KISS bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons played his solo song "It's My Life" live for the first time ever during his February 16 concert at the Lynn Auditorium in Lynn, Massachusetts. Fan-filmed video footage of the performance can be seen below (courtesy of Mike Brunn). "It's My Life" was originally written by Gene and Paul Stanley and demoed for KISS's 1982 album, "Creatures Of The Night", but it did not make the final record. It was later re-recorded for 1998's "Psycho Circus", but once again found itself excluded from a KISS album for which it was recorded. Gene's original demo version of "It's My Life" is one of the tracks featured on his recently released, massive collection "Gene Simmons - The Vault Experience: 1966-2016", which celebrates the KISS co-founder's 50 years in music. A different version of "It's My Life" was included on "WOW", the debut solo studio album by THE PLASMATICS singer Wendy O. Williams, which was produced by Simmons and released in 1984 by Passport Records. Regarding how "It's My Life" came to be recorded by Williams, Gene said: "KISS had taken out THE PLASMATICS, featuring Wendy O. Williams on lead vocals. During one of the shows, Wendy came up and said that she wanted to do a solo record and would I like to produce her. And I said, 'Sure. I think it'd be a great idea. But if I'm gonna produce you, I'm gonna decide everything. I'm gonna decide which songs you record, and if you don't have the songwriting talent within the band, then I'll get you the songs, or I'll write some stuff for you. But the songs have to be first and foremost.'" He continued: "Paul Stanley had an old piece that he started working on called 'Every Little Bit Of Your Heart', so I took the chordal passage and I wrote a brand new song around it called 'It's My Life': 'I've got a reputation / people know who I am / rules are made to be broken / you can't kill what you don't understand,' which felt very much, and I designed it, to be Wendy talking about herself, about being an individual. And, yeah, she's a chick, but she'll be damned if she'll let any guy tell her what to do." "Gene Simmons - The Vault Experience: 1966-2016" is a comprehensive box set of Gene's solo material that comes packaged in a safe. The set includes 150 previously unreleased songs spread over 10 discs, a leather-bound photo book, a Gene Simmons action figure, an "In Gene We Trust" gold medallion and a "surprise item." Describing "The Vault" as "literally and physically the largest box set of all time," Simmons told the "Hair Jordan" show that it stands "three feet tall" and "weighs 38 pounds. You need two arms to wrap around it and two arms to pick it up. It has metal hardware, metal wheels. I'm really proud of it." Simmons added the price is only $2000, and "there are only gonna be a few thousand made on Earth. After that, they will be gone and they will never be done again. It's not available in stores — no nothing. And I'm gonna be going around the world and hand-delivering it to the fans who buy it." "Gene Simmons - The Vault Experience: 1966-2016" spans the rocker's entire musical career and includes the first song he ever wrote at the tender age of 14. There arealso tracks co-written with Eddie and Alex Van Halen from VAN HALEN (a band he says he "discovered"), Joe Perry, and a slew of other luminaries.
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