King Diamond Says Gene Simmons Tried To Sue Him Over Makeup Usage

Tilly antoine, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
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During an interview hosted by Metal Hammer, King Diamond clarified some details regarding a past story where Kiss bassist Gene Simmons made an effort to sue the Mercyful Fate singer over his use of makeup.

This interview featured fan submitted questions directed at King Diamond (with questions being pulled from social media and emails). One of the questions involves asking Diamond the following:

“Gene Simmons sued you for allegedly ripping off his makeup. Have you bumped into him since?”

King Diamond then goes on to talk about Kiss having their iconic look copyrighted, but how ultimately, nothing major came to be of this matter.

Per King Diamond’s response:

“No, I haven’t. I think that would be a lot of fun. I have no outstanding stuff with him. There’s a lot of reasons why this happened: they’d dropped their makeup around this time, but they still had the copyright on the look. I was never influenced by them – my influences were Peter Gabriel and Alice Cooper.

“I said, ‘I don’t have a lot of money that you can sue me for, but you have a lot of money that other people can sue you for.’ They were not the first to wear makeup. It never got to be a lawsuit, it just got stirred up.”

There you have it folks – Mr. Simmons was not too pleased that someone else wanted to wear some makeup in a heavy metal act, but there was never any official lawsuit. What do you think of this story and Simmons’ effort to sue King Diamond?

In other news related to the Mercyful Fate singer, the band just played their first concert in 23 years and debuted a new song! Along with this new song, the band played several other classics. To check out video footage of the Mercyful Fate performance, follow the link below:

Mercyful Fate Debuted A New Song At Their First Concert In 23 Years