Gene Simmons has apologized for his comments about Prince’s death. The KISS frontman made waves after an interview with Newsweek in which he called Prince “pathetic” for seemingly dying of an opioid overdose. Apparently, Simmons does have some semblance of a conscience, because he walked those statements back in a post to Twitter.
https://twitter.com/genesimmons/status/730199305793871874
According to the note, Simmons was moved to apologize after his own family called him out for being insensitive, and Simmons explained why he holds such a hard-line stance on drug users in the first place.
“I just got such sh*t from my family for my big mouth again. I apologize — I have a long history of getting very angry at what drugs do to the families/friends of the addicts,” he said. “I get angry at drug users because of my experience being around them coming up in the rock scene. In my experience, they’ve made my life, and the lives of their loved ones, difficult. I was raised in a culture/crowd where drug addicts were written off as losers, and since that’s the narrative I grew up with, it’s been hard to change with the times.”
Simmons says that he’s used to catching flack for his frequently controversial cloud-yelling. But Simmons says that this one time, he knows he was wrong.
“I don’t shy away from controversy, and angry critics really don’t bother me at all. If I think I’m right, I’ll throw up a finger and dig my heels in and laugh,” he said. “But this time, I was not. So, my apologies.”
He ended the note with an odd postscript about journalists digging up things that Simmons said on record in the past and attempting to hold him accountable for them. People who aren’t Gene Simmons might refer to this as “doing their jobs,” but Simmons isn’t having it.
“What I will say is that there is part of this that is journalists quote-mining things I’ve said in the past and applying it to new situations. This, too, happens often, and not just to me. So, quote mining, too, is wrong. It doesn’t make my past quotes any more tactful, but still — be wary of click bait,” he said.
(Via Billboard)