Kiss’ ‘Horrible’ Thanksgiving Parade: ‘This is How You Get Fired’

Doc McGhee has revealed how Kiss was, in Paul Stanley‘s words, “screwed over and misled” during their appearance at the 2014 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Stanley made those comments on Twitter shortly after the nationally televised event, which found Kiss performing on a stripped-down float that was a far cry from their usual bombastic stage presentations. Stanley said “we ALL deserved better,” without going into details about what went wrong.

Five years later, their band manager filled in the missing puzzle pieces during a Q&A session aboard the ninth annual Kiss Kruise.

“The worst thing we did was we played the Macy’s Day Parade,” McGhee said. “We were supposed to be on the Gibson float, which was this huge float. So, it was great; it’s just like Kiss. Well, the night before we found out that they wanted Paul to play Gibson [guitars], and he doesn’t play Gibsons – because he plays Washburns. So, we couldn’t go on the float. They go, ‘Oh, we have another float for you.'”

Problem solved, right? Wrong. “So, we get there, and [the new float] is literally like, 25 feet long with two microphones on it. We looked like the shittiest thing on the Macy’s Day Parade. When I saw it I went, ‘ohhhh, this is how you get fired.’ That was just a horrible time.”

Stanley revisited the incident in a November 2020 tweet, which included the above photo. “We showed up at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade after being shown sketches of a HUGE float and told we would be surrounded by 100 baton twirlers in Kiss makeup. Instead we got an SUV with a U-Haul attached and two unimpressed escorts. HA! HA! HA! Look how happy we are!”

Obviously, McGhee was not fired and continues to work with Kiss, who will return to New York City in December for the last two shows of their End of the Road farewell tour.

Watch Kiss Perform at the 2014 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade