Originally published on Goodreads

Me, Inc.

According to Gene Simmons, the way to earn money (and it’s all about the money) is to work hard, work all the time and never stop working. The book is split into two parts, one about Simmons and one about the advice he has for one to become successful in life. The first part is actually pretty interesting. It traces his life from being born in Israel in poverty and then coming to America and how he comes through, working hard and earning money to support his mother and then on to establishing KISS. Unfortunately the meaty parts are really short. The early parts of his life is really interesting and the impressions of a young poor boy coming to America is page-turning material but after turning a page, then that material runs out. While his experience with capitalism is interesting it’s also slightly off-putting in a way. Perhaps it is in the missing empathy for other life-styles that is offending to me. Simmons tells us about his way but without remorse and portrays it as the only way. The second part of the book is not better. There Simmons boils down the lessons he learned throughout life to let the reader make their own fortune. But it’s again only grounded in his own experience which simply cannot work for everybody. Simmons’ intense focus on earning money is also jarring as it seems like the purpose of earning money is to earn more money. It’s great if it works for him, but the book discards trivial things like vacations and human relationships for the sole reason of earning more money. Simmons also believes that if what you do is what you love, then apparently it’s also something that you can do indefinitely without rest or focusing on health.

I went into this book hoping that it would be a fun read with some few golden truths packaged in stories from the rock world which I don’t know anything about. Instead it’s a one-sided tale from a workaholic who doesn’t seem to care much about the fact that money is a tool, a means to the end, but focuses on how to make more and more money with no regard on anything else but money. I would not recommend this if you’re looking for business advice or as a biography (I think he has written a proper autobiography).

1 out of 5 stars.