Gene Simmons has never met a dollar he didn’t like and he’s got plenty of wisdom on the subject. For example, if you’re going to be miserable, “it’s still better to be a rich, miserable fuck,” he tells us early in our conversation.It’s part of the reason he’s been playing solo concerts in the past couple of years since Kiss said farewell to the road, because he still remembers his modest beginnings. “It’s funny, I’m an only child to my mother and I grew up with the hard knocks of not being very romantic about what it all means,” he shares on an upcoming episode of the UCR Podcast. “I developed a harder skin and for myself, realized that everything was about the search for power and money, which is not a very romantic notion. But I didn’t want to be poor, because I know what that felt like.””My mother worked at a sweat factory six days out of the week and survived the Nazi concentration camps of Germany. You know, life is tough, so the romantic hippie dippie notation about life never worked for me,” he continues. “All I ever did was try to figure out how to become powerful and make lots of money, for survival. The only thing money ever does, really, is give you the freedom to do stuff you actually like doing. It’s what it’s really about and also to keep you safe, pay for your hospital bills, create jobs, give to charity, all of that stuff. A poor person never gave me a job.”READ MORE: You Can Be Gene Simmons’ Roadie for $12,495 a DaySure, that logic applies in part to his career with Kiss, but for Simmons, it goes further than that. “Throughout Kiss, fame was nice, but there are a lot of famous people who are relatively poor, that’s not a lot of fun,” he explains. “But on the other side, there’s a lot of industrial types whose names you don’t recognize who are filthy rich. It’s better to be rich than poor, it really is. And if you’re a miserable fuck, it’s still better to be a rich, miserable fuck. That’s all I ever tried to do.”What Fans Can Expect From Gene’s Solo ShowsAs he told UCR last month, he found that staying away from the stage wasn’t an option for him — and he expanded on those thoughts during our latest conversation. “I can say that I’m having more fun now in ways I never thought I’d have without 60 people on the crew, without a private jet, without three triple-decker buses, without 20 tractor trailers — without a small city setting up with more firepower than some third world countries, just getting up on stage and rocking out,” he says. “It’s like your favorite band rehearsing in a garage, and then the garage door opens and everybody in town rushes over and has a party.””It’s very flexible.There are no plans. I can pull up people from the audience. They can join me singing, if you can play an instrument, jump in if you know one of one of the tunes, dive in,” he continues. “You can Google ‘Gene Simmons Band, teenage guitar player, ‘Parasite’,’ and you’ll see some kid step up and rock out. There was a 15-year old kid in Scandinavia who yelled out from the audience that he wanted to play the drums. [We] brought him up on stage and never rehearsed with him. ‘What do you want to play?’ ‘Christine Sixteen.’ ‘Do you know the song?’ ‘Oh yeah, I know this.’ You’ll see that he kills it. That’s half of the fun, the idea of band and fan and not having the moat around them. With these solo shows, anything can happen.”Simmons and his band will hit the road for their next round of dates starting May 2.Watch the Gene Simmons Band Play ‘Chrstine Sixteen’ With a FanKiss Live Albums Ranked Worst to BestYou wanted the best, you get the best.. and the rest.Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening