He told Terry Gross: "If you want to welcome me with open arms, I'm afraid you're also going to have to welcome me with open legs", paraphrasing a lyric from the Who's 1981 song "You Better You Bet". Gross replied: "That's a really obnoxious thing to say". At the time, Simmons refused to grant permission to NPR to make the interview available online. However, it appears in print in Gross' book "All I Did Was Ask" and unauthorized transcripts are available. NPR re-broadcast part of the interview in August 2007. In a 2014 interview with "The Huffington Post", Simmons noted he was upset over what he perceived as Gross's "holier-than-thou" attitude, which included mislabeling his band Kiss as "the Kiss".