Gene Simmons Says Angus Young Had No Front Teeth When He First Met Him

KISS icon Gene Simmons recently remembered his first meeting with AC/DC guitarist Angus Young, the musician telling Australia’s Triple M Radio that the six-string legend had no front teeth at the time.

The small but poignant detail still sticks out to Simmons, who joined his KISS co-frontman, Paul Stanley, on the May 16 broadcast in advance of the “Rock and Roll All Nite” stars’ End of the Road World Tour re-launch. The farewell trek, paused in March 2020 with the pandemic, picks back up this summer with concerts in Europe followed by dates in America before stopping in Australia to end 2021.

But before that happens, let KISS’ The Demon transport you back to ’70s Los Angeles, where he first met AC/DC before the two acts combined strengths for a short run of joint KISS-AC/DC concerts in 1977–1978.

“I saw them playing this really small club in LA,” Simmons recalls. “[And] there’s Angus just running around on stage, not posing — just kind of feeling it, like somebody in a trance or something. I said, ‘That guy is rock and roll. That guy is real.'” [via Blabbermouth]

The KISS rocker continues, “So after the show, I went backstage. And [Angus came up to me and said], ‘Oh, Gene Simmons.’ … [And I said], ‘You’re the guy. What’s your name?’ ‘Angus.’ And then he smiled. And I’ll never forget it — he didn’t have front teeth. I guess at that point they couldn’t afford it. So I said, ‘Let me take you a few blocks away. I wanna sit down and talk with you.'”

Simmons seemingly figured Young needed some grub. The pair headed to a restaurant, where the KISS bassist, surrounded by a group of rock fans, backed his companion’s unusual (to some) food choices.

“We went to a place called Mel’s Diner,” Simmons says, “which is in some parts of the world real famous. And there we are at 1AM … [with] all the waitresses and everybody gathered around the table. And at that point, they had yet to know who Angus and the boys were.”

Still, “it was just Angus and myself,” the musician adds, and they received top-rate service at the restaurant. “‘What would you like, Mr. Simmons?’ All that kind of stuff. I said, ‘Ask my friend first.’ I’ll never forget it, Angus asked for a frankfurter — instead of a hot dog — and beets. And they looked at each other, and I said, ‘Get the man what he wants.’ So they did; they brought it back. … Angus picked up the hot dog without the bun and started biting into it on the sides of his mouth because the two front teeth were missing.”

It just goes to show that you don’t need front teeth to know how to rock.

KISS’ Gene Simmons + Paul Stanley Talk to Australia’s Triple M Rock – May 16, 2021