everything has to be so huge. everything has to be a moment. >> you wanted the best and you got it. the hottest band in the land, kiss. >> the iconic look. >> kiss are the four most recognized faces on planet earth. >> the outrageous costumes. >> where did you start? the outfits and the makeup, the pi pyro. everything is over the top. >> that wagging tongue, indestructible rockers. >> kiss is kind of like the cockroach of rock 'n' roll. you can't kill them. >> who evolved from band to brand. >> people talk about the golden years of kiss in the '70s. >> how cool is that? come on. >> that is dwarfed by what we do today.

>> kiss lotteries. kiss mr. potato heads. kiss boots, kiss condoms. >> and into new arenas. now, after four decades, the cover of rolling stone. >> this is vindication. >> and the industry's ultimate honor. but not without some rock star drama. >> they all wanted to induct the four original guys. >> tonight, cnn shined the spotlight on kiss. a historic night in brooklyn, new york. >> class of 2014, welcome to the hall of fame. >> legendary musicians took home rock's highest honor. >> kiss. >> but for kiss, the victory was bitter sweet. their induction came 15 years after becoming eligible. >> we won our own hall of fame

long ago, so the rock and roll hall of fame, we appreciate it. we're very gracious. mostly we're thanking the fans. >> some fans had hoped for a reunion of the original band. gene simmons, paul stanley, ace freely, and peter crist, but this is kiss today. guitarist tommy their and a singer replaced them more than a decade ago, wearing the same makeup and costumes. >> i never tried to act or play in any way like peter crist. i have always played like eric singer. >> kiss is a 40 year story and kiss has weathered the storm. >> early this year, tempered flared when the rock hall announced they would only induct the original members. >> when we said what about other members? they said it's a nonstarter. >> the kiss founders accepted the induction but flatly refused

to perform as the original four. >> the last thing we would do is to get up on stage and just play with ace and peter because that's running a race looking backwards. >> and there was worry freely and crist wouldn't perform to their standards. >> you won't be disappointed. >> to go up with peter and ace dressed as they once were, regardless of how they play or how they look is a risk i don't want to take. >> criss and freely wouldn't comment, but backstage, he was disappointed. >> it wasn't my choice. i didn't want to do it, but bottom line is we're still brothers in rock 'n' roll. >> in the end, they were are there. singer and their in the audiences, the original members accepting their award together. >> let me hear you.

>> yes. >> i want to thank paul, gene, and peter. >> it's great to be home in brooklyn. this is my home. i never thought this could happen in my life. this is vindication. >> vindication for the band that's been around for four decades. >> we are in the glory days of kiss. to think that 40 years long, our plate is more full than ever. >> and spilling over the top with their next adventure. >> paul stanley and gene simmons. >> stanley and simmons are the new co-owners of l.a. kiss, an arena football team in anaheim, california. this is not your father's football game. >> it's sports jacked up on steroids, and we're not advocating steroids in sports, folks, but we're trying to give

people as much as we can. >> and taking the kiss brand to a whole new level, literally. for about a third the price of an nfl game ticket, fans see pole dancing, pyro, lasers, electric guitar, and football players that look like rock stars. >> this is the three-ring circus but it's also a sporting event. why can't the two coexist? >> the l.a. kiss owner is banking on it. he said the combination of cheaper tickets and the band's star power will draw fans and money. >> i don't think it works for any other music brand. kiss is a brand that's -- it's an iconic brand that's been around for 40 years and i'll tell you right now, it's going to be huge. it's going to change the way sports does business. >> but it's a risky business. arena football has failed four

times in california. financially, what is at stake here? >> it's millions, but it's not about how much money we have at stake. if this doesn't work, it impacts kiss, the band, because at the core of everything is the band. >> this is the victory lap for us. >> does that mean it's over soon? >> no, we've had other victory laps. but to do it 40 years on, look, we're in our 60s. that's insane. >> i think you go as fast as you can and achieve as much as you can before you drop dead. coming up, how kiss came together. face paint, fate, and fury. >> we have a love/hate relationship. he loved me, i hated him.

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ladies and gentlemen, kiss.

>> the coventry, january 1973, queens, new york. >> the first time we played, the only people were there were a couple friends and some lonely guy at the bar. >> it was four guys off the streets of new york. we're nobody. >> four guys who hoped to stand out during the heyday of glam rock. >> you look at someone like alice cooper, david bowie, that was ellreally just one person. kiss's yie is why don't we krad an identity that has foir alice coopers. they transform themselves from regular rock musicians into superheroes. >> part superhero, part sci-fi villain, kiss created personas for each band member. the guitarist paul stanley the star child. on bass, gene simmons, the demon. ace freely was spaceman, and on

drums was peter kriss, catman. >> did anyone tell you you were crazy? >> everybody. platform boots, are you kazy? people would be in the front row, hitting each other, hilarious. >> they designed their own costumes, those legendary platform boots. >> look at these heels. >> and black and white face paint. >> we had to learn to put on the makeup through trial and error. we used to go on stage in clubs and be blinded by the stuff running into our eyes until we figured out how to do it. >> i tell them buy something that's bright and red. >> 40 years later, they still do their own makeup, a two-hour process. how does it not all drip off during the show? >> we bake it in. >> there were no designers, no marking people. we didn't even have a record deal. >> they booked their own gigs, flooded music execs with demos,

and by the summer of '63, kiss had their first deal. >> we were the first act on casablanca records. >> next, they brought out the fireworks. their first three albums bombed, but kiss quickly built a rep as the hottest stage act in town. >> gene simmons blowing fire. gene simmons spitting blood. paul stanley breaking a guitar. guitars smoking. >> fans were blown away. they banded together, calling themselves the kiss army. >> i like the stage show. >> but critics were brutal. >> throughout their career, critics have always leveled barbs at kiss, calling them clowns. >> all the critics and all the bad reviews have helped buy us the empire that is kiss. >> kiss not only have we

survived, we've thrived. >> the kiss frontmen say that survivor instinct instilled at a young age, propelled them to stardom. >> i am the product of a tribe of survivors. our backgrounds were very similar. we were both from families that in one form or another had fled from europe to avoid the holocaust. all the friends of my mom and dad had numbers on their arms. >> gene simmons was born hyam, in israel. he was raised by his mother, a holocaust survivor. >> she went in at 14. the rest of the family was left. >> your father leaving you when you were almost 7 years old. what did that do to you? >> i felt betrayed or abandoned. i decided i wasn't going to depend on anybody.

>> gene and his mother immigrated to new york when he was 8 years old. >> i had never seen a television set. i had never seen comic books or toilet paper, literally. for me, it was like from zero to 60. >> the fact is that the opportunities are here. i'm the living proof of that. >> paul stanley was born stanleyizen, and grew up in queens, new york. >> my parents slept on the sofa and my sister and i shared a bedroom in a one-bedroom apartment walk-up. >> you overcame a huge challenge and you kept it a secret for a long time. >> yes, i was born without a right ear. and deaf also. >> were you an outcast? >> totally. a deaf kid who was painfully shy, ridiculed, succeeded beyond his and everyone else's wildest dreams. >> from a young age, stanley and simmons dreamed of becoming rock

stars. the two met in 1970. >> i learned how to play guitar on my own. so when i met him, it was like, oh, really? let's see what you got. actually, he was pretty damn good. >> so good, they united with a game plan. >> we in essence wanted to be the band we never saw. >> i have heard that the two of you didn't necessarily really like each other when you first met. >> that's not fair. he hated me. >> we had a love/hate relationship. he loved me, i hated him. >> true? >> yes. oh, yes. >> the feuding between band members would escalate. >> peter criss was the first to join the alliance with paul and gene, and ace would join the band in december 1973. >> they began to build a following. it paid off in 1975 when they broke through with mega hit

"rock 'n' roll all night." >> kiss alive, which captured what the band was. and then all the other albums suddenly caught on. >> selling six platinum albums in three years with hits like "shout it out loud." >> i would say by 1977, kiss were probably the most popular band in the world. >> within a year and a half, we are headlining anaheim stadium. i remember opening up the curtains and the place was packed. and my sense was, we're on the roller coaster. you better hold on because we're going up. and the ride's about to begin. >> momentum was high, but by the late '70s, the ride came to a crashing halt. >> good night, detroit! >> there was fighting within the

band. and disco fever in the air. ♪ i was made for loving you baby ♪ >> kiss had a big hit with a disco rock song "i was made for loving you." it alienated their hard core audience that loved the hard, raunchy rock 'n' roll. >> when we return, sparks fly. >> it was a betrayal. >> and kiss unmasked. how did we do it last time?

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on mtv. >> this is a really big moment. >> a decade after their debut, a radical decision. kiss loses their masks. >> it felt -- >> it came down to saying, look, if we're a great band and we're really good, it's trial by fire. >> gone was the paint and gone was the original lineup. peter criss left in 1980, and ace freely left two years later. >> once fame and success happened, it divided the group into the more level-headed guys, paul and gene, and the partiers, which were ace and peter. >> simmons is still bitter about the split. >> during their time in the band, they were miserable human beings, drugs, abuse, nothing was ever good. you couldn't make them happy. >> we reached out to both freely and criss. neither would comment.

however, in the march edition of rolling stone magazine, freely admits to substance abuse in his early days with kiss, but says he's been sober for seven years, adding i'm healthy and working. in the alreadiy '80s, a stripped down version of kiss emerged with stripped down faces. the band churned out more platinum albums, but kiss began to unravel. >> taking off the makeup, ace and peter were no longer in the band. there were some real changes in music, so i was completely lost. i didn't know who i was. >> simmons drifted from the band. >> i was seduced by hollywood power. cher moved in and then moved in with diana ross. >> did you sell out for a while? >> i did. >> in this case, it was a betrayal. it was a betrayal of a bond that we supposedly had.

in essence, leaving me holding the bag, going off to do other things. and still wanting equal credit. >> simmons returned, but the kiss army, their faithful core of fans, had deserted. >> we were playing to empty halls. to go out on stage and have somebody go, you wanted the best, you got the best, the hottest band in the land, kiss, and you go out onstage and the place is empty. i was shaken to the core. >> they went back to the makeup and the original lineup a decade later for a wildly successful reunion tour. but after several more tours, the band was still fractured. the four had a final farewell in 2000. >> i had really hoped when we got back together for the reunion was that we could really resolve issues, having pride in

what you do and living up to your vows in the band. those were all broken. >> criss wouldn't respond to cnn, but he told rolling stone magazine, i wish there wasn't so much bad blood. did his and freely's place ever since singer and feer with big shoes to fill. >> when i first discovered kiss, i was 15 years old. i had friends tell me when i saw kiss in the beginning, i told them i would be in the band one day. >> i have been with kiss for a good part of 25, 30 years now. year after year, this thing has evolved and grown. >> we couldn't be here had we not had ace and peter in the beginning. and we couldn't be here today without eric and tommy. this is the winning team. >> the team blazed on with 2009's sonic boom, the highest

charting kiss record yet. and continued to sell out conce concerts, the show bigger and louder than ever. but today, the kiss brand may be even bigger than their music. >> have some fun. >> simmons' l.a. home had become a shrine to the kiss collection of merchandise. from kiss coffins -- >> really very restful. >> to kiss comics. >> i love these cartoons. >> do you think of kiss as equivalent to like a fortune 500 company? >> it's the music business. i always tell me, as good at you are at playing music, someone else is just as good at stealing your money. >> kiss now boasts some 3,000 different pieces of merchandise. >> kiss lotteries, diss mr. potato heads, kiss bibs, to kiss glasses, and of course, the

kiss condoms. >> can you put a dollar sign on the kiss empire? >> we make a living. >> $500 million? $750 million? a billion. >> give me a cookie. >> a billion dollars? >> anywhere from 1 to 5. >> kiss marketers say the band has sold shy of a billion dollars in goods. family and simmons have equal say in all things kiss, but gene is the one you'll find in the spotlight. you said gene is sort of more about the flash and image of kiss. do you ever worry, paul, about oversaturating the market? >> well, that's part of my job. my job is to say let's slow down. >> my favorite piece of merchandise is me. >> they've always had that yin/yang quality. gene much more business and aunt

rupruneurial, where paul is the creative engine of kiss. they're the polar opposites, the light and shade of kiss. >> differences that have led to years of ups and downs. and some scars. >> this isn't my family. if you want a family, find a wife, have some kids. but this is the office. the key to a great partnership is knowing its limitations. >> but back onstage, the band is as unified as ever. >> now the fun begins. >> four decades after they began, the kiss empire is still rocking. >> nobody can touch our platform heels. we are the finest rock band on the planet, bar none. >> and after they say their final good-bye, they hope four new rockers will one day fill their boots. >> kiss will live beyond us. we're a part of it, but we're also holding onto it. it's an animal that has gotten it own life. at this point, you know, we're

on for the ride. beautiful, right? we can already indulge ourselves into something special, such a beautiful day. >> pony ride. >> absolutely. now we are coming to your most beautiful fascination side of russian legacy. the birches. >> ah. the forest of birch. >> ah, what a place. ♪ >> all hail, the maximum leader. now let's dance.