KISS guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley was interviewed on episode 11 of the "Heavy Metal Book Club" (web site). You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below. Stanley's revealing life spanning memoir, "Face The Music: A Life Exposed", debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times' Best Sellers list for Print Hardcover Non-Fiction. On top of that, "Face The Music" debuted on the Times' Combined Print and E-Book best seller list and E-Book best sellers list at No. 3 and No. 13, respectively. In "Face The Music", Stanley talks frankly about his early struggles with hearing he was born with Level 3 Microtia and is deaf in his right ear. Microtia is a congenital deformity of the cartilage of the outer ear that can affect normal hearing. Stanley, who grew up half-deaf and scarred with a deformed right ear, eventually had reconstructive surgery in 1982 to create an ear using a piece of his rib cage. The Pulse Of Radio asked Stanley why he kept his ear a secret for so long. "Oh, it was painful," he said. "It was too painful. Y'know, you can only reveal things and you can only deal with things when you're ready to. And my experiences as a child were so debilitating and destructive, that the best way for me to deal with my ear was to cover it and to at least on the surface ignore what was going on; although when something is invisible to others doesn't mean it's not visible and very much a part of your life." Microtia is a congenital deformity of the cartilage of the outer ear that can affect normal hearing. There are four grades of Microtia, ranging from a small ear, to a complete absence of the external ear and ear canal. The lack of ear canal leads to conductive hearing loss. Microtia occurs in every one out of 8,000 to 10,000 births. It usually occurs on only one side (more commonly on the right side) and this can lead to single-sided deafness. Interview (audio):
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