Why were Gene and Paul such j@goffs re: Mark St. John?

[Tommy2Tone84]

That’s crap. The VVI songs are better than the LIU songs. Just need the solos to be reigned in and the singing not to be screechy absurd bullshit, which Gene and Paul’s influence would have seen to.

I never thought the VVI stuff was all that great. I’ll take any Tod Howarth song on Second Sighting over Boyz R Gonna Rawk all day and all of the night.

[Bono Nettencourt]

No doubt. Animalize with VV would have been massive.

Only problem with that is we wouldn't have had VVI, which means we probably wouldn't have gotten Mark Slaughter, and thus no Slaughter, Stick It to Ya, "Up All Night", and "Fly to the Angels". Or would that have been a good thing?

A good thing. Slaughter was generic early 90s hair metal, basically VVI without the songs and the VVI songs would have been better with Gene and Paul singing.

And here I thought VVI was Slaughter without the songs...

[Bono Nettencourt]

Lol

[Tommy2Tone84]

No doubt. Animalize with VV would have been massive.

Animalize outsold Lick It Up. VV’s influence on the band is greatly exaggerated by the some of the fans. The fanbase and public at large didn’t really care.

Paul did better writing with Desmond Child and an inexperienced hack like Mark than he ever did with Vinnie.
I like Creatures and Lick It Up better but the numbers don’t lie. Animalize outsold them both. Animalize outsold Revenge, as did Crazy Nights. That’s got to hurt.

[Nightcrawler]

It was lose/lose. If they just invited Bruce, then it would've been like "Where's Ace and Peter?" Some insane people would've asked "Where's Vinnie?"

And, more (most) importantly, there would've been no significant dollar increase by inviting Bruce Kulick onstage. They made exactly the same amount of money either way, so why bother?

Also think it would've been kind of a weird look with four makeup guys and Spruce Kulick up there. (He seems like such a nice guy, I feel bad saying that.)

But it's definitely kind of weird that MTV Unplugged was more of a significant event than their last show ever. I can't blame anyone for expecting a little more.

I didn’t mean invite Bruce on stage. I agree that would’ve look insane with a non makeup guy.
According to Bruce they didn’t reach out to him at all.
At least invite him to the show.

Inviting Bruce to open the last two shows with his '80s tribute act was the obvious answer.

But then Paula's kids wouldn't have had their "moment". That was low key a great look at Paul's ego. His own kids open the show - and they're not even on the main stage. They played on the little stage by the soundboard he flies to for Love Gun.

[Tommy2Tone84]

That’s crap. The VVI songs are better than the LIU songs. Just need the solos to be reigned in and the singing not to be screechy absurd bullshit, which Gene and Paul’s influence would have seen to.

I never thought the VVI stuff was all that great. I’ll take any Tod Howarth song on Second Sighting over Boyz R Gonna Rawk all day and all of the night.

Well that’s silly. Go play Invasion or Back on the Streets and then play Second Sighting. Time Ain’t Runnin Out is okay.

I always preferred Ace’s three solo albums over anything Vinnie did post KISS. I’ll throw Vinnie a bone here and there for I Love It Loud and I Still Love You. But I’ve never been in agreement on the Vinnie “saved KISS” bs. The fans and the public at large didn’t really care. They reacted more positively to Slaughter than they ever did to Vinnie.

The cold, hard truth is, KISS did better with Bruce in the band than they ever did with Vinnie. But Ace proved to be next to impossible to replace. As much as I love Bruce, Tommy Thayer in Ace’s makeup put more butts in the seats than Bruce, who had a very respectable eleven year run in the band, ever did.

Bottom line, there was no real demand for Vinnie. In or out of the band.

[Tommy2Tone84]

No doubt. Animalize with VV would have been massive.

Animalize outsold Lick It Up. VV’s influence on the band is greatly exaggerated by the some of the fans. The fanbase and public at large didn’t really care.

Paul did better writing with Desmond Child and an inexperienced hack like Mark than he ever did with Vinnie.
I like Creatures and Lick It Up better but the numbers don’t lie. Animalize outsold them both. Animalize outsold Revenge, as did Crazy Nights. That’s got to hurt.

Mark didn’t write anything on Animalize.

And yes, Animalize sold more than Lick It Up at the time, in part due to the momentum of COTN and then LIU. People who bought those liked them and they bought the next album. Two strong albums in a row.

That didn’t happen with Animalize going into Asylum. Asylum never went platinum it’s still gold, despite Tears Are Falling being pretty popular on mtv at the time. Animalize is garbage, so yes a million people bought it but they didn’t like it enough to buy the next album.

I think it had more to do with Heaven’s On Fire than anything. Maybe the song coupled with their image.

I like Asylum better than Creatures, Lick It Up and Animalize. Musically speaking, as far as I’m concerned, Asylum is their strongest record from 1980-2012.

I don’t think Animalize is garbage. I’ll take it over HITS, Revenge and COS among others. But it’s a 3 or 4 out of 5. The majority of Paul’s songs are good. Gene has one good song. I like his Asylum, Crazy Nights and even some of his HITS material better.

The Creatures album and tour tanked. Nobody cared that VV was in the band. Lick It Up should’ve sold a bill on copies but it didn’t.

[RaceFan3]

He was never let go for his playing, he was let go because he got elephantitis of the knucks and couldn't play.

But in the years following, whenever he was brought up, Gene and Paul would talk about how he was a showboat and played a million notes but had no groove, etc.

Not nice!

Gene has always said that about Mark in one way or another. Watch Xtreme Closeup where he mentions how he prefers a “simple A chord that will crack your ribs” rather than “a million notes that sound like an angry bee.” While you can interpret it as a generalIty, I always took it that he was referring to Mark and Vinnie, Mark specifically. He even comments that it took Bruce “a couple of years” to get “that crap” out of his playing. The thing that doesn’t make sense is, Gene loved Eddie Van Halen and Eddie helped bring that style of playing to the mainstream. Some would say he even invented it.

I wonder what Gene thought of Bruce's solo in, for example, "Who Wants to Be Lonely." IMHO that's a perfect combination of a rib-cracking chord(s) and angry bee notes yet still fit the song perfectly. And that was on Bruce's first album with the band, not a couple years in.

[Tommy2Tone84]

He was never let go for his playing, he was let go because he got elephantitis of the knucks and couldn't play.

But in the years following, whenever he was brought up, Gene and Paul would talk about how he was a showboat and played a million notes but had no groove, etc.

Not nice!

Gene has always said that about Mark in one way or another. Watch Xtreme Closeup where he mentions how he prefers a “simple A chord that will crack your ribs” rather than “a million notes that sound like an angry bee.” While you can interpret it as a generalIty, I always took it that he was referring to Mark and Vinnie, Mark specifically. He even comments that it took Bruce “a couple of years” to get “that crap” out of his playing. The thing that doesn’t make sense is, Gene loved Eddie Van Halen and Eddie helped bring that style of playing to the mainstream. Some would say he even invented it.

I wonder what Gene thought of Bruce's solo in, for example, "Who Wants to Be Lonely." IMHO that's a perfect combination of a rib-cracking chord(s) and angry bee notes yet still fit the song perfectly. And that was on Bruce's first album with the band, not a couple years in.

Good question. Bruce’s playing smokes on Asylum. For me, it’s one of the few 1980-2012 records that stacks up against the original 1974-1979 run.

[Wild Obsession]

The 1st VVI CD has "Boyz R Gonna Rock" , a couple "ok songs" and a bunch of forgettable filler......., the 2nd VVI CD is all filler........

The songwriting on the Slaughter debut is like Lennon/McCartney in comparison.......

[Love_Industry]

The 1st VVI CD has "Boyz R Gonna Rock" , a couple "ok songs" and a bunch of forgettable filler......., the 2nd VVI CD is all filler........

The songwriting on the Slaughter debut is like Lennon/McCartney in comparison.......

What is this, opposite day?

If you can't find at least five songs on the 2nd VVI that are better than ANY Slaughter song not called Reach for the Sky or Eye to Eye, you're not listening.

[Earl Skakel]

I think he got the job because of Grover Jackson's recommendation. Mark wasn't properly vetted by Paul, doubt Gene really cared at that point.

But Bruce came in to do some work on Animalize, which was more like an audition. Paul tells him to not cut his hair, think Mark was on the way out regardless of the arthritis.

I would think St John getting recommended by Grover Jackson had to be a great endorsement so I get them taking him at his word that MSJ was the guy. I don't mind Mark's playing and I don't think enough people put themselves in his shoes as that was a pretty shitty time to be brought into KISS with Gene off doing Miami Vice and Runaway and Paul probably checked out porking Donna Dixon or Samantha Fox with Eric Carr just happy to be there. The Poughkeepsie Soundboard I kind of like as it's clearly Gene,Paul and Eric playing with an 80's metal shredder, I still laugh that KISS put out an official release with 2 songs cutting off toward the end WTF?

[pieceofme]

The 1st VVI CD has "Boyz R Gonna Rock" , a couple "ok songs" and a bunch of forgettable filler......., the 2nd VVI CD is all filler........

The songwriting on the Slaughter debut is like Lennon/McCartney in comparison.......

What is this, opposite day?

If you can't find at least five songs on the 2nd VVI that are better than ANY Slaughter song not called Reach for the Sky or Eye to Eye, you're not listening.

Thats what we think of you everyday considering your disdain for paradise city, the zoo, and parasite to name just a few.

[Love_Industry]

The 1st VVI CD has "Boyz R Gonna Rock" , a couple "ok songs" and a bunch of forgettable filler......., the 2nd VVI CD is all filler........

The songwriting on the Slaughter debut is like Lennon/McCartney in comparison.......

What is this, opposite day?

If you can't find at least five songs on the 2nd VVI that are better than ANY Slaughter song not called Reach for the Sky or Eye to Eye, you're not listening.

Thats what we think of you everyday considering your disdain for paradise city, the zoo, and parasite to name just a few.

I don't like Paradise City? Wtf? Surely you don't mean the GnR song. The most negative I could have said about it is that there are a few better songs on AFD.

Edit: You probably meant Detroit Rock City. I don't hate it but it's my least favorite on Destroyer after Beth.

[DangerZone]

MSJ rips on ‘animalize.’
It’s not his fault the Gene songs were garbage

[El Vampiro Blanco]

What is this, opposite day?

If you can't find at least five songs on the 2nd VVI that are better than ANY Slaughter song not called Reach for the Sky or Eye to Eye, you're not listening.

Thats what we think of you everyday considering your disdain for paradise city, the zoo, and parasite to name just a few.

I don't like Paradise City? Wtf? Surely you don't mean the GnR song. The most negative I could have said about it is that there are a few better songs on AFD.

The only bad thing you can say about Paradise City is they stole the riff from Iommi.
It's a monster riff though and Paradise City is a great song...

[pieceofme]

What is this, opposite day?

If you can't find at least five songs on the 2nd VVI that are better than ANY Slaughter song not called Reach for the Sky or Eye to Eye, you're not listening.

Thats what we think of you everyday considering your disdain for paradise city, the zoo, and parasite to name just a few.

I don't like Paradise City? Wtf? Surely you don't mean the GnR song. The most negative I could have said about it is that there are a few better songs on AFD.

Edit: You probably meant Detroit Rock City. I don't hate it but it's my least favorite on Destroyer after Beth.

I actually meant rocket queen..

[Jason Jennifer Leigh]

Animalize sold because of Heaven’s On Fire … it had a cool Jump style video and MTV.