Bruce Kulick promises a no-slam story in upcoming memoir

Bruce Kulick, the former guitarist for KISS, discussed his intention to publish his memoirs without disparaging anyone in a recent interview with Metal-Rules.com’s Marko Syrjala.

Yeah, I mean, actually, over 20 years ago — like 25 years ago — I started working on a book with a friend of mine in the industry. He wanted to write it, and I was pretty cool with that. He started doing interviews with people. Fortunately, I still have all those interviews. One of my projects last year was to digitize them all. My parents, my brother, Bob Ezrin, Eddie Trunk, and even Michael James Jackson — though I didn’t really work with him — were all interviewed. Obviously, having my parents and my brother included is fascinating to me. Carrie Stevens and many other friends and industry folks who were pretty hip to KISS and my career were also interviewed. But here’s what happened. The reason I probably said that I’d never write a book is because we did start working on it. He even put together some sample chapters — maybe 30 or 40 pages. But the reaction at the time was, like, ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t… We’re looking for stuff like Mötley Crüe’s ‘The Dirt’.’ You know what I mean, right? But that’s not my life. That’s not my experience. I’m more of a musician who was part of a famous band and some of the other groups I worked with are really interesting. A lot of people don’t know much about Meat Loaf and don’t know that much about Michael Bolton, let’s say, or a Billy Squier record. There’s so much about my career that’s unique — it isn’t just one thing. And I was never involved with drugs or wild debauchery. So when they wanted salacious stuff, I kind of put the brakes on. Then my friend got busy with his career, and I got busy with mine. We shelved it and didn’t revisit it for a long time. I used to have a web site — Kulick.net—but for the past five or six years, it’s been BruceKulick.com. Back in the day, I used the web site to write blogs when people were still into web sites. Now, it’s all about social media. I wrote about record releases, anniversaries, and things like that. I’ve amassed all this material over the years and realized there’s a good story to tell here. I think my journey — from being a guitar player from Brooklyn to being with Kiss, one of the most iconic bands in the world — has value. And I embrace that. I don’t want to write a book to slam people. I want to share my perspective — how I saw things — but I don’t need to do that by saying horrible things about other musicians or people I’ve known. I was shocked at some of the stuff other Kiss members said in their books. Gene and Paul are like brothers, which probably explains why they take liberties picking on each other, you know? In their books, they told it like it is — or how they wanted it to be. And if they wanted to be snarky, they had the platform to do that. But I want my book to focus more on my learning experiences and successes. I hope to share some life lessons because I’ve certainly seen a lot in my career.