Gene Simmons names the “definitive anthem” rock album
Gene Simmons‘ work with Kiss is nothing short of biblical. Few bands were respected for their music and stage presence in the same way that Kiss was. Their stature makes it hard to imagine them in a small venue, as their look, set design, and stage presence feel as though they were made for arenas.
Simmons seems to have a similar mindset when it comes to writing music, as he is hardly associated with light music. Every time he puts pen to paper and finger to bass string, he does so with absolute intent, knowing that he will be playing it to tens of thousands of people worldwide. He and the anthem seem intertwined, and it’s a sound he can pick out in the music he listens to.
When asked about his favourite albums, he listed a number of excellent, big-sounding rock bands. He called Def Leppard’s Hysteria an album that had “Great rock sensibility,” he said that Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland “still holds up”, and he stated that Guns N’ Roses “didn’t mess around with any fancy stuff,” on Appetite For Destruction. However, there was one album in particular that he called a “definitive anthemic” rock album.
For Those About To Rock We Salute You was AC/DC’s eighth album, released in 1981; it resonated immediately with fans and epitomised everything that people loved about the band’s music. They were a hard rock band through and through, and while they get criticised at times for having an unrelenting sound, that’s the whole point of AC/DC. All of their albums can have positives drawn from them, but their eighth outing is the one that Simmons connects with the most.
“Bands have their anthems, you know, ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’, all that for AC/DC sure,” said Simmons, “For Those About To Rock is the call to arms; it’s the definitive anthemic album. Back In Black probably had better songs, but the band started to have a sense of itself because a band stands or should stand for something like when you have a country, you have a flag for that country.”
Playing good rock music was undoubtedly what the band stood for, and they realised it long before the 1981 album. Angus Young commented that Let There Be Rock will always be the definitive AC/DC album for him, given that it perfectly reflected the fact that despite shifts in music, AC/DC would always be a riff-heavy rock band.
“Let There Be Rock, for me, is the album,” he said, “My brother, George [asked] me and Malcolm… ‘What sort of album do you wanna do this time?’ And Malcolm just looked at me, and he said, ‘We just want an album that’s just gonna be pure hard rock guitar’.”