Gene Simmons Says Prince Was Pathetic For Killing Himself

Rick Stewart/Getty Images

Gene Simmons Says Prince Was Pathetic For Killing Himself

Rick Stewart/Getty Images

Oh boy. Deep sigh. Here we go. Gene Simmons — longtime Kiss bassist, aging rock vampire, terrible human being — loves to talk shit. More often than not, something unbelievably stupid comes out whenever the man opens his mouth. Sometimes, it’s funny! Most of the time, not at all! And every once in a while, it’s nasty enough that you want to seek the man out and punch him in his awful, giant-tongued face.

So now, after we’ve lost icons like David Bowie and Prince in the past few months, leave it to Simmons to open his fat fucking face, treating Prince’s addiction issues like some kind of moral failing. Newsweek has asked Simmons about what he thinks of all these stars of his generation dying. Here’s what he says about Bowie: “Bowie was the most tragic of all because it was real sickness.”

Prince’s sickness, on the other hand, was not real: “His drugs killed him. What do you think, he died from a cold?… I think Prince was heads, hands and feet above all the rest of them. I thought he left [Michael] Jackson in the dust. Prince was way beyond that. But how pathetic that he killed himself. Don’t kid yourself, that’s what he did. Slowly, I’ll grant you… but that’s what drugs and alcohol is: a slow death.”

There’s more here, if you really feel like you need to read it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find my ’90s-vintage Simmons action figure and back my van over it a few times.

UPDATE: He apologized.

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