If there’s one thing the KISS bassist/singer/reality TV star Gene Simmons knows, it’s branding and marketing.

That’s how how four mostly average New York musicians — Simmons referred to them as “knuckleheads” — got insanely big with the classic ’70s albums Destroyer, Rock and Roll All Over, Love Gun, Alive!, and Alive II and became a pop culture and merchandising phenomenon: T-shirts, action figures, comic books, a seriously bad made-for-TV movie, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, and more recently, a line of products, services, and entertainment options (cruise, restaurant chain, golf course, and an arena league football team).

“KISS has gone in a lot of ways where no band has gone before,” Simmons said in a phone interview earlier this summer. “We love Radiohead and we love Coldplay and all kinds of bands that have success, but nobody can do what we do. That doesn’t mean that your songs are better than my songs or anything like that, but the ‘brandability’ of these others bands just doesn’t exist.”

OK, so there’s that word, brandable. Simmons maintains that few — if any — bands are as brandable as KISS. And to prove his point, he calls out Coldplay and fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Chicago.

“Have you ever seen anybody wearing a Coldplay T-shirt? That doesn’t mean that the songs aren’t great, it just doesn’t lend itself to that anthemic feel,” he said. “You like Chicago and they’ve had lots of hit songs, [but] when was the last time you read Chicago comics?”

For the record, when Simmons wants to make a point during an interview, there’s little point in trying to stop him. The man is a human marketing machine, steering each answer as if the possibility of an afterlife depends on the number of bullet points he recites while still on Earth.

Simmons is only on the phone to promote the band’s Wednesday night show at Huntington Center. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., opener Dead Daisies goes on at 7:30, and tickets — priced at $39.50, $89.50, and $125 — are available at Huntington Center Box Office, 500 Jefferson Ave., ticketmaster.com, all TicketMaster locations, or by phone at 1-800-745-3000.

Besides Simmons, the rock band now consists of fellow founding member Paul Stanley (vocals, guitar) along with the later additions of Eric Singer (drums) and Tommy Thayer (lead guitar).

So back to the interview ...

The first question to Simmons, as advised by his public relations/​marketing flak, who offered that Simmons is quite chatty (and he is), is about the tour. KISS reached the 40-year milestone in 2013 — which is probably unimaginable to the band’s early critics in the same way most of us can’t fathom raw liver becoming permanently de rigueur.

And so with nothing to prove and no new album to support the band, Simmons said, is playing smaller venues in cities KISS has never or, in the instance of Toledo, rarely played. (The group last played Toledo at the University of Toledo’s John F. Savage Hall in 2000.)

“It’s a combination of both,” said Simmons, who turns 66 on Wednesday, the day of KISS’ Toledo show. “We’re going to smaller cities, where we cut our teeth, but also doing 50,000 outdoor places.”

And then after a minute or two more devoted to further explanation of the tour’s premise, Simmons gracefully slides into band promotion without any prodding or setup. It’s a skill as impressive as the stage theatrics and pyrotechnics that established the quartet in the ’70s.

He begins by saying when KISS started decades ago, the band could “never have imagined” becoming “America's No. 1 gold record, award-winning group of all time in all categories.”

That, by the way, is true, as long as “America's” and “group” are included, but not “in all categories.”

And then he illustrates this point with a self-deprecating slam on a once-popular-where-are-they-now band from the ’80s.

“Wang Chung had more hit singles than KISS ever did. But I defy you to tell me who’s in the band or who they were or anything [about them]. And that’s very bizarre.

“The only thing we had in our minds 42 years ago when four knuckleheads came off the street and decided, in essence, to put together the band we never saw onstage, because we were so furious. You’d go and see your favorite band, and they’d be sitting on the floor with some lit incense and crosslegged with an acoustic guitar and [you’d] go, ‘Really? That’s it?’

“So we decided to be guilty of our harshest critics who say we make a complete spectacle of ourselves. You’re damn right we do. And that’s what we’ve been committed to at the very beginning.”

Simmons then asked what city this interview is for. Toledo, I told him.

“Toledo,” he said. "So when you see us you’re gonna see more bang for the buck than anybody out there. While Santa Claus may wind up being untrue, the legend of KISS is true. Everything you’ve heard about it is true. And you’ll see it. You’ll hear those words resonate before we even come in. The most important word for us has always been ‘you,’ which is how we introduce ourselves. We just work here, you see, the bosses are standing on the seats.

“You wanted the best, you got the best. The hottest band in the world, KISS. Either those words are just showbiz cornball stuff, or they mean something. To us it’s an oath. Before we get up onstage at every single show, no matter where we are — Toledo, Paris, London — in front of 90,000 people at Nuremberg, or in front of 210,000 people in Rio, or in front of 10,000 people in Toledo, you look at each other and say, ‘OK, it’s as if this is the only show that we will ever do; you’ve got to make it count.’ That’s what a boxer should do when he gets into the ring and when you take your eye off the ball, even if you’re Mike Tyson, you get knocked out by a chump.”

And bam, in 3 minutes, Simmons mentioned Toledo three times while he guided the conversation to cover every talking point he needs to mention for the interview:

— Why KISS is relevant.

— That KISS is really about the fans.

— And that you should see KISS live because it’s a spectacle and the band works its collective butt off to give the fans what they want to see, therefore Toledo KISS fans need to come to the show.

It’s also true. Not being a KISS fan but realizing the cultural importance of the group and the significant void in my life having not seen the band live, I attended a KISS concert nearly 13 years ago on a double-bill concert with Aerosmith. KISS was the opener and blew me away. They also blew away that other ’70s band. About 20 minutes into the Aerosmith set, feeling bored, I left to beat the late-night Las Vegas Strip traffic home.

In hindsight, it’s not necessarily all Aerosmith’s fault.

From the fireworks, explosions, lights, lasers, costumes, smoke, and fake blood, there really isn’t another spectacle like what KISS puts onstage.

Simmons, in fact, considers KISS’ concerts to be the band’s legacy — even beyond bootleg copies of Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.

“Our legacy is if we’ve raised the bar in terms of what a band must do onstage to give hardworking people who buy tickets bang for the buck, then that’s our legacy,” he said.

“If KISS didn’t exist, Paul McCartney would never have imagined putting fireworks into his show. Think about it. What do fireworks have to do with ‘Let it Be?’ That’s what we’ve done. Whether it’s Garth Brooks or anybody, when you see spectacle onstage it happened because we decided to. We didn’t create it, we insisted on it ... ”

And that is brandability. Which isn't really a word — unless, of course, Simmons says it is.

Contact Kirk Baird at kbaird@theblade.com or 419-724-6734.

First Published August 21, 2016, 4:00 a.m.