After Gene Simmons’s parents divorced, he went to work at age 12 to pick up the slack. The Wall Street Journal’s Marc Myers discusses Simmons’s life from hauling meat out of the basement for a butcher to rock and roll stardom, and now movie production with his new film, Deep Water. Myer writes:

My parents separated when I was 6. My father was a dreamer. One day, we went looking for him. At a movie theater, I spotted him. He was with a blond woman. My parents divorced.

In 1958, my mother decided we’d join her two brothers in New York. We lived in the house of her brother Larry in Flushing, Queens. He was a successful baker.

My mother and I changed our last name from Witz to Klein, her maiden name. She found a job in a Brooklyn factory sewing buttons on coats for half a penny per button. We lived nearby.

At 12, I went to work to make my mom’s life easier. I was a butcher’s assistant, lugging heavy meat up from the basement, I delivered newspapers and had other part-time jobs. I contributed nearly $30 a week.

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