Bio
Gene Simmons is an American rock bassist, vocalist, and actor best known as The Demon, the blood-spitting, fire-breathing, and tongue-wagging bassist and one of the lead vocalists in the hard rock band Kiss, a group he co-founded in the early 1970s.
Simmons was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1949 and is the only child of his mother, a German Nazi concentration camp survivor.
He came to America at eight-and-a-half years of age. He graduated State University (NYSU) and City University (CUNY) and got a Bachelor of Education degree.
He taught sixth grade in Spanish Harlem in New York City. He then became the Assistant to the Director of the Puerto Rican InterAgency Council, a government funded research and demonstration project.
He worked at Glamour and then at Vogue, as the assistant to the editor Kate Lloyd.
Simmons speaks number of languages including English, Hungarian, Hebrew, German and Japanese.
Simmons discovered Van Halen and produced their 15-song demo and managed the recording careers of, among others, Liza Minnelli
He produced New Line Pictures' Detroit Rock City and appeared in movies such as Runaway (Tristar) and Wanted Dead or Alive (New World), New Guy (Revolution) and television series such as Third Watch (NBC), Miami Vice (NBC) and scores of others.
He has written two New York Times Best Selling Books, Kiss and Makeup (Crown) and Sex, Money, Kiss (Simmons Books/New Millenium).
The reality shows Gene Simmons Rock School for VH1 and Gene Simmons Family Jewels for A&E featuring his business, his life and his family. He is also creator and executive producer of the cartoon My Dad the Rock Star for Nickelodeon and creator of Mr. Romance for Oxygen.
Simmons has never been married. He has had live-in relationships with Cher and Diana Ross. He has been happily unmarried for 23 years to Shannon Tweed, the mother of his two beautiful children.
He lives in Beverly Hills, California.