Kiss star Gene Simmons has a pretty famous tongue, and now he is apologizing for his “big mouth.”
The musician said he was sorry for comments he made about the death of Prince. The star died April 21 at age 57.
In an interview with Newsweek, Simmons hailed the late singer as “heads, hands and feet above all the rest of them. I thought he left (Michael) Jackson in the dust. Prince was way beyond that.”
Then he followed with remarks about how Prince died.
“But how pathetic that he killed himself,” Simmons said. “Don’t kid yourself, that’s what he did. Slowly, I’ll grant you … but that’s what drugs and alcohol is: a slow death.”
Authorities are investigating evidence of opiate use by the late singer.
Simmons took to Twitter to apologize, saying, “I just got such s**t from my family for my big mouth again.”
“I apologize — I have a long history of getting very angry at what drugs do to the families/friends of the addicts,” he wrote. “I get angry at drug users because of my experience being around them coming up in the rock scene.”
Simmons added, “Needless to say, I didn’t express myself properly here — I don’t shy away from controversy, and angry critics really don’t bother me at all. If I think I’m right, I’ll throw up a finger and dig my heels in and laugh. But this time, I was not. So, my apologies.”