GENE SIMMONS Rates Himself As A Songwriter: ‘My Batting Average Is Very Low’

Mitch Gallagher of Sweetwater Sound recently conducted an interview with KISS bassist Gene Simmons. You can listen to the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On whether he is writing new songs on a regular basis:

Gene: “My batting average is very low. I can write 10, 20, 30 songs and maybe one or two will connect with people they may like. I’m not [John] Lennon or [Paul] McCartney; I don’t care who you are, whether you’re Bob Dylan or anybody else. Very few of the songs you’ll actually write connects. It’s like baseball. Your batting average is .300 and you’re considered one of the top guys. Well, 70 percent of the time you miss. I write all the time. Sometimes they’re completely different forms. You have an idea and you can’t wait to sit down and put it on paper and record it. As an example, Paul McCartney, and you can find this in the illustrated BEATLES book, Paul McCartney wrote a song called ‘Scrambled Eggs’. And it was supposed to be a children’s song. And it goes like this [sings song]. It was a little kid’s song about what he had for breakfast. And it was Lennon who said, ‘No, no, you have something with this ‘Yesterday’ thing.’ I have original versions of ‘Calling Dr. Love’, which was called ‘Bad, Bad Lovin” and had a different chorus and so on. Things like paintings, books, you do that, then you come back and re-write and mold it. Songwriting is no different than a painting.”