Legendary KISS bassist Gene Simmons might’ve been one of rock’s biggest womanizers. That is, until he married his girlfriend Shannon Tweed back in 2011.
Simmons, 74, explained in a recent episode on the “Steve-O’s Wild Ride!” podcast that he decided to give up his bachelor lifestyle.
“The first 29 years of Shannon’s and my relationship, we were unmarried,” Simmons told Steve-O. “And I was doing anything you could imagine somebody who didn’t care about anybody else who was completely self-absorbed, arrogant and… You know, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Where am I going? Who wants to know?’ That kind of thing.”
“It was no secret that I was carousing,” Simmons said. “Shannon, bless her, never backed away. I would have thrown my sorry ass out in a second.”
The bassist confessed that he had an “epiphany” that changed his life is when he was in Belize shooting his A&E reality show “Gene Simmons Family Jewels.”
“I’m probably going to die alone and a miserable old f—,” Simmons recalled. “And the people that I love and care about the most – our kids especially, Shannon, who never tortured me about getting married – I don’t know if they’re going to be here. If I was Shannon, I’d remarry and try to find happiness while you’re alive instead of having this arrogant, self-absorbed guy doing whatever he wants to do and not caring about it.”
Simmons said he’s usually “not an emotional guy,” but that he was overwhelmed in that moment and confessed his love to Tweed.
He went onto say that he feels as though his views on relationships have shifted a lot since he was younger and added that people who find their soulmates are the lucky ones.
“If you’re lucky and you find that soulmate, you don’t want to be around anybody else,” Simmons concluded. “This sounds like a completely different guy than I ever expected to be. I think it’s called maturity.”
READ MORE: Legendary rock band sells their songs, name and logo for $300 million
KISS completed their farewell tour last year though it was announced earlier this year that the rock band sold the rights to their entire music catalog including publishing and master recordings, name, logo, image and likeness to Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment for $300 million.
