KISS and Las Vegas made for each other

(LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL) “The future is certainly unwritten. The story continues to unfold.”

Written out, the words sound like something a deep-voiced narrator might intone as fog machines crank up for rock stars who dressed up like “Superman with a guitar,” as Paul Stanley puts it.

But Stanley actually sounds pretty laid-back on the phone, discussing the future of KISS in Las Vegas and whether nine shows at the Hard Rock Hotel starting Wednesday will be the first of many.

Two things are definite. One is that “the opportunity to do something unique in Vegas is something we’ve wanted for a long time,” says Stanley, who’s been suited and booted as the rock heroes’ lead-singing Starchild for 40 years and counting.

And while he doesn’t get deep into spoilers about that unique something, he does volunteer, “The beauty of this is we’ve created a stage that doesn’t have to be transported literally nightly from city to city.”

It may not be the $40 million production show that was announced, wrongly as it turns out, for the Strip in 2009, but it is “a great opportunity to explore something we haven’t done before,” he says. “(T)he chance to do more because of the fact that it’s stationary and we don’t have to worry about the mobility of it.”

One thing is as obvious as the Hard Rock sitting right across the street from a Kiss-themed miniature-golf course: “Kiss in Vegas is a match that’s been a long time coming,” Stanley says.

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