KISS’ Gene Simmons sat down with Really Famous with Kara Mayer Robinson, and recalled the day he tried to convince Paul Stanley and his team to sign Van Halen.
“Paul knew stuff I didn’t know. I knew stuff he didn’t know,” Simmons said. “He should have taken my advice and signed Van Halen. I found that band.”
“I couldn’t convince Paul or the rest of the guys in the band or the management. They just said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘In a year or two, this is going to be the biggest band,’” the rocker recalled.
It all happened when Simmons spotted a still-unsigned Van Halen playing at a Los Angeles club. He took them under his wing but failed to convince the other members of Kiss or their manager, Bill Aucoin, to sign the band.
Stanley and Eddie Van Halen eventually became friends after his first encounter with the band.
“Eddie was playing things I’d never seen before,” he said in a different interview, reflecting on the first time he saw the guitarist on that tour. “We became friends then. Of course, he set off a whole new load of players like that, and now I can’t believe some of them. I can’t follow it. I certainly couldn’t do it.”
Van Halen soon caught the attention of producer Ted Templeman. He helped secure them a deal with Warner Bros. Records not long after their close call with Gene Simmons.