As Gene Simmons sat in his dressing room at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 2, 2023, the final night of the End of the Road Tour, the singer and bassist of Kiss cleaned off his Demon makeup for the last time.

“I thought, ‘You know, I’m not going to get onstage for a while,’ ” Simmons says on a call from his Malibu home. “Just relax.”

Only one problem. “I can’t, you know,” he says. “It’s, you can’t stay away from it. It’s a great feeling. I’ve played the Superdome and the Coliseum, Dodger Stadium and Anaheim Stadium and the Whisky. All sizes, all shapes.”

Then he remembered that while Kiss might be done with touring after four years of farewell shows interrupted by the pandemic, the Gene Simmons Band, well, that’s a whole other thing.

Five months later, Simmons was back on the road, playing loose solo shows with musicians he’s known for years, the set list all drawn from Kiss songs, most of them ones he sang lead on, and covers of songs such as Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades,” the Beatles’ “And Your Bird Can Sing,” Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” and Van Halen’s “House of Pain.”

“It’s very strange, this love-hate relationship with touring and being onstage,” Simmons says. “When you tour your butt off, you can’t wait to get back home and do nothing. I mean, I have other things that keep me busy.

“But when you’re away from it, that feeling, that magic that happens onstage, there is no other feeling like that,” he says. “It’s not like being on a baseball team or in a boxing ring or even being the pope.

“What we can do (in the Gene Simmons Band) that Kiss could never do is if I get a call, somebody says, ‘You want to play a gig tomorrow night at this place?’ ” Simmons says. “I go, ‘Sure!’ Just go to the airport with my bass and my guitar pick. It’s so easy. You just go, and it’s so much fun.”

When we spoke, Simmons had been preparing for a handful of Southern California shows that were subsequently postponed. New dates have not been announced.

He and Kiss co-founder, singer and guitarist Paul Stanley later announced they will be in Las Vegas in November for the first official Kiss Army fan convention in 30 years. They’ll be joined by Kiss guitarist Tommy Thayer for a performance without the iconic Kiss makeup or drummer Eric Singer.

Kiss is also celebrating several significant 50th anniversaries this year. The albums “Dressed to Kill” and “Alive!” both arrived in 1975, as did the single “Rock and Roll All Nite,” which became Kiss’s signature song and the one that often closed the band’s concerts.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Simmons talked about how “Dressed to Kill” and “Rock and Roll All Nite” were created, why he finds it hard to relax, and what his Hungarian immigrant mother taught him about work.

Q: There’s a Kiss audio tour, a walking tour of sites in New York City for the 50th anniversary of “Dressed to Kill.” How’d that come together?

A: This was put together by Pophouse, the company that bought our underlying rights, and they’re magnificent.

So they were the ones who put (the audio tour) together. They start at 10 E. 23rd St., where the band was put together at our loft. There are various stops in New York, including where the “Dressed to Kill” album cover was shot, a few blocks away on the street in New York, to Electric Lady Studios, where we recorded our first demo.

Q: All that road work paid off when you put out “Alive!” and the live “Rock and Roll All Nite,” which was first on “Dressed to Kill.” Suddenly, that’s a massive hit.

A: We were noticing a disconnect between album sales because we didn’t have a lot of hit singles. We didn’t try to write hit singles. It was about live, turning up the guitars and a raucous shaking of the heavens. But at the same time, we were breaking records all over the place with attendance. People were kind of like, “You gotta see this band!”

So the idea we came up with: Why don’t we do a souvenir of our tours? Like if you were there, a live album, double live album, with a tour book, photos and stuff like that. That thing flew off the shelves like nothing you’ve ever seen. All of a sudden, we were playing stadiums.

Q: Tell me about writing “Rock and Roll All Nite” for “Dressed to Kill,” and later “Alive!,” where it took off.

A: Neil Bogart (head of Casablanca Records) decided he wanted to produce “Dressed to Kill.” He was a record company president, didn’t know how to produce, was close to being tone deaf, but he knew a hit when he heard it.

And when Bogart entered the studio, he said, “What you guys need is an anthem.” We had no clue what that meant. What’s an anthem? He goes, “You know, kind of like a song you sing at a football game that says what you believe in.”

We’re touring while we’re discussing songs and everything, and it’s time to go to the studio. I turned to Paul and I go, “You know, I’ve got this song called ‘Drive Me Wild’ about a hot car. ‘You drive me wild, I’ll drive you crazy.’ Paul thought about the anthem thing and says, “That’s great, let’s finish that off. But it doesn’t say what we believe in.”

So he came back the next day and says, “What do you think of this? ‘I wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day,’ ” which is exactly what the band is all about.

Then, like Frankenstein, we put the two pieces together and presto, you got a song.