Kiss rocker Gene Simmons just gave some very blunt advice to the son of Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California.
“Mr. Chairman, if you’ll indulge me, for Mr. Simmons, not on the bill itself, but my youngest son. His name is Diego. He’s ten years old. He has quickly fallen in love — not with the bass, but the electric guitar,” Padilla said. “What advice do you have for him?”
“Have a fallback position,” Simmons deadpanned, prompting the Senate hearing room to erupt in laughter.
“And I say this seriously,” Simmons continued after the attendees quieted down, “because since the advent of downloading and file sharing, where artists are actually getting minuscule amounts, barely able to get by.”
Simmons did give the tyke a tip by noting that he saved up money to launch Kiss while working first as a teacher, at a real estate firm and as some sort of assistant to a Puerto Rican government official.
“I was making $23,000 a year when that meant a lot of money. But doing the Jewish way of living with your mother, not paying rent, and so on. So I amassed a large enough amount so that I could support the band. We were forming together without managers and everything else.”
Simmons later asked Padilla what kind of music his son liked.
“Heavy metal,” the senator replied.
