Backstage Pass

by Paul Stanley

  Everything.

  Just a few days ago I made pasta for myself. It may seem like a weird statement and perhaps overblown for the situation, but I can’t tell you how happy I was sitting down with that bowl of what’s called cacio e pepe. It’s spaghetti with ground black pepper, butter, and grated pecorino Romano. I sat in my kitchen by myself, just so happy.

  It was a relatively simple meal, and yet there was satisfaction in having done it properly, and in knowing that I didn’t take the path of least resistance. I could have just slapped together a sandwich. Instead, I’d provided an opportunity not only to feel good about myself but also to eat the rewards.

  How cool is that?

  Blandness and mediocrity are easy. It doesn’t always take a lot of effort to elevate our sense of self. That bowl of cacio e pepe wasn’t a tremendous effort, and yet it was an effort, and that effort made me enjoy the meal and feel better about myself in a fundamental way. If I had chosen not to make the dish, I would have sat there afterward and thought, “I should have and I could have.” It would have been a waste: a waste of calories, sure, but perhaps most importantly a waste of an opportunity.

  It’s crazy, but that simple bowl of pasta was my life in a meal.

  Doing that sort of thing gives us a sense of pride in ourselves. It’s not necessarily something we have to share with others, although that’s terrific too. It starts with us. The optimal way to enhance ourselves is not to look for approval or validation from the outside. It comes first from inside. It’s nice to have it reinforced, but it’s hollow unless we believe it ourselves.

  It’s no different with KISS—it’s never been about someone else thinking we did a great show on any given night. It’s never been about a great review for any given show. It’s only about how I saw the show. The rest of it, and it may seem contradictory or hypocritical, is only of any value to me if it correlates with my own assessment. Otherwise, I discard it. If everybody around me says it was a great show and I didn’t feel it, I’m left feeling hungry. I’m left feeling disappointed. It’s much more fulfilling to base things on our own perceptions than on somebody else’s. That’s the same reason I ask my children to try to examine how they feel when they succeed at something, rather than simply seeking parental approval.

  I once had a carpenter at my house working on a cabinet. I saw that he was doing really shoddy work, so I said to him, “Forget about what I think about it. How can you accept it? This is your work. This is your craft. Forget about me. What about you?”

  When we do something, are we doing it for someone else or are we doing it for ourselves? If we get nothing back from someone else, what we get internally should make it worthwhile. The bonus is the external. The sense of self and knowing that we did a good job—knowing, for instance, that we’re good parents, or that we’re good people—should start with knowing we’re living up to our own potential. Obviously the results will show in our children, in the path we choose, in the impact we have on the people around us, but we are defined by our successes as well as our attempts. Doing our best elevates our lives and the quality of our existence.

  Even when we’re by ourselves, do we want to eat slop, or do we want to create something that’s a reflection of caring? If I make a great meal and no one else is there to share it with, the most important element of the satisfaction and validation has to come from me, not from those around me.

  I came to cooking by necessity. When I started out, I didn’t know the first thing about it. I just needed to make healthy food for my young son after his mother and I split up. I also wanted him to see that life goes on and that I would make sure everything was okay. Very quickly I found myself reaching a point where I no longer wanted to make food that fulfilled the basic need for nourishment but food that was pleasurable to eat and look at. And even though I didn’t know how to do that, I had a pretty good idea how I might learn to.

  In 1977, I went to London and visited a clothing store called Ebony. It was on South Molton Street, which was lined with cool shops. At the time, I was a horrible dresser. I wore clothes that looked as if I had borrowed them from Thomas Jefferson, and in terms of understanding how to dress, I was clueless. So I went into Ebony and picked up a sports jacket. I took it to one of the clerks and said, “I like this jacket. Can you pick a shirt that goes with it?” Then I asked him to pick out a pair of pants and a tie. I did the same thing another time, in another shop, and then I made myself a chart that had this shirt with that jacket and that tie. It seemed to make sense to me: I would write it down. I started to go shopping and look for things that were similar to, say, the shirt, and marked down on my chart that this new shirt could also go with that jacket and that tie. Then I started adding things. Let’s see, this sports coat is similar to the one I have, so I could wear it with these pants and this shirt. After a while I was able to jettison the chart and to have confidence in my ability to choose. I created a style by starting with just two outfits and having a structure that allowed me to learn. I was methodical about it.

  The same is true for how I learned to write songs. Initially I listened to songs I liked and tried to write one like it. Oh, I like that song by the Who—I’m going to write one like it. That went on even later, when, for instance, I wrote “Hard Luck Woman” after listening to Rod Stewart. I would hear something and absorb it and emulate it. “Hotter than Hell” was my “All Right Now,” by Free. The templates for my songwriting were the people I admired, the people who inspired me. Over time, if you’re good, you can transform those inspirations into something new. It’s a question of taking different ingredients and turning them into something that’s familiar, but not a copy of any of them. If, as a singer, I could transform a love of Sam Cooke, Steve Marriott, and Robert Plant into a style of my own, why couldn’t I do the same with food?

  And I did. Step by step. A process. I learned some basic building blocks and perfected a few dishes that allowed me to broaden my repertoire over time. But it all started with one dish and one step.

  One of the first things I started to get good at was making meatballs. Anybody can make a meatball—it’s just a lump of meat, after all. All you have to do is take some ground meat and roll it into a ball. But then I began to wonder: How can I improve it? How do I elevate it? Then I remembered my mom’s meatloaf. Most people grow up despising meatloaf. That’s because it’s often just a five-pound hamburger. But my mom was smart enough to use a mix of different meats and different proportions of fat to meat to create a different flavor profile. When I first said to my kids I was going to make meatloaf, without even knowing what it would taste like, just from watching television, they thought I might as well be feeding them cockroaches. But as soon as they took a bite, it became one of their favorite things to eat.

  So what’s a meatball? A ball of meat. That’s where it starts. But then you go from there. I wanted to learn how to improve it, create different textures and flavor profiles. Luckily my friend and chef extraordinaire Rocco DiSpirito gave me his mama’s recipe, which was a road map to perfection. Committing to doing something challenging is incredibly satisfying. If we treat what we do as a craft or an art form, it enhances the people around us.

  Even though I originally started cooking for a very simple, uncomplicated reason—to feed my son Evan—it led to my seeing that cooking can be a means of exploration, and that exploration can be gratifying. The joy I get from Emily loving my pasta with peppers and onions or Colin and Sarah’s love of my frittata elicits an almost childish pride in me. Oftentimes we can initially do something for one reason, and the reward we get is not the intended one. Or it’s more than the intended one. It fulfills the original need but then opens other doors that we couldn’t have gotten to otherwise.

  For example, had I not done The Phantom of the Opera, I wouldn’t have written a book. Because not only did Phantom fulfill a decade-old yearning to do theater in general and The Phantom of the Opera in particular, but also when I did it, I suddenly realized why it was that im
portant to me, which I had been clueless about. It was so obvious, once I started doing it, what the connection was. Phantom led to my working with children with facial differences and their parents. None of that would have been possible otherwise. I never would have revealed my microtia to anybody. I had to do Phantom first, and then those doors—which I never would have found otherwise—opened.

  When we commit to doing something, there’s no way for us to know where it’ll take us. Then we have to be receptive to possibilities and the doors that open. Most of the time, they’re going to be doors that we couldn’t even see beforehand.

  Food is not unlike art or music. We don’t have to do it well to appreciate it. Because someone goes to a museum and looks at art doesn’t mean that person can paint, but it shouldn’t stop them from trying. The same is true with music. I remember listening to songs ten, twenty, a hundred times, trying to understand what was connecting me to the song. I listened over and over to figure out what was layered in there—which is the same way I try to figure out how something is cooked: I try to discern the layers.

  Painting started out as a way for me to purge, to let out a lot of pain and turmoil. But it turned into something incredibly joyous. Quite honestly, it’s surprising to me how much I love some of my pieces. That’s something I never, ever could have imagined. I never could have imagined that my art would affect other people either. And most of all, I never could have imagined looking at some of my art and thinking that if I saw it in a gallery, I would love it.

  Every time I take on a challenge or I become interested in going down a new avenue, I learn something about myself. It’s another piece of a puzzle that I didn’t realize was so big or complex. But that complexity is rewarding.

  Over the past twenty-plus years, I’ve steadily become more appreciative of culinary skills and the artistry of being able to cook, which shouldn’t be confused with actually being able to do it. But in our own way we can use whatever skills or imagination we have to try.

  There’s nothing wrong with being proud that you boiled water for the first time. Everything starts at step one. We can’t get to step twenty if we don’t start somewhere. Success starts with trying. God knows I’ve made enough food that I took a bite of and threw away, but it hasn’t stopped me. It showed me that I did something wrong. I try to be my own harshest critic and to learn from my culinary mistakes as much as I learn from all my mistakes.

  Erin’s love of baking and my love of cooking have sparked a can-do kitchen adventure for all three of our young ones, which has them inventing their own culinary creations. Being creative in our house is so much the norm, and the idea of can-do as opposed to can’t-do is so much a part of our day that it has been both amusing and fulfilling to have Colin and Sarah, who are both amazingly athletic and terrific students at school, also take such a liking to food and to cooking.

  One day I was in the kitchen just as Colin was pulling from the oven some sugar cookies he had baked from scratch. He announced very matter-of-factly that he and Sarah were going to make a Granny Smith apple pie. I smiled, but also sensed possible disaster. Even so, their curiosity and obvious commitment to doing it were so palpable that both Erin and I said, “That’s great!”

  They told us they were going to make the pie crust from scratch, which in itself would be challenging. And then they started cutting up apples. Erin and I left them alone for hours. And lo and behold, when we came back downstairs, there was a beautiful apple pie. It even had latticework on the top. We were stunned.

  That pie took me back to my making pants for Gene and myself when we played the Hotel Diplomat in 1973. My parents told me that they appreciated my tenacity, but they thought making those pants was pretty much impractical and out of reach. Mind you, I managed to make two great pairs of pants, even though every step of the way—from cutting the fabric to putting in the zippers—I was told it would be impossible. My parents appreciated my effort, but they didn’t think it would come to anything.

  The difference with my children is that Erin and I cheer them on. And now, here was this beautiful apple pie in front of us. When Colin and Sarah asked us to sit down to have a piece, Erin and I looked at each other like, Now the fun stops. Then I took a bite of it. It was mind-blowing. And I told them that. I said, “I would be proud if I’d made this—it’s amazingly good!” Which was followed quickly by Erin saying, “And you kids are making the pies for Thanksgiving!”

  Their sheer can-do spirit, coupled with a naivety about what is possible, brought the results that maybe in some ways mirrored my success with the band and Erin’s success as an attorney.

  Perhaps when we don’t know how difficult something is going to be, it isn’t that difficult after all. We can use whatever skills or imagination we have—and then just try.

  I’m certainly not a chef. But I like cooking the way a chef might like playing guitar. It doesn’t make the chef a rock star, and liking to cook doesn’t make me a chef. But I take joy in being able to feed my family and myself and make nice food. Cooking turns a house into a home, because eating food we make ourselves fills the shell of a house with the life of a home.

  With cooking, I kept adding fundamental skills—like deglazing a pan, which is a fancy term for pouring some liquid, usually some form of alcohol, into a frying pan and making sure you scrape up all the flavorful bits of food clinging to the bottom so that flavor infuses whatever it is you’re cooking rather than just making the pan tough to scrub out later. I needed someone to open a door for me. If we can find somebody to help us, it’s foolish not to take the help. The only dumb question is the one we don’t ask. There’s so much experience around us that to close our ears and make believe we know everything only hurts us. In my case, I started messaging chefs through Twitter and asking them questions. That’s how I learned to deglaze my pan with some Marsala wine and chicken stock to get the concentrated flavors in the bottom of the pan.

  I once tried to make a pasta dish with chicken and peas, and it seemed easy enough, but when I tasted the results, it was unremarkable. In that instance I messaged Rocco DiSpirito. What was the problem with the dish? Turns out it starts at the beginning. You have to build what they call a sofrito. You have to build your flavors at the beginning with your herbs, with your stock. You have to deglaze your pan. Without the fundamentals, you can’t make a great dish.

  God is in the details. God is also in the nuances. It’s those subtleties we miss that make something great. At a restaurant recently I had to remark that something I was eating was just heavy-handed. And yet those same ingredients in the right hands would have been in proportions that worked. Maybe food is no different from anything else in life. It’s all about proportions. It’s all about what takes the lead and what supports it. And though I’m far from being a chef, it’s the little things I can learn that become the building blocks to something else, whether it’s building a wardrobe from one jacket, one shirt, and one pair of pants or building up a recipe collection by starting with one dish.

  Suddenly, with help, I had a good dish. And then I realized I could do something similar with shrimp—and just like with my jacket-shirt-tie chart, I was off to the races. I’ve got a long way to go, but as naive and elementary as it sounds, that is so exciting to me. I made this pasta with chicken and chicken stock and Marsala wine, I did it right, and it was the key that opened a door that had been closed.

  That sort of thing—a basic accomplishment like making an awesome pasta dish—is exciting. I would have been chasing my tail, but a little bit of knowledge and guidance started me on another journey. Armed with that knowledge and guidance, I’ve been able to put a personal stamp on the food in my home. I’m not making Michelin-star dishes, but I’m making good, tasty food.

  And I’m not skipping dessert, Doc. I mean, is there a good substitute for ice cream? Fuck no. So eat the ice cream. And enjoy it.

  For myself, I’ll have my ice cream and then figure out something else to sacrifice. But if I’m going to have de
ssert, I want the real thing. Some things can’t be replaced, and there’s no reasonable facsimile of ice cream.

  Also, certain savory dishes just need fat. You simply can’t make certain foods with lean meat. You have to have the fat. A good hamburger has to have 20 to 30 percent fat. The discipline we have in what we don’t eat allows us the freedom to eat what we do eat. There really is a way to do it without feeling that we have to eat sawdust to be healthy.

  Some things just can’t be replaced. Eat the ice cream. That’s what life is about.

  17

  If We Keep Moving Forward, We Never Finish the Journey

  At this point, I’ve reached the mountaintop in the field of music. But I want to replicate the high. There’s a hunger to find another means of replicating that feeling of accomplishment and validation. I don’t think that goes away.

  That feeling of getting to know another side of yourself and getting to see what you’re capable of is built on your prior accomplishments. Any of the guys who originally went into space as astronauts had to start out as student pilots, after all.

  Our successes open doors to other possibilities, and we want to get the same psychological rush of fulfillment, if not the same adrenaline rush, of seeing what we’re capable of.

  I’m always looking to see what more I’m capable of. Not because of any feelings of inferiority, but because it enhances what’s already there. At this point in my life, it helps to broaden the picture, add to the mosaic. It helps to create a bigger sense of who I am. And it’s uplifting, if only because I surprise myself by what I can do.

  We all can surprise ourselves by what we can do.

  When you achieve success, some people will try to intimidate you, but for God’s sake, don’t intimidate yourself. That’s a mistake many people make: they intimidate themselves and don’t let themselves experiment.