KISS was all marketing and showmanship. Simmons was good at both. I saw Alice Cooper in San Antonio around 79. During the concert he yelled “KISS ain't shit.” Place erupted. People forget how KISS was viewed by fans of Rock in the 70s and 80s. KISS was a fun show especially when the organic substances started being passed around. But like a lot of bands in their era it was all show not so much substance. Look at old videos of Deep Purple, one video of them playing “Smoke on the Water” looks like a High School auditorium. No explosions, no costume's, just good music.
Money, marketing and showmanship made KISS. The music made the great Rock bands. More money, better marketing, technology and pyrotechnics damaged Rock, and KISS lead that charge. Honestly, does anyone still sit and listen to KISS albums? Seriously, I can still listen to “Cosmos Factory”, “Dark Side of the Moon” any Zeppelin album, Fleetwood Mac etc…. KISS had a few good songs but without all the bling and marketing are they really musically that interesting? If you had a choice, would you listen to the entire Hotel California album or Destroyer?
Marilyn Manson I think was a big reason for the downfall of shock rock- he was just so rediculous at trying to pretend to be bad/evil that he looked like a clown- new bands were all trying to “out-evil” each other at that point, and the public just got tired of the silly antics- had nanda just stuck to performances that didn’t try to emulate satanic rituals, the genre might lasted a bit longer I thunk.
Ozzy and the chicken incident, and other bands doing simi,AR grotesque crap like that i think too might hurt the genre- quite a bit-
the whole KISS thing was targeted for 12 year old boys, and the 12 year old boys ate it up. Terrible, amatuerish songs, mediocre musicianship. All became cartoonish.