where the four band members turn up as superpowered versions of themselves to help crack the case.
Q 16Gene Simmons closed his 1978 solo album with a cover of which Disney song?
When You Wish Upon a Star
Simmons said he barely spoke English when he first heard it but knew the words were true.
Q 17Which hit songwriter co-wrote I Was Made for Lovin' You with Paul Stanley and Vini Poncia?
Desmond Child
Desmond Child recalled that Paul Stanley wanted to write a good disco song, so he sat down to help him do it on purpose; Child went on to co-write Livin' on a Prayer.
Q 18Which fan club began in 1975 when two Indiana teenagers badgered a radio station into playing Kiss?
The Kiss Army
The Kiss Army was what Bill Starkey and Jay Evans called themselves when they kept phoning a Terre Haute station that refused to play the band; it became the official fan club.
Q 19In October 1975 Kiss played a gymnasium in Cadillac, Michigan, to honor which local group?
The high-school football team
The high-school football team had turned two opening losses into seven straight wins after an assistant coach played Kiss in the locker room, so the band came to town for homecoming.
Q 20Eric Carr's proposed 'Hawk' persona was dropped after the costume drew comparisons to which character?
Big Bird
Big Bird: the feathered Hawk costume came out bright orange-yellow and nobody could design make-up to match it, so the whole idea was scrapped before Carr's 1980 debut.
Q 24Kiss first showed their faces without makeup on television in 1983 to launch which album?
Lick It Up
Lick It Up was the album the unmasking was staged to sell, and the stunt worked: after years of sliding sales it put Kiss back in the Top 30 and started a second run of success.
Q 25Which Velvet Underground musician co-wrote songs for Kiss's 1981 concept album Music from The Elder?
Lou Reed
Lou Reed helped write three of its songs, including the single A World Without Heroes, but the album sold so poorly that Kiss skipped touring for the first time in its history.
Q 26What did Kiss blame when guitarist Mark St. John missed the start of its 1984 tour?
Reactive arthritis
Reactive arthritis was the band's official line, and his hands did swell; but St. John later called it 'a cover up for the other reasons', and his stand-in had the job by December.
Q 27I Walk Alone, from Carnival of Souls, is the only Kiss track with which member on lead vocals?
Bruce Kulick
Bruce Kulick sang lead for the only time on the album's closing track, then saw the record shelved when Kiss chose a reunion of the original four; bootlegs forced its release in 1997.
Q 28Which 1984 Kiss album produced the MTV hit Heaven's on Fire?
Animalize
Animalize was close to a one-man job: with Gene Simmons away acting in the film Runaway, Paul Stanley ran the sessions himself and came out with a platinum album.
Q 29Kiss's 1990 Top 10 power ballad Forever was co-written by Paul Stanley and which singer?
Michael Bolton
It peaked at No. 8, the band's first US Top 40 single since 1979.
Q 30Who introduced the original Kiss lineup, back in full makeup, at the 1996 Grammy Awards?
Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur told the audience the Grammys needed something different, said 'let's shock the people', and out walked the four originals in full makeup together for the first time since 1979.