Gene Simmons is best known as Kiss’s tongue-waggling bassist, said Kathryn Knight in the London Daily Mail. But he’s also a very canny businessman. Over four decades, Simmons has accrued a $160 million fortune selling Kiss merchandise, setting up online firms, and running a financial planning service for the super-rich. “The music business was always just that, business,” he shrugs. “If you’re in it, you have a duty to take care of yourself, otherwise it’s going to make short work of you. It’s not very far from headlining an arena to living in your mother’s basement again.”
The son of a concentration-camp survivor, Simmons was raised “dirt poor” in Queens, N.Y. As a young man, he worked two jobs while putting together Kiss. He has little sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street protesters. “What they’re arguing about is they don’t have jobs—but there are plenty of jobs,” he says. “It just may not be the job you want. Too bad.” Anyone can get rich, he adds, by following a few simple rules. “Never a lender or a borrower be. Avoid credit cards. It’s common sense. But people don’t have common sense. They have greed.”
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