It blew me away that these four boys the middle of nowhere could make that music." Career Kiss Those skinny little boys, kind of androgynous, with long hair like girls. I was watching The Ed Sullivan Show and I saw them. "There is no way I'd be doing what I do now if it wasn't for the Beatles. The Beatles had a significant influence on Simmons. A proficient typist, he served as an assistant to an editor of Vogue, and spent several months as a sixth grade instructor on the Upper West Side. Before his musical career began, Klein worked a variety of jobs in the city. He practiced playing his guitar for hours on end. He later attended Richmond College and Sullivan County Community College, both in New York, and chose a stage name in tribute to the rockabilly singer Jumpin' Gene Simmons. When he was nine, he briefly attended a Jewish religious school, Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, before transferring to a public school. In the United States, Simmons changed his name to Gene Klein, adopting his mother's maiden name. His father remained in Israel, where he has another son and three daughters. Īged eight, he immigrated to the United States with his mother and settled in New York City. At the age of seven, he began to pick wild fruit and sell it on roadsides together with a friend. He has said that his family was "dirt poor", scraping by on rationed bread and milk. Simmons spent his early childhood in Tirat Carmel and was raised in a practicing Jewish household. Simmons' father, Ferenc "Feri" Yehiel Witz (1925–2002), was a carpenter. She and her brother, Larry Klein, were the only members of the family to survive the Holocaust. His mother, Florence Klein (1925–2018) (née Flóra Kovács), was born in Jánd and survived internment in Nazi concentration camps. Simmons was born as Chaim Witz on August 25, 1949, at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel, to Jewish immigrants from Hungary. Simmons was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 as a member of Kiss. Also known by his stage persona the Demon, he is the bassist and co-lead singer of Kiss, the hard rock band he co-founded with Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss in the early 1970s. Gene Simmons (born Chaim Witz Hebrew: חיים ויץ, born August 25, 1949) is an Israeli-American musician.
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