You may be asking yourself, What does a remembrance of the one and only Ace Frehley have to do with Halloween and Biff Bam Pop!’s 31 Days of Horror. Well, I can tell you that my first introduction to KISS scared the shit out of me, just like they were scaring the shit out of tight ass parents in the 1970s and early ’80s.
My original meeting with KISS came not with their music, but their image, found on bubble gum cards (remember those) at my barber’s shop. I would have been 6 or 7, and the visage of not just Gene Simmons’ The Demon, but all of them – Ace’s Spaceman, Paul Stanley’s Starchild, and the Catman, Peter Criss – were the definition of evil incarnate to my young eyes. And listen, without the riffs coming at you, isn’t it possible that seeing these make-up-clad men on small cards would scare you, too?
My first real musical exposure to KISS came in the post-Ace and Peter era, with 1990’s mega-hit ballad, “Forever,” a song co-written by Michael Bolton and featuring guitarist Bruce Kulick and drummer Eric Carr. I’d go to my first KISS show a few years later for the band’s 1992 Revenge tour, this time with drummer Eric Singer now in the fold following the passing of Carr. I remember the concert being incredibly loud, and the fact that I didn’t know a lot of the classic material. My best buddy Perry and I were there for the spectacle (and strippers), not the songs. It would still be a few years before I’d officially enlist in the KISS Army.
It’s not hyperbole to say that my musical world changed in the summer of 1996 when the original line-up of KISS reformed. This didn’t happen at first, though. I hadn’t planned to see the band on tour, but when inexpensive tickets for the band’s stop at Toronto’s Skydome came up, I jumped on them. I think we wound up paying something like $11 for a first row in the 500 section of the massive stadium, which was cut in half for this particular show. Still, somewhere around 30,000 fans were in attendance to see Simmons, Stanley, Frehley, and Criss back together and sounding as good, if not better than ever.
Because I wasn’t a big KISS fan, I had no idea what to expect when these four men took the stage together, once again clad in make-up. What I can tell you is that finally, I got it. Seeing the classic line-up together, hearing songs full of vocal hooks and memorable riffs, watching smoke jut out of Ace’s Les Paul, seeing Gene Simmons breathe fire, spit blood, and fly through the air…after that show, I was a devotee.
A few weeks later, I found a bootleg cassette of the band’s show in Montreal at a downtown record store hidden away on Queen St. I wore that cassette out. I obsessively listened to the band’s Unplugged album that saw the Revenge line-up play with Ace and Peter, taking in the songcraft of Simmons and Stanley. For those who may think that KISS couldn’t get by without its onstage bells and whistles, Unplugged is the album for you. It’s just good songs.
I’d see the classic KISS line-up a few more times over the next four years – a gig in Hamilton, Ontario where Ace Frehley fall on his ass during “Rock and Roll All Night,” the final song of the show, while a pissed off Gene Simmons looked on; then again at the Skydome on their Psycho Circus tour, in support of a purported reunion album that barely featured Ace and Peter and with the foursome only fully playing together on Ace’s excellent “Into The Void”; and finally, on the band’s first farewell tour, where non-make-up era hits like “Heaven’s On Fire” and “Lick It Up” were part of the set list. Not long after, Ace once again left the band, with Peter following soon afterwards.
KISS carried on without Ace and Peter, bringing back Eric Singer on drums and introducing longtime band insider Tommy Thayer on guitar. Those men would don the makeup of their predecessors and, in doing so, kept KISS live and thriving for 20 more years. For many, it was sacrilege; for others, it was just another part of KISSstory. The shows I saw with Eric and Tommy were always good; those guys had the chops, and the KISS songs clearly have stood the test of time.
However, none of the shows I saw could ever measure up to that first experience in August 1996 and the Skydome. Going in knowing nothing and coming out a dyed-in-the-wool fan. And while so much of KISS can be traced to Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, for the first ten years of its life, the band had one of the great guitar players of its era contributing some of the best guitar solos of the 1970s. Ace Frehley wrote solos you could sing along with. I caught myself doing that just yesterday, listening to the band play “Firehouse” from their Millennium concert.
With Ace Frehley’s passing earlier this week, hard rock’s fantastic four no longer walk our planet complete. Yet, the legacy of KISS will live on, bigger than either the make-up or the men (yes, even bigger than you, Gene). They no longer scare me as they did when I first encountered them more than 40 years ago; instead, like so many of my fellow KISS Army members, they just inspire me to turn it up.
Loud.
Blast from the past. KISS were my jam in grammar school. Rest in peace, Space Ace.