Kiss plans final concerts in New York hometown

It really is the end of the road for Kiss. Most likely. We think. So they say. But this time we’ll believe Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons when they announced Wednesday on Sirius XM’s “The Howard Stern Show” that the band’s final concerts will be Dec. 1-2 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

“We’re finishing up where we started,” Stanley told Stern, flanked by his bandmates in full makeup. “When you come to see the show, it’s awesome. … It’s clearly a kick-ass rock ’n’ roll show. It’s everything Kiss – just amped up and ramped up. We’re giving it everything we have.”

Simmons added that he was sure he would “cry like a 9-year-old girl whose foot is being stepped on” during Kiss’ last moments on stage.

The closing location makes sense for the venerable rockers, who burst out of New York 50 years ago.

Tickets for the final dates of The End of the Road Tour will be available at 10 a.m. March 6 for a Kiss Army presale at kissonline.com/tour. The general sale begins at 10 a.m. March 10 at livenation.com.

The band’s goodbye tour kicked off in January 2019 and had been set to end at Madison Square Garden in July 2021. But COVID-19 postponements resulted in delayed until August 2021.

This final leg will begin Oct. 29 at the Moody Center in Austin and roll through Canada, Los Angeles, Knoxville, Baltimore before the career finale.

Despite a few personnel changes on guitar and drums throughout the years – Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer handle the respective duties on this tour – Kiss has always soldiered on.

The pioneering rockers have been lauded as much for their ingenious stage personas – Stanley remains the Starchild and Simmons, with his wicked tongue, the Demon – as their astute business acumen, selling everything from Kiss-branded lunchboxes to caskets during their five-decade career.

And, with more than 100 million albums sold worldwide, an inventory of guitar-crunching hits (“Detroit Rock City,” “Shout It Out Loud” “Calling Dr. Love,” “Lick It Up” and “Rock and Roll All Nite” among their mindlessly fun fistpumpers) and a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Kiss legacy will live on beyond their final bows.*