Buckcherry: More Music Business Lessons From Kiss

BBy a cool little coincidence, today I’ve got a follow-up article to Friday’s interview with Micki Free, who spoke about the influence of Kiss’ Gene Simmons. Not that I have ever been a huge fan of anything related to the Kiss brand, but its importance in the world of music business is so huge, that talking about it on Dotted Music can’t get boring too quick.

So, below is an excerpt from Joe Matera’s UG interview with Buckcherry’s Keith Nelson (the band released an album called “All Night Long” last week), where the guitarist speaks about his group, gives some proper advices to young musicians and reveals what he has learned from Gene.

Buckcherry have toured heavily over the past few years and have also toured with many of their own musical heroes. What is like to go on the road with guys that have played a major role in influencing you and your guitar playing?

Gene Simmons

It is like going to school every night! We’ve played with KISS, we’ve played with Aerosmith and AC/DC. Each night after our set, I quickly get off stage, get out of my gig clothes and go out front and watch them. I am a fan of music and I love it. And being able to see those shows…you know… I have probably seen around 70 to 80 KISS shows so far just because we have toured with them twice. So it is just great man.

What has been the best advice some of these bands have imparted to you?

It is always about doing what you do and sticking to your guns and not letting critics bring you down if they don’t like what you’re doing.

The guys in KISS for example, they get turned away from the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and the critics always love to hate those guys. But they go out every night to a full arena of people and rock them for two hours with songs that they all know. So I don’t think they’re the fools, I think the critics are the fools.

So they are always positive about doing what we’re doing and not letting anyone discourage us. That is basically what I walk away from in the majority of those conversations.

You have certainly stuck to your guns, I mean since the success of the 15 album Buckcherry has become a full-time project again, how does that feel considering before 15 the band were non-existent?

I feel we’re very fortunate and I also feel that we have worked really, really hard at a time when nobody really wanted to know us. We couldn’t get a record a deal, agents didn’t want to represent us, managers didn’t want to manage us, yet we still believed in what we were doing.

We found people that believed in what we were doing too, which is how we found our attorney, our manager, our agent and all the people we’re still in business with because they believed in what we were doing. And that is the reason why it has been successful coupled with the fact that we work really hard and play well over 200 shows a year. We’re not afraid to work for it.

With all these experiences you have gone through in your career, if a young musician was to come to you for advice about working in this industry, what would you tell him or her?

Unfortunately when I got into this business I thought I was just going to play my guitar, write some songs and party all the time. And I quickly found out that if I wanted to be successful, I really needed to educate myself on the business. And when you start thinking that you know everything, then that is a huge mistake.

So you really need to educate yourself on how it works and you have to make the best decisions you can for yourself.

Read the full interview on UG.