KISS guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley has revealed that he is working on the follow-up to his 2014 autobiography "Face The Music: A Life Exposed". He writes on his Facebook page: "You won't be disappointed where the next takes us together."
Asked why he was the last of the four original KISS members to write an autobiography, Stanley told the "Patcast" podcast: "Because I didn't write a KISS book. This isn't the fourth KISS book; this is the first Paul Stanley book. I wasn't writing the last in a series. I don't wanna be associated with those books, 'cause most of them are junk. Autobiographies, by their nature, are junk, because they tend to be love letters to yourself. You are writing what you think is you in your best light, telling stories that probably may have been enhanced, to say the least."
Asked if he had read any of the autobiographies from the other original KISS members, Stanley responded: "When Gene's [Simmons, bass, vocals] came out, I read a little bit of that. And I thought, 'Gee, I thought I did that. I thought that was me. You thought you were me.' And the other guys [drummer Peter Criss and guitarist Ace Frehley]… Look, there's a reason… And people say, 'Oh, you shouldn't take potshots.' Well, if you ask me a question, I've gotta give you the same answer. And the truth of the matter is, there's a reason why attorneys don't put drug addicts or alcoholics on the witness stand. Regardless of whether they are today or not, anybody who's in a 12-step program will tell you they are alcoholics, or they're drug addicts. It's not a past tense. So to have somebody write their memoirs, well, they… as far as I can remember, they couldn't remember yesterday. How are they gonna remember thirty years ago?"
Stanley also explained his reasons for writing a book, saying: "I wrote the book because my life is great, and my life wasn't always great. And if I can inspire some other people to realize that life's not always easy… And the truth of the matter is the people that you look up to and think are perfect are pretty much like you. And I think a lot of people with problems sometimes don't realize that they're not alone. So maybe by breaking down that wall a little and saying, 'We're all kind of in this together.' It's cathartic."
He continued: "[My book] was a New York Times best seller, which is a nice place to be. It was translated into Japanese, Swedish, Italian, German… I like to think of it as… it's got a worldwide sentiment to it. And I really wrote it initially for my children. 'Cause I wanted my children to know what life was like, and when it's appropriate for them to read it… My 20-eyar-old, Evan, read it, and he just had this big smile and said, 'It's you.'"
Stanley added: "The truth is great when it takes you to a place that's positive. I couldn't write a book if it didn't have a happy ending. I'd be horrible to… to be in the midst of what I was going through. And nobody should feel sorry for me — I had tons of great-looking women and money, and all kinds of stuff — but if I was still in the midst of the life I had then, there's no purpose to write a book. I only wrote a book because things turned out far beyond anything I could imagine."
"Face The Music: A Life Exposed" debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times' Best Sellers list for Print Hardcover Non-Fiction. On top of that, "Face The Music" debuted on the Times' Combined Print and E-Book best seller list and E-Book best sellers list at No. 3 and No. 13, respectively.
In the "Face The Music", Stanley talks frankly about his early struggles with hearing — he was born with Level 3 Microtia and is deaf in his right ear. Microtia is a congenital deformity of the cartilage of the outer ear that can affect normal hearing.