In a new interview with American Songwriter, KISS frontman Paul Stanley spoke about the band’s “End Of The Road” farewell tour, which is expected to conclude at the end of this year, five decades after KISS‘s formation.

“Being on tour is pretty much three hours of elation, and 21 hours of being away from home, which honestly is not fun,” Stanley said. “There are nights when I’m going to bed and going, ‘What the hell am I doing here? Why am I here when I have a family home?’ So there certainly is a push and pull, but there’s nothing like being on stage, the gratitude that I feel.”

He added: “And the workout that I get on stage, I couldn’t do that in a gym. If you could pack 10,000 or 100,000 people into a gym to cheer you on, you’d do things that you couldn’t do without them there, so flying over an audience on a wire, that’s pretty cool. If I try that during the afternoon when nobody is there, I’m terrified. Adrenaline makes you stupid.”

Stanley went on to say that the end of KISS as a touring entity is unavoidable.

“There are two things that are inevitable: death and taxes,” he explained. “And it’s inevitable the demise of us playing as a live band. Do I want to see that day? No. But it’s necessary. Before we have no choice, I’d like to end it.

“When I think about the end of it, it doesn’t make me happy,” he added. “I’ll be ecstatic looking at what we’ve accomplished and what we’ve done, but it’s the end of an era. It’s also the end of a huge part of my life.

“I take my kids to school, and I do all kinds of things, but the band has been most of my life,” Stanley said. “The connection to the audience and that adrenaline rush and the emotional rush of doing a show, I don’t want that to end, but a lot of things have to end. I’d like to think that in the best situation you can control it, and that’s simply what we’re doing. If we were in t-shirts and jeans, we could do this into our 80s and 90s but not in eight-inch platform heels and 40 pounds of gear.”

KISS launched its farewell trek in January 2019 but was forced to put it on hold in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“End Of The Road” was originally scheduled to conclude on July 17, 2021 in New York City but has since been extended to at least late 2023. The trek was announced in September 2018 following a KISS performance of the band’s classic song “Detroit Rock City” on “America’s Got Talent”.

KISS‘s current lineup consists of original members Stanley and Gene Simmons (bass, vocals),alongside later band additions, guitarist Tommy Thayer (since 2002) and drummer Eric Singer (on and off since 1991).

Formed in 1973 by Stanley, Simmons, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, KISS staged its first “farewell” tour in 2000, the last to feature the group’s original lineup.