Evan Stanley and Nick Simmons defend naming their band Stanley Simmons, citing Simon & Garfunkel and Hall & Oates.
Evan Stanley and Nick Simmons have answered the criticism that surfaced when they chose to call their band Stanley Simmons, arguing that surnames have been standard practice for musical partnerships for decades and that the decision was made in a matter of days. The sons of Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons set out their case on SoundExchange‘s “Sound Advice” series, a run of conversations in which musicians, comedians and creators talk through career lessons and industry experience.
Stanley said the name came together at the same speed as everything else in the project’s first fortnight, and that the alternatives struck them as worse.
“This happened so quick. So, February 3rd, 2024 is when we wrote [the first song] ‘Temporary Love‘, and I think we were a band by — what? — February 14th or something. So it all happened really fast. And we were never gonna be, like, ‘THE da, da, da.’ That just seems super lame. And the whole thing had started so organically, and there wasn’t really any trying. We were just, like, ‘Here’s the Venn diagram of what we both love. Here’s the overlap. Let’s do that.’ And we figured, well, Crosby, Stills & Nash used their names, and Simon & Garfunkel used their names,” he explained (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
The date Stanley gives sits a year ahead of the timeline the duo have given elsewhere, which places their first writing session in February 2025.
Simmons added further precedents and said the interpretation that followed had not occurred to either of them.
He said: “Hall & Oates. Even [Jimmy] Page, when he left [Led] Zeppelin, did Coverdale-Page. It is what it is. This whole thing was supposed to be not a gimmick. It was supposed to just be sort of us being kind of, ‘Here we are. Here’s what we like,’ without much affectation, hopefully. And I didn’t anticipate, actually… These are our last names. We were, like, ‘Oh, Simon & Garfunkel did it. We can do it.’ And then there was a couple of comments of, like, ‘Oh, they’re leaning into the dads.’ And we were, like, ‘Oh, I didn’t even really think about that.’ It’s my last name. I wasn’t trying to like whack that nail real hard on the head there.”
Stanley said the Kiss association would attach itself to whatever he did, and that changing the name would not have prevented it.
“But that’s one of the weird things, is, like, look, I could be a landscaper, and if I was the best landscaper in the world, someone would be, like, ‘But his dad’s in Kiss, so he was around plants growing up.’ It’s so silly. You can’t escape it, so you just gotta do you. And I feel like for us, yeah, people are, like, ‘Yeah, they wanna get away from their dads. They’re using Stanley Simmons.’ Like, it’s on my birth certificate, man. What do you want me to do?” he added.
Simmons rejected both readings of the name and asked to be held to the same standard as any unknown act.
He explained: “I don’t wanna get away [from it], and I don’t wanna use it. It’s the least interesting thing about me. I don’t think it makes me cooler or more worthy. I hope everybody treats me as harshly as they would any new band. I don’t really give a s**t. I don’t think it makes anyone cooler or more deserving of attention than anybody else. I hope people react to the songs as the songs, and if they hate it, I hope they express that equally harshly. I don’t mind. I welcome it.”
He went on: “I think there’s a lot of us who are tangentially related to show business, and the ones that stick around, like the Nicolas Cages and the Angelina Jolies of the world, are the ones who deliver good work at the end of the day. So that’s really all I care about, is trying to make this thing any good at all. The rest is not something I care about or think about at all.”
Stanley argued that a recognisable name buys an artist one listen and nothing beyond it: “All art is entirely based on the market, and if there’s no demand, then it goes away. People might listen to something the first time because of a name, for sure. But they’re not gonna listen the tenth time. They either connect with it or they don’t, and I think at the end of the day, we’re just trying to make music that we love.”
Simmons closed on what he takes his position to be: “Our lives are lovely because of it, and it’s not something I can change. The only thing I can do is earn my luck in retrospect by working really hard.”
The argument has already drawn a response from one of the fathers in question. Speaking to “The Drew Lane Show“ in March, Paul Stanley addressed the accusation that the pair had been handed a head start.
He said at the time: ”Nick and Evan have basically known each other their [whole] lives, but didn’t really get close until the last year where they said, ‘Oh, let’s try singing or writing. Their album, which I’ve heard, is frigging phenomenal. I mean, it’s as good as anything I’ve heard in the last three or four decades. It’s that good. So it’s terrific, and it’s organic.”
The veteran musician also dismissed accusations which have been leveled at Stanley Simmons for supposedly leveraging their famous parents for an early advantage in the music business, saying: “The idea of nepotism — if you suck, you’ll fall on your face. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking advantage of having some sort of familiarity. But ultimately, most people who trade on that fail because it’s not enough. So, I think Stanley Simmons, it’s just fantastic and I can’t wait for them to start playing live.”
After host Drew Lane said that “Body Down” “sounds like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young” and asked Paul Stanley if Evan Stanley and Nick Simmons are “influenced by classic rock”, Paul responded:
“They’re very inspired by all the greats. And I have to say that as good as ‘Body Down‘ is, the rest of the songs leave that in the dust… Oh, the songs are just crazy good. And there’s flavors of all different artists in what they do, in the same way that virtually everybody who’s out there or has succeeded has elements of something else. So I don’t have a problem with that. It’s not imitating; it’s being inspired by. So, they’re great. I can’t say enough about them. I’ve just been wowed.”
As for whether Evan and Nick seek advice from their fathers about their music careers, Paul said:
“I think they ask — I know Evan asked me my opinion of things. And I always preface it by saying, ‘It’s just my opinion, and you have to go with what you believe.’ And he does. I said, ‘I can give you my point of view.’ And I think it’s great that anyone asks somebody else’s opinion, and uses that to their advantage, but to rely upon me to make decisions — I’m not qualified to make decisions about what [he should do]. Only he is.”
Back in May, one fan criticized Paul Stanley on X (formerly Twitter) following the live debut of Stanley Simmons. The Kiss frontman fired back, replying: “You clearly don’t want to accept that your own lack of talent is the reason you continue to fail at everything. If your father was famous you would still get nowhere because you are too busy looking enviously at others instead of looking at yourself and realizing the obvious.”
During an episode of the “Caught On The Mike” podcast, Evan pushed back against accusations that the project name was chosen as a marketing ploy tied to their famous lineage.
He said at the time: “It’s funny when you say the obvious marketing angle, it’s a really funny one for us, or to anyone who is familiar, our parents are in a band together, and it’s a pretty big band and that’s great and it’s really cool. I think it’s one of those things where online it’s a very funny thing. You read these comments, and it’s, like, ‘You’re trying to do your own thing, but then you use their names. Riding their coattails.’ I’m, like, dude, it’s literally our names. This is my birth name. It’s our legal name.”
Nick acknowledged that the backlash caught him off guard, despite the logic behind the choice.
“I didn’t actually anticipate that, which is stupid. I should have,” he admitted. “But when we talked about it, we were, like, ‘Oh, we like a lot of bands that do that: Crosby, Stills & Nash, Hall & Oates and Simon & Garfunkel. We could just be Stanley & Simmons‘ or whatever. And so we did that conversation. And we were, like, ‘Yeah, sounds good. That makes sense, with the type of music we’re doing.’ Yeah. And then people were, like, ‘Look at them milking the f**king [Kiss connection].’ And we were, like, ‘Oh, I guess… I didn’t really think about that.’”
Evan went on to frame the decision within the broader reality of trying to break through in an oversaturated modern music landscape.
“The thing is, you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t,” he said. “Because at the end of the day, there are so many talented musicians out there, and there’s so much great music coming out. There’s also just an ungodly amount of platforms to try and keep up with, and there’s so much noise to cut through.”
He added that curiosity might bring listeners in once, but only the music itself determines whether they stay.
“So anything that we can do to help cut through the noise and get people to listen to our music, I’m willing to do. I have no problem with that, because at the end of the day, someone will listen once out of curiosity, but they won’t listen a tenth time because they’re curious. They’re gonna either love it and connect with it and be part of it or they won’t be. And that’s not something you can buy.”
Evan also addressed the contradiction he sees in fan reactions.
“But it’s so funny reading all the comments. It’s kind of, like, ‘Okay, so you don’t want us to use this, but then when we don’t, you ask why we don’t.’”
Closing out the discussion, Evan emphasized that the project came together naturally, without any initial intention of forming a long-term collaboration.
“To us, the reason we went with Stanley Simmons is this was such an unexpected collaboration,” he explained. “We’ve been friends for a long time, but we’d never really done anything together. And when we tried writing, we were, like, ‘Wow, this is something. Let’s run with this.’”
He continued: “From the get-go it has been — I think the word ‘organic’ and ‘authentic’, both of those words get tossed around so much, but this was never trying to be a thing… And then it was, like, ‘Let’s write a song or two together. And maybe we’ll do one or two songs together. It’ll be fun.’”
According to Evan, the breakthrough came quickly.
“And then we wrote the first one. It was, like, ‘Well, wait. This is the best song I’ve ever been a part of. There’s something to this.’ … And that’s kind of why we went with Stanley Simmons, is just, ‘Hey, this is who we are.’ We’re not trying to be the da da. It’s just our names. There really isn’t a thing, except the thing is that it’s just us singing together and playing stuff that we like.”
They tried writing together in February 2025, and the project followed. Bedroom demos reached producer Rob Cavallo, whose credits include Green Day, Fleetwood Mac, Paramore, My Chemical Romance and Dave Matthews. He produced the debut album and also took on managing the band.
Stanley Simmons played their first show on May 4 at the House Of Blues Voodoo Room in San Diego, followed by a short California run through Santa Ana, Morro Bay and Ventura.
The band recently released “Lilith”, which follows “Body Down“, the title track “Dancing While The World Is Ending“, “Temporary Love“, “Cellophane” and “Don’t Leave Me Here Like That“.
Their first full American tour, billed as the “Dancing While The World Is Ending 2026 US Tour“, opens on September 14 at Three Links Deep Ellum in Dallas and closes on November 3 at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.
“Dancing While The World Is Ending 2026 U.S. Tour” Dates:
- Sep 14 — Three Links Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
- Sep 16 — House of Blues Houston, Houston, Texas
- Sep 17 — Antone’s Nightclub, Austin, Texas
- Sep 19 — Gasa Gasa, New Orleans, Louisiana
- Sep 22 — All Good Beverage Co., Birmingham, Alabama
- Sep 23 — Cannery Hall – Row 1, Nashville, Tennessee
- Sep 24 — Bourbon and Beyond, Louisville, Kentucky
- Sep 27 — Neighborhood Theatre – Side Room, Charlotte, North Carolina
- Sep 29 — The Loud — Live Music & Beer Garden, Huntington, West Virginia
- Sep 30 — The Atlantis, Washington, D.C.
- Oct 2 — City Winery Boston, Boston, Massachusetts
- Oct 3 — The Mercury Lounge, New York, New York
- Oct 5 — World Cafe Live – The Lounge, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Oct 7 — City Winery Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Oct 8 — The Magic Bag, Ferndale, Michigan
- Oct 11 — Hoosier Dome, Indianapolis, Indiana
- Oct 12 — Blueberry Hill, St. Louis, Missouri
- Oct 14 — The Rave/Eagles Club – The Rave Bar, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Oct 15 — Chop Shop, Chicago, Illinois
- Oct 18 — xBk Live, Des Moines, Iowa
- Oct 20 — Goosetown Tavern, Denver, Colorado
- Oct 22 — Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City, Utah
- Oct 25 — The Vera Project, Seattle, Washington
- Oct 26 — Holocene, Portland, Oregon
- Oct 29 — Napa Music Hall – The Ballroom, Napa, California
- Oct 31 — Cornerstone Berkeley, Berkeley, California
- Nov 1 — Felton Music Hall, Felton, California
- Nov 3 — Troubadour, West Hollywood, California
