There were many great guitar moments at this year’s Songwriters Hall of Fame, but none can top the shred fest and sheer joy John Fogerty brought to the stage last night at NYC’s Marriott Marquis.

The youthful 81-year-old and newly honored recipient of the Johnny Mercer Award (the Hall’s most prestigious award) ended his mini set with an epic, blistering jam on “The Old Man Down the Road,” beaming with fatherly pride and tearing it up on the guitar while trading licks with his sons, Shane and Tyler.

The Mercer Award is given to songwriters who are already in the Hall and ‘whose body of work is of such high quality and impact that it upholds the gold standard set by the legendary Johnny Mercer.’

Fogerty began his five-song set with a harmony-filled short version of “Oh! Susanna” in tribute to both his mother and the 19th century American composer Stephen Foster, his first musical idol. He then launched into his singalong classics “Proud Mary,” “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and “The Old Man Down the Road,” aligning himself as a legitimate link in the American songwriting lineage.

In his 26-minute speech, the Creedence Clearwater Revival legend told of his mother playing a record when he was a child.

“It was “Oh! Susanna” and the other side was “Camptown Races.” She played both songs a couple of times and said, ‘well Johnny what do you think?’ I’ like it!’ I said.”

“And then she said something remarkable: ‘You know, Johnny, the songwriter who wrote both of those songs is Stephen Foster.’ I had never pondered that someone created these songs that my mom would sing around the house.”

For the rest of his life, Fogerty said, “I’ve wondered about that little ceremony” and the impact it had on him as he discovered other classic songwriters, and ultimately his own skill at songwriting.

The first song he wrote, he continued, was titled “Wash Day Blues,” taken from a line from a radio commercial. The eight-year-old Fogerty set the lyrics against a Muddy Waters rhythm, “one of the most powerful things I could think of at the time. And it was current.”

Fogerty then showed the audience his original songwriting notebook, which he purchased when he realized he needed to be organized if he was serious about his craft.

“I wrote down the very first words in the book: ‘Proud Mary.’ I had no idea what the phrase meant but it’s there in the book.”

An Army serviceman faced with a life choice between continuing in the service or becoming a musician, he received an official government letter in the mail a year later granting him an honorable discharge at the age of 22.

“I ran outside and started strumming my Rickenbacker electric guitar acoustically. Pretty soon I’m singing,” left a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day.”

“I grabbed the notebook and there was the phrase ‘Proud Mary,’ and the word ‘riverboat.’”

Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley

This year’s inductees included Kiss founders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, Kenny Loggins, Alanis Morissette, Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, Taylor Swift, Walter Afanasieff, Terry Britten and Graham Lyle. The artist Raye received the Hal David Starlight Award.

Billy Corgan and John Rzeznik (a 2008 Hal David Starlight award honoree) might seem like an unlikely pairing, but both shared their love and admiration for Kiss and the band’s songwriting partners Stanley and Simmons. The two sang “Rock and Roll All Night” and “Shout It Out Loud,” opting to ditch their guitars for the set.

In a red-carpet interview with Guitar Player prior to the show, Corgan said while he was a massive Rush, Yes and prog music fan growing up, “Black Diamond” was a favorite Kiss track. “Something about the atmosphere of the song and the makeup and being ten years old. I wanted to play that song a hundred times in a row.”

“I had the Kiss poster on my wall as a kid before I ever heard Kiss. That imagery was like, ‘What is this? I want to know about this.’ The music seemed to marry to the image for me, not the other way around.”

As a teen growing up in the suburbs, Corgan said “Gene challenged me in one way — the business angle — and Paul challenged me in another — to think about freedom and self-expression.

“Over time I really began to understand their brilliance as musicians and songwriters.” Gene’s bass playing, he said, “is more ‘50s doo-wop where Paul is more of a Free, Humble Pie, straightahead style. It’s a very interesting mélange of influences.”

Simmons could not attend due to a family emergency and Stanley did not perform any of his classics at the event. But he did give a pre-show interview to this magazine.

“I wanted to be a great songwriter from the beginning,” the guitarist said. “I never wrote songs to jam on. I wrote songs to sing.”

“That can seem simple when you are looking at a song like ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ or ;Heaven’s on Fire’ or ‘Lick it Up.’ But it’s elusive and deceptive. Those songs follow the same formula as a lot of the great songs that inspired me. I was inspired by everyone who was working in the Brill Building.”

He also offered a juicy anecdote specific to this magazine.

“The first time we were on Guitar Player magazine, the guitar snobs at the time were horrified, that it had sold out. Then when the sales came in and it did better than other issues, everybody liked it! It opened the floodgates, not unlike some of the stuff Kiss has done.”

Taylor Swift

Film director Steven Spielberg paid tribute to Taylor Swift, the youngest female artist to be inducted into the Hall, noting “no algorithm can replace the soul of a true original who defies the status quo.”

Spielberg noted her dedication to her craft going all the way back to when “she first picked up a 12-string guitar. Most people start with a six-string. Isn’t that right? But you were an overachiever at the age of 12.”

Swift gave an emotional 21-minute speech, acknowledging her family, collaborators and the importance of the arts.

“Everything came together when I learned to play guitar at 12. I wrote my first song after learning my first three chords. It felt easy to work incredibly hard with this.

“It felt easy to nurture something I loved so much, to watch callouses form on the tips of my tiny fingers and to become a constant observer of the human condition, because people’s feelings, passions and motivations have always fascinated me, and it was easy to choose songwriting over everything else in my life.”

Madison Cunningham, Brandi Carlile, Alanis Morissette & Kenny Loggins

Other notable guitar highlights of the evening were more subtle, with artists using their instruments to complement and support the song’s lyrical meaning.

Grammy Award winner Madison Cunningham performed a stunning solo acoustic take on the Tina Turner classic “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” paying tribute to the songwriters and inductees Graham Lyle and Terry Britten. Using a Martin nylon string classical guitar in a dropped tuning, Cunningham’s gentle picking set the musical bed for the song’s emotional core.

Before the show, Cunningham spoke with GP about the song’s depth and importance.

The song is a “treasure,” she said. “It’s a very 80’s sexy song that bears a lot of heartbreak within it. I’m putting a different spin on it to showcase the lyrics.”

Alanis Morissette stripped down her classic “You Oughta Know” to two acoustic guitars and her vocal. Guitarists Julian Coryell and Jason Orme effortlessly weaved beautifully played single note runs and counterpoint lines in between Morissette’s breathy and focused lyrics of love gone wrong.

Brandi Carlile paid tribute to Morissette with an equally mesmerizing acoustic version of “Uninvited,” joined by the violin duo Sistastrings.

Kenny Loggins, whose vast catalog includes many guitar-centric classics like “Footloose,” “Your Mama Don’t Dance,” “Danny’s Song,” “Danger Zone” and more told GP of his relationship with the instrument.

“The guitar always has a mind of its own. I’ll be starting a song, and I’ll hit a chord and go oh that’s different. It will change the direction of the song.” While writing the classic “Danny’s Song,” he said, “the guitar showed up and added about six different chords than it originally had.”

Steve Farris holds a distinction no guitarist envies: he may have been a member of Kiss for the shortest time in the band’s history.

The future Mr. Mister guitarist was effectively hired and fired during the sessions for Kiss’s 1982 album Creatures of the Night. Yet during his brief stint in the band’s orbit, he accomplished something few people can claim: he sang lead vocals on the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” with Kiss.

At the time, Kiss were searching for a replacement for departing guitarist Ace Frehley. Their commercial peak was behind them, and as work began on what would become Creatures of the Night, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were auditioning players to help revitalize the band.

Farris was playing original music with a group that included three members of country-rock veterans Poco when an unexpected opportunity arrived during a packed show at the Blue Lagoon Saloon in Marina del Rey.

“I play a set, and in that band I had lots of guitar solos. The place was packed,” he tells Vertex Effects. “After the set, some tall guy comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, Ace Frehley’s leaving Kiss. Will you be interested in auditioning?’

“And I’m like, ‘Well, I eat peanut butter and jelly every day, and my Volkswagen Rabbit doesn’t start unless I push it off the clutch. Yeah, I would do that.’”

The man scribbled a phone number on a napkin, and Farris hurriedly assembled an audition tape featuring demos and “anything I could find that showed I played guitar well.”

“Two weeks later, I get a call,” he recalls. “It’s Paul Stanley. He says, ‘Gene and I listened to your tape last night, and we really liked it. We’re down at the Record Plant cutting a record, and we’re having guys come and play on the record. It’s kind of an audition. Want to come down?’”

The answer was obvious.

The next day, Farris arrived at New York’s Record Plant carrying little more than a guitar, a few pedals and a dream.

“I’ve got my Valley Arts Strat, a Goodrich pedal, and a CE-1 Chorus,” he says. “They’re in Studio Four, I’m walking [down the corridor], and Tom Petty’s coming out of one studio, Luther Vandross is on the phone [in another].”

After spending three hours waiting in the hallway while other players auditioned, Farris finally got his shot.

“They’re in the control room, and they hand me a cable. There’s a Marshall in the other room,” he recalls. “Gene and Paul are standing there looking at me.”

He was asked to play an eight-bar solo. Then he played it again.

The response was immediate.

“Can you dye your hair black? Can you wear high heels?”

Farris answered yes to both questions.

“Fuck man,” they replied. “We got the guy.”

“They’re going nuts,” he says. “They say, ‘Don’t cut your hair, we’ll see you Tuesday.’ I was the guy after two solos. The second take is what you hear on the record.”

But the celebration proved premature.

When Farris returned the following week for a full-band rehearsal, Kiss asked him to do something he hadn’t expected: sing.

As Farris explains, he’s not a singer. But he knew he needed to be.

“I realized at one moment, ‘Wow, I’m going to take a stab at this. If I don’t sing, I don’t get the gig,’” he says. “It’s one of those moments. So I have the dubious distinction of having played ‘Honky Tonk Women’ with Kiss, with me singing lead vocal. I wish I had that tape.”

The audition didn’t go as planned. Although Simmons and Stanley loved his guitar playing, they ultimately decided he wasn’t the right fit. Farris remained involved in the Creatures of the Night sessions, but the permanent job eventually went to Vinnie Vincent — the guitarist Ace Frehley would later criticize for playing “too fast.”

More than four decades later, Farris can still laugh about the experience.

“I still do interviews about that freaking solo,” he says.

Not bad for the shortest-serving member in Kiss history.

It‘s Kiss‘s biggest hit of all time. But according to bass guitarist Gene Simmons, it's been credited to the wrong person for the past 50 years.

The song is “Beth,” from the group‘s fourth album, 1976’s Destroyer. It‘s an oddity in the band‘s catalog — a ballad sung by drummer Peter Criss accompanied by piano, acoustic guitar and the New York Philharmonic orchestra.

Although the track is credited to Criss, Stan Penridge and producer Bob Ezrin, Simmons claims Criss had nothing to do with its creation and shouldn‘t be included as one of its composers.

As fans have been told for decades, “Beth” began life as “Beck,” a song co-written by Criss and guitarist Penridge years earlier while both were in the New York City rock group Chelsea. The tune was composed as a joke to make fun of Becky, the wife of their bandmate, Mike Brand, who would regularly interrupt their practices by calling to ask when he would be coming home.

As Simmons tells the Professor of Rock in a new interview, he was first introduced to the song in 1976 while Kiss were making Destroyer with Ezrin, known at the time for his success with artists like Alice Cooper, Lou Reed and Aerosmith.

“The history of ‘Beth’ is that Peter and I were in a limo, and he starts humming,” Simmons explains. “I'm, like, ‘That's a nice melody. What is that?’ He goes, ‘Oh, it's a song I wrote called ‘Beck.’

“Because we had started working with Bob Ezrin, I said, ‘Why don't you bring up that song? By the way, what are the chords to that?’ He goes, ‘I don't know.’

“I thought that was peculiar.”

Simmons says Criss found a tape of the song with the intention of presenting it to Ezrin. But first, the bass player says he suggested changing the name to “Beth,” which he thought sounded better than “Beck.”

Ezrin liked the song and thought it would help the band build a female audience. It was hard to ignore his ideas: As a hands-on producer, he‘d already helped Alice Cooper score a hit in 1972 with “Elected,” a rewrite of the shock-rocker‘s 1969 debut single, “Reflected.”

Against the protestations of Simmons and Paul Stanley, Ezrin chose to produce “Beth” as a ballad. To everyone‘s surprise, it became a huge hit, reaching number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976, the highest chart rating of any Kiss song before or since.

Fifty years later, however, Simmons claims Criss couldn‘t have written the song because “he doesn't play a musical instrument. The person who wrote ‘Beth’ and ‘Baby Driver’ was Stan Penridge [“Baby Driver” is another Criss/Penridge-credited tune from Kiss‘s fifth album, Rock and Roll Over.]

“But through politics, Stan apparently agreed that Peter's name would go in the songwriting credit. Peter had nothing to do with that song,” he says flatly. “Nothing.”

“And to fix all the mythology and the gossip and the outright lies, it was Bob Ezrin who said, 'I wanna do this like [the Beatles track] ‘Yesterday' — more like a string quartet and piano. And we'd never done that.”

Simmons’ claim is just his latest attack on a former bandmate. He recently got in hot water for his comments about the late Kiss lead guitarist Ace Frehley.

In fact, there may be some bad blood behind the bassist‘s new statements. Kiss performed “Beth” — with current drummer Eric Singer on vocals — at the last show of their final tour in 2023.

Although the song was included in the live pay-per-view performance of the concert, it was not available during replays due to copyright requirements. Fans have speculated that Criss denied the band permission to include the song in retaliation for Simmons and guitarist Paul Stanley not allowing him and Frehley to perform at the show.

We‘re sure this won‘t be the last we‘ve heard from Simmons. And it‘s certainly not the last we‘ll hear from Kiss. Despite retiring from touring in 2023, they have a busy future ahead of them, according to lead guitarist Tommy Thayer.

Kiss may be done with touring, but Tommy Thayer isn’t ruling out the possibility of new music.

The band returned to the stage last month to play two shows at a Kiss Kruise event in Las Vegas. The show saw the quartet perform a candle-lit tribute to their late founding lead guitarist, Ace Frehley. Thayer tells MusicRadar the event was a huge success and teases what else the band has up its collective sleeve.

“Fan events like we just did in Vegas are really great to do, and we’ll probably do more,” he says. “We hadn’t played together for almost two years, [but] it’s funny how quickly everything felt like we hadn’t been apart that long.

“There’s a lot in the works for Kiss moving ahead,” he continues. “We’re not touring anymore, of course, but there’s still a ton happening behind the scenes.”

Thayer took over full time for Frehley in 2002 and has played on two albums with the group. He says more new music isn't out of the question.

“I’m honestly not sure yet,” he says. “It really depends on where things go and how everything evolves over the next year or two. But I do feel like we all still have a lot of great ideas and a desire to keep creating and doing all the things we love doing.”

Thayer adds that a hologram version of the band similar to ABBA's hugely successful Voyage shows is on the list of possibilities.

“It’s been interesting doing the avatars so far,” he says. “I haven’t really thought about what it all means in the big picture, but with technology evolving as quickly as it is, there’s no doubt that this is the direction a lot of entertainment is going.”

Thayer started life in Kiss doing menial work for guitarist Paul Stanley and bass guitarist Gene Simmons while working on their book Kisstory.

That led to him getting the lead guitarist gig in the wake of Frehley’s second departure in 2002. (Frehley, for his part, said Thayer “played the right notes, but didn’t have the right swagger.”) He remained a part of the band up to and including their extravagant tour farewell at Madison Square Garden in 2023.

Although Frehley and founding drummer Peter Criss were originally slated to join Simmons and Stanley for that final show, that idea fell apart.

Simmons has since voiced regrets about how Frehley and Criss were treated. He also had to apologize for his comments that the guitarist died due to “bad decisions.”

An archival interview with Ace Frehley has been released in the guitarist’s memory, and in it the former Kiss man reflects on producer Bob Ezrin’s magic touch. He even credited Ezrin with writing one of his most iconic guitar solos.

Ezrin, once described by Alice Cooper as his band’s unofficial sixth member, has long been known as a hands-on producer. He was the man who convinced the king of shock-rocker to resurrect a misfiring early track and transform it into the satirical political anthem “Elected.” He also persuaded Kiss to get in touch with their softer side on “Beth” — the band’s most successful single — despite protests from Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley.

But his impact on the glam rock giant’s music didn’t end there. On Destroyer, the 1976 LP on which “Beth” also featured, Ezrin had a big sway on Ace Frehley’s lead playing.

“Bob brought a cohesiveness and a sound that we didn't have before,” the guitarist told Banger TV in 2010. “Bob is classically trained, and he’d made a lot of hit records before working with us. He had a proven formula, and we had to kind of fit into his formula.”

Ezrin’s own words about his time cutting Destroyer with Tape Op give insights into the kind of ship he ran.

He pushed the band hard, saying “we spent weeks — 8, 10, 12 hours a day — drilling the material until the band was really comfortable,” he said.

“The rest becomes an emotional process,” he explains. “With most of the music made in studios, you don't really hear that depth of emotion. And the recordings where you do hear that depth of emotion are either ones where the band is comfortable with the material and can just feel the songs — play them with all the emotion that they deserve.

“With Kiss, and to a certain extent Pink Floyd, we figured out the parts first and practiced, practiced, practiced — and then we recorded them.”

But when it came to the guitar solo in “Detroit Rock City,” Ezrin played a special and unique role.

“Bob's the one that came up with the solo for 'Detroit Rock City,’ – I didn't write that,” Frehley revealed. “Bob came up with the melody.

“He had some great ideas, and we were able to execute them pretty much the way he wanted us to. It made for a good marriage, and I think it showed a different side musically of where we were prior to that point.”

The solo certainly has Ezrin's signature flair. Paul Stanley and Frehley harmonize a repeating motif that wouldn't sound out of place on his early records with Alice Cooper, like Love it to Death and Killer.

Speaking to Ultimate Classic Rock in 2021, Paul Stanley also revealed the touching backstory to the track, and one that belies the swagger of the finished product.

“Bob Ezrin at the time really wanted us to push ourselves in terms of our lyrics and perspective,” he says. “I remembered that a fan going to our show in Charlotte was hit by a car and died, and I just remember thinking about the idea of somebody traveling to see something that celebrates life, and in the process losing their life.

“So the song became about somebody traveling to a Kiss concert and not making it. It was still championing Detroit, but also memorialized somebody who didn't get there.”

Meanwhile, Gene Simmons has explained why he made Frehley recreate an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo note-for-note on another iconic Kiss hit. And there’s also the solo that Simmons says Frehley stole from the Doors.

Gene Simmons says he has one regret about his relationship with Kiss founding guitarist Ace Frehley. Speaking at the 2025 Kiss Kruise in Las Vegas this past weekend, the bass guitarist said he wishes he had tried harder to give some tough love to Frehley, as well as founding Kiss drummer Peter Kriss, when they were partying too hard.

“If I have any regrets, my hand to God, it’s that I sometimes wish we were smarter and better at trying to help Ace and Peter have better lives,” Simmons said (via People).

Simmons admitted that too often he and others would look the other way rather than confront Frehley and Criss.

“All of us are guilty of it, and so am I. [We’d say] ‘I don’t want to start an argument. Let’s just continue doing the tour.’ Because you want to get through it for selfish reasons, because it’s working, and the chicks, and the money, and you don’t want to ruin anything.

“Meantime, somebody who might be your brother is ruining their life by making bad decisions.

“I wish I had practiced more tough love and been more in the face of people that we cared about,” says Simmons, who at 76 has been anti-drink and drugs his entire life,. “It’s not going to be a popular thing, or you’re going to argue about it, but in the long run you’re going to be helping that person, hopefully, change their life.”

Simmons made similar comments last year when speaking about the duo's contributions to the group he and guitarist Paul Stanley put together after the failure of their previous band, Wicked Lester.

“Ace and Peter have as much credit for the beginning of the band as Paul and I do. There's no question it was that chemistry,” Simmons told Backstage Pass (via Classic Rock). “They should have been here with us 50 or 55 years later and enjoying the fruits of their labor. But sadly, they're not.

“It's not even unique,” he added. “Go to almost every band and you'll find people ingesting stuff more than the bum on the street corner, except they're richer and they can afford to ingest more. It's sad.”

Frehley, who died on October 16 following a fall at home, eventually got clean and sober. He once told Classic Rock that “alcohol and drugs were my constant companion, my best friend — and worst enemy. Sometimes, they were a deterrent to my career and personal life.” Ultimately, he says a phone call from his daughter, Monique, drove him to get sober.

The guitarist was understandably a topic of conversation at the Kiss Kruise event. As reported by Guitar World, the band held a candle-lit tribute to him before performing an unplugged set on Saturday. The show marked the first time Simmons and Stanley have taken to the stage together since their End of the Road tour concluded in New York in December 2023,.

In related news, Simmons has reflected on the solo Eddie Van Halen recorded for a Kiss demo — a band he once asked to join — and why he made Ace copy it note for note.

What were the big news events in the world of guitar this week?

More importantly, how much do you remember from what you read?

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A veteran guitarist has claimed that one of Ace Frehley's most iconic Kiss solos laid the foundation for Eddie Van Halen to flip the guitar world upside down with "Eruption."

It’s not the first time that links have been made between Ed's 1977 guitar solo and various other guitar players. For example, Harvey Mandel said he deserves credit for introducing EVH to the two-handed tapping techniques that are a signature element of the song.

But this new assertion of a link between the virtuoso and Kiss — a band he loved so much that he once asked to join them — is something altogether more incendiary.

The claim has been made by former Cro-Mags guitarist Parris Mayhew in the newly published book, Talk to Me: Conversations With Ace Frehley, by Greg Prato.

Despite his deep-rooted associations with the New York hardcore punk scene, Mayhew is a big admirer of the late Space Ace. He says there are clear similarities between Ace's solo on "Shock Me" from Alive II and Eddie's showcase.

“People understand and revere how important Eddie Van Halen is. It's so clear,” Mayhew states. “He is so much better than everybody else. But he also has all that fire and magnetism and magic that Ace had. He just did it better.

“And nobody that I knew who liked [Van Halen's debut] would accept the fact that this guy was influenced by that guy,” he continues. “And if you listen to the ‘Shock Me’ solo and ‘Eruption’ back to back, and if you don't hear that the 'Shock Me' solo is completely a template for the 'Eruption' solo, then you don't have ears.”

Frehley's solo — which, like "Eruption," is performed without accompaniment — comes at the 4:05 mark. While there are similarities in his and Van Halen's approach and style, including plenty of squealing pinch harmonics, there are good reasons to doubt the claim Ed took his lead from Ace.

Consider the recording and release dates: Alive II was issued on October 24, 1977. Van Halen's self-titled debut album, which features "Eruption," wasn't released until the following February, but "Eruption" was recorded September 8, 1977, several weeks before Alive II came out.

For that matter, Ed had been performing "Eruption" well before its September 8 recording date, as can be heard on a live taping from June 10, 1977. The recording of "Shock Me" on Alive II comes from a show at the L.A. Forum in late August of that year. To claim it was a template for a work that was already months in the making seems quite a stretch.

This isn't the first time someone has claimed Eddie took something from Ace. Even Ace thought Eddie began using two-handed tapping after seeing him do it in concert. Eddie said he saw Jimmy Page do it in 1971, well before Kiss existed, making him realize the technique's potential for his electric guitar fireworks.

Mayhew admits his claim has led to debates with fans over the years. But he stands by it.

"When I first heard 'Eruption', I was like, 'Oh my God, he's totally ripping off Ace!' I have never heard anybody else say that. And when I've brought it up, I've had people argue it down. And I'm like, 'Listen to them back to back.'

"Eddie Van Halen, if he was alive, and he claimed that he didn't just nick that whole thing as a template for 'Eruption', he's a liar."

In related news. former Van Halen bass player Michael Anthony has revealed the career-saving advice Eddie got from David Lee Roth in the band's early days, and Carl Verheyen has recalled the time Eddie borrowed one of his Les Pauls, causing him distress in the process

The one-two punch of Alive! and Destroyer made Kiss a success in the mid 1970s. In the summer of 1976, shortly after the release of Destroyer, Gene Simmons decided to use his newfound fame and fortune to help find and lead another group to the top of the charts. While in Los Angeles, he saw a young, unsigned Van Halen perform on the Sunset Strip and decided he would turn them into superstars.

He cut a demo tape with the group — Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alex Van Halen, singer David Lee Roth and bass guitar player Michael Anthony — at Village Recorder in L.A., then flew the group to New York City for overdubs and final production at Electric Lady Studios.

Nothing much came of the effort — Kiss’s management vetoed Simmons’ request to sign the group — but the bassist stayed friendly with Van Halen. (Simmons has said Eddie even tried to join Kiss in 1983 when he grew tired of leading his own band.)

As Simmons explains, while Van Halen were in New York City, he hired Eddie and Alex to help him record demos for three songs, including the Kiss hit “Christine Sixteen.” Simmons says he liked Eddie’s guitar solo on the cut so much that he made Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley copy it note for note.

“Around ’77, I wrote ‘Christine Sixteen’ and two other songs,” Simmons says. “On the way back from Japan, at one in the morning, I called Eddie and Alex and said, ‘I’ve got some songs — you want to help me do these demos?’ And they did.

“Eddie did the solo on ‘Christine Sixteen’ in one take. I loved it so much that I made Ace copy it note for note. So when you hear ‘Christine Sixteen,’ that’s Eddie’s solo you’re hearing, but copied by Ace.”

Granted, the solo is short on the kind of fireworks Eddie would soon be unleashing on Van Halen’s records, but it’s a tasty fill that shows young Ed’s maturity as a player. Whereas another guitarist might have used the opportunity to show off his chops, Ed gives the song just what it needs.

Simmons might have showed similar restraint. When it comes to crude and rude rock songs, they don’t get much worse than “Christine Sixteen,” which Kiss delivered on their 1977 album, Love Gun. The song concerns a 16-year-old girl, and the much older singer — Simmons was 27 at the time — who is spending too much time hanging around her high school waiting for a glimpse of her. Many radio stations banned the song. Others played it only during late-night broadcast hours.

As Simmons explained in the liner notes to his 2017 box set, The Gene Simmons Vault, the song was written as a retort to Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley.

“Paul would say, ‘Gene, all you ever write about are monster songs. Like ‘God of Thunder,’’’ Simmons wrote. In fact “God of Thunder” didn’t exist at the time Stanley said it; he just made the name up in the moment, but it sparked an idea. “And of course, he went home and wrote that song, as a semi-parody of a Gene song,” Simmons explained.

Simmons similarly challenged Stanley, telling him, “All you ever write are teenage girlie songs, like ‘Christine Sixteen.’

“And as soon as I heard myself say that, I quickly wrote it.”

Perhaps too quickly. With lyrics like “when I saw you coming out of school that day / that day I knew, I knew / I’ve got to have you,” “Christine Sixteen” is creepy and cringey.

Nevertheless, it reached a respectable number 25 on the Billboard charts.

Notably, “Christine Sixteen” isn’t the only time Frehley copied a solo. As Simmons told The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan last February, the late Ace was a huge fan of Doors guitarist Robby Krieger and copied his electric guitar solo for “She,” a track from the 1975 Kiss album, Dressed to Kill. The Krieger solo comes from the Doors’ “Five to One,” from their 1968 album, Waiting for the Sun.

Bob Dylan hasn’t been shy about picking fights with his fellow artists. Over the years he’s had beefs with Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, “American Pie” songwriter Don McLean, and even John Lennon, who he felt had copied his musical style on at least one too many occasions.

But one group in particular got his ire in the late 1970s, after the born-again Dylan began writing almost exclusively on Christian themes. From roughly 1979 to 1981, he explored evangelical Christianity in the music for his three-album "gospel trilogy," which consists of Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love.

Around the same time, the Satanic Panic was brewing. It would come to full force in the 1980s as moral outrage over alleged cases of Satanic ritual abuse spread through the U.S. In the lead-up to it, Kiss were singled out for supposedly encouraging satanism, largely thanks to the long-standing rumor that their name — which the band spelled in all caps, like an acronym — stood for Knights in Satan’s Service, something which the band denied for years.

Apparently Dylan never got the memo. While performing in Arizona in 1979, he became fed up when the unruly crowd began calling out for his more popular, secular tunes. When one of them yelled out “rock and roll!,” the folksinger used the occasion to provide a bit of spiritual advice.

“If you want rock and roll, you go down and rock and roll,” he said according to the Portland Mercury. “You can go and see Kiss and you can rock and roll all the way down to the pit.”

What was especially odd about Dylan’s remark was that he had himself claimed to take a cue from the band to paint his face white for some shows on his Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975 and 1976.

In Martin Scorsese's 2019 Netflix documentary, Rolling Thunder Revue, he said the revue’s violinist, Scarlet Rivera, took him to see the group perform in Queens. But Dylan didn’t meet her until 1975, by which point Kiss were famous and no longer playing clubs. Most likely it was all a fabrication made in jest.

Whatever the case, Dylan’s acknowledgement of the group certainly pleased its bass guitar player, Gene Simmons. A longtime admirer of Dylan, he was thrilled to have the folk icon acknowledge his group.

Years later, in 1991, while Dylan was in-between projects, Simmons decided to test his luck and see if the singer would write a song with him.

“Everybody buys lottery tickets. What are their chances of winning? Not much,” Simmons explained to The Pulse of Radio. “So what? There is a chance you can win, and I’m like that.

“So I called his manager: ‘Can I speak with Bob?’

“‘What do you wanna talk to him about?’

“‘I… I wanna write a song with Bob.’”

To Simmons’ surprise, Dylan was game.

“And all of a sudden, within two days, an unmarked van shows up at my house, and Bob gets out with an acoustic guitar in his hand, and tells his driver, ‘I’ll see you at the end of the day,’ comes up, and we start strumming. I mean, it was just like that.”

Simmons was thrilled, but he decided to save the song — “Waiting for the Morning Light” — for himself rather than give it to Kiss. It finally came out in 2004 on Simmons’ second solo album, Asshole.

“Bob came up with the chords, most of them, and then I took it and wrote lyrics, melody, the rest of it,” he explained. “We understood each other right away. He picked up an acoustic guitar, and we just tossed it back and forth: ‘How ’bout this, how ’bout that?’

“And he started to strum, because he — at least with me — tended to talk and strum guitar at the same time. And as soon as I heard the first three or four chords, I went, ‘Wait, wait, what’s that? Do that again.’ So I went and started to write a lyric around that.”

A second song from that session, “Na, Na, Na, Na,” was released later on 2017's Gene Simmons Vault, a collection of his demos from 1966. to 2016.

Oddly, shortly after the release of Asshole, Simmons found himself in a new feud with another unlikely adversary: Carlos Santana. The spiritual guru of guitar took issue not with Kiss but with the bassist himself.

“He's not a musician, he's an entertainer,” the guitarist declared. “A musician is Coltrane, Bob Marley. Kiss is Las Vegas entertainment, so he wouldn't know what music is anyway. That's why he wears all that stuff.

“Simmons hides his talent beneath costumes and makeup. A musician doesn’t need the mask or the mascara. There’s a difference between an entertainer and a musician.”

In response, Simmons would say only, “Not everyone likes the same meal.”

But the words stung, and four years later, he shot back during an interview for Kiss’s then-new Sonic Boom album.

"It's time for us to go out and show the little boys how the big boys do it," the bassist declared. "I'm sick and tired of these bands like Carlos Santana looking at his shoes and thinking that's a rock concert. Get off the stage!"

Unlike Dylan, Santana probably won’t be getting a request to collaborate with Simmons.

Ace Frehley will be forever celebrated for his years with Kiss, the iconic group he cofounded in the 1970s with Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Peter Criss.

But Frehley — who died on October 16 at the age of 74 from injuries after a fall at home — will also be remembered for his signature solo hit: “New York Groove,” released in 1978.

That was the year all four Kiss members issued solo albums. But only Ace scored a top 20 hit, when “New York Groove” reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was especially appropriate, since the electric guitarist was a Bronx-born native of the Big Apple.

Since then, “New York Groove” has remained popular in the New York area, where it’s become the Mets signature tune, played at home games to celebrate a win.

But as Ace explained, he had one regret about the song: He didn’t write it.

“A lot of people think I wrote ‘New York Groove,’” he told Louder in an interview published October 6. “It’s not a myth that I’ve perpetuated, but that’s the way it is.

“I wish I would’ve wrote the song, though. I would’ve made a lot more cash out of it,” he said with a laugh.

The foot-stomping three-chord tune was actually written by Russ Ballard, the British songwriter behind hits like Rainbow’s 1979 hit “Since You Been Gone” and “God Gave Rock and Roll to You,” originally recorded by Argent in 1973 and covered by Kiss, no less, in 1991 as "God Gave Rock '’N' Roll to You II," with modified lyrics.

Ballard told Louder he wrote the song while en route to New York City for the first time.

“While I was sitting on the plane, I got out a pen and paper and started thinking of the phrase ‘back in the New York groove,’” he said. “That’d be a good title for a song, I reckoned; the whole idea of someone going back to New York and singing about the experience.”

The tune was originally cut by the London-based glam-rock band Hello in 1975 and became a number nine hit in the U.K.

Strangely, Frehley had no recollection of hearing Hello’s version.

“Or maybe I have and I just can’t remember,” he told Louder. “Can you send me an MP3 of it?”

Freely said “New York Groove” became forever associated with him after “we realized we needed a more commercial song for inclusion on my solo record.”

“To be honest, I actually didn't want to record this song,” he told Guitar Player last year. “Eddie Kramer my producer, introduced me to it. He kept saying to me, ‘Ace, you’ve got to record this song,’ and I kept saying, ‘I don't think it has anything to do with any of the other songs.’

“But once we had finished recording a lot of the album in Connecticut, we went down to Manhattan to do the overdubs and vocals, and once we got down there, he finally talked me into doing it.”

He cut the track at Plaza Sound Studios above Radio City Music Hall on 51st Street, giving him a memorable view of the hall’s Rockettes dancers to go with the session.

“It was kinda cool because the Rockettes used to sun themselves on the roof,” he recalled to Louder. “These beautiful, semi-naked girls were constantly walking into the studio and checking out what was going on. So that was quite a nice recording environment.”

Ace also remembered that, on this particular session, he used his sunburst ‘59 Gibson Les Paul, one of the guitars he, unfortunately, parted ways with.

“I bought it in a guitar store, and it was really faded, but it was a great guitar,” he told Guitar Player. “Gibson actually ended up putting out a copy of it several years ago. They got ahold of a guy that owned it and did a version that was aged and a regular version too.”

Considering that Ace often stood in Simmons and Stanley’s creative shadow, it was a point of pride that he was the only Kiss member to have a solo hit. “I'm starting to come out of my shell and I'm going to get stronger,” he told People in 1980, noting that the song’s success gave him some clout in the group.

Despite that, he didn’t gloat over his achievement.

“It didn’t feel like I was getting one over on the other guys in Kiss,” he remarked to Louder. “It’s just something that happened. I was lucky that it came out as good as it did.

“I never really listened to the other three solo records, although I did put Gene’s on once. When I heard his version of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star,’ I had to pull it off the turntable, ha-ha-hargh!” The tune was originally a children’s favorite from the Disney animated film Pinocchio, but in Simmons’ hands it became a cringe-inducing oddity.

While “New York Groove” remains one of Ballard’s best-known tunes, he remains a little mystified by its success.

“I guess it surprised me because it’s so incredibly simple,” he says. “They say a good song will always sell. And there’s a lot of truth in that.”

Paul “Ace” Frehley’s passing on Thursday, at the age of 74, leaves us with a lot of memories. He will forever be Kiss’s Spaceman, the lead guitarist with the slightly vacant look but the undeniably present chops, as he fired Roman candles from his headstock and rocked through the likes of his songs “Shock Me,” “Cold Gin” “New York Groove,” and other Kiss favorites.

After answering a Village Voice ad placed by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, Frehley went on to serve two tenures with the band — from its formation in 1973 to 1982, and then from 1996 to 2002. During that time, he appeared on 11 of the group’s studio albums and three of its live releases, and guested on four tracks from 1996’s Kiss Unplugged.

Frehley’s self-titled set in 1978 went Platinum and was the top seller of the four Kiss solo albums released concurrently. He went on to issue nine other albums — two with his band Frehley’s Comet and another pair of Origins projects on which he covered songs from the catalogs of his very favorite bands (he was working on a third at the time of his death).

Ace certainly let the music — and his electric guitar — do the talking, but he always had plenty to say away from the stage. Which makes his passing seem like a good time to share a dozen of the interesting things he’s shared over the years.

On meeting Jimi Hendrix in 1969

“I was lucky enough to sneak backstage and I ended up roadie-ing for Jimi. I set up Mitch Mitchell’s drums, which was a very surreal experience ’cause I used to walk around high school with the Are You Experienced album under my arm and just stare at it. I actually froze for a second and said, ‘This can’t really be happening!’ [laughs] But [Hendrix] just shook my hand and said, ‘Thanks for helping,’ which is a helluva memory to have.”

On seeing Led Zeppelin

“It was their first New York appearance, at the Fillmore East [on January 31 and February 1, 1969], when I was 16, 17 years old, and it changed my life. They were opening up for Iron Butterfly, and a friend of mine — actually it was the lead singer of my band at the time, Larry Kelly — he told me about this new band: ‘They’re going to be great!’ I got a hold of the record, and it blew me away. When I went to see them live it was just like, ‘Whoa…!’ I said to myself, ‘This is gonna be the next big band.’ And the rest was history.”

On getting sober

“It took me a long time. I’m stubborn. [laughs] I’m a Taurus. By the time I left Kiss for good [in 2002] all my addictions and abuses caught up with me. I had to get clean and sober and get my life back together. I basically worked through the 12-step program and therapy, changing my friends, hanging out with people who are clean and sober, changing my life, getting in touch with my higher power, turning my life around.

“It’s easy to say ‘I don’t want to drink anymore’ or do this or that. But you can’t do it halfway. You have to follow through. There’s some people who can do that the first time in rehab, then there’s other people who go in and out and end up in rehab a dozen times before they get it, and one day they just get it.”

On the hardest song to play since then

“I feel a little funny playing ‘Cold Gin’ ’cause I don’t drink anymore and I don’t promote it. But it’s such a kick-ass song… I think that me talking about the fact I’m clean and sober and I’m not a party animal anymore is plenty. I can still get away with playing it.”

On Simmons and Stanley

“We had some great times together — more good than bad. We’re all still friends. I know a lot of people think we hate each other, but that’s not true. We’re just like a family; sometimes brothers and sisters have arguments and so on, but when the shit hits the fan, we’re there for each other.

“I wish them the best, I really do. There were just times when I had enough and I had to leave and do my own thing. I’m driven by the quality of the music, and Paul and Gene are driven by different things, that’s all.”

Was End of the Road really the end for Kiss?

“Kiss is supposedly retired — which I don’t believe is gonna happen. I wouldn’t be surprised if they reformed. No matter what they say, that’s what those guys do.”

On maintaining the Kiss legacy

“I’ve actually added two more Kiss songs to my set; I added ‘Shout It Out Loud’ and ‘Rock and Roll All Nite,’ and everybody was on their feet and having a good time. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t matter who wrote the song; I played the guitar solos on those records, and that’s good enough for me.

“And I’ve decided I’m gonna keep going until the wheels fall off. There have been a lot of ups and downs since I got sober 18 years ago… but to me the music was always the most important thing, not the makeup and all that shit.”

On the makeup — and all that shit

“Y’know, I hated reading reviews that said, ‘Yeah, Kiss played last night at such-and-such arena and their show was incredible and somebody breathed fire and somebody’s guitar smoked and rockets and explosions and blah, blah, blah.’ And they didn’t really talk about the music. That used to piss me off all the time, ’cause to me it’s always the music first and the other shit second. It’s even more important to me now.”

On Simmons' and Stanley's plans for a Kiss avatar show

“I wish them all the best [they filmed motion capture for before the end of the farewell tour], but deep in my gut I have a feeling it may not be as successful as they think it’s gonna be. That’s not just me talking; a lot of people I’ve talked to feel that way. As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing like a live band onstage with real amps and singing into the microphones, but that’s just my opinion. Let them prove us wrong. I just want them to be happy and doing their thing.”

On Alive!, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in September

“Well, that was a great record. That was the record that really broke Kiss. Prior to that album we put out three records which did okay; they were kind of mediocre sales. But once the live one hit, it broke all records. It was on the charts for years and that was the album that put us in arenas.

“It didn’t surprise me at all because Kiss is really known for its live show, and Alive! is kind of a souvenir of a Kiss concert and captures the essence of what Kiss was, live. We doctored up a lot of the mistakes, ’cause everybody makes mistakes live, so some of the mistakes were fixed in the studio with the help of Eddie Kramer, the producer. But the essence of the album comes across. The excitement comes across. It was the right move at the right time.”

On 2024’s 10,000 Volts, his last solo album

“It’s pretty much the same thing I set out to do on every record. I didn’t do anything different on this record than I’ve done on my other records, except I’ve been singing a lot more because I’ve been touring with my band. So I guess the more you sing the better you sing.

“I’m glad, ’cause here I am at age 72 and I put out one of the best records I’ve ever recorded and the singing is some of the best vocals I’ve ever done. This album surpasses all my expectations. It really doesn’t make any sense, but I’m the kind of guy that always broke rules, y’know?”

On Origins Vol. 3, the covers album he was working on at the time of his death

“When I was a kid, basically it was Led Zeppelin, it was the Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Who, the Rolling Stones… and it’s so much fun to go back and do my own versions of their songs. I was on YouTube the other day and I typed in ‘classic rock songs from the ’60s and ’70s’ and nothing grabbed me yet.

“The Origins records are a different animal, ’cause the songs are already written and the lyrics are already written. All I have to do is Ace-ify it and put my stamp on it. Right now… I’ve got a lot of time to figure out what I want to do for the next record.”

Nearly two years after the curtain fell on Kiss for the final time, Ace Frehley has finally shared details as to why he was a notable absentee from the band’s End of the Road tour.

The final iteration of the rock heavyweights featured mainstays Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer. That meant there was no room for original guitarist Frehley, who recorded 11 albums with the group, the last being 1998’s jeopardy-ridden Psycho Circus.

His omission — and that of original drummer Peter Criss — was glaring to fans, especially when he is considered a key part of the band’s classic line-up. Speaking to Guitar World, Frehley has been keen to set the record straight on how it went down.

“About nine months before Kiss was going to play [their final show at] Madison Square Garden, both Paul and Gene were saying, ‘We’re going to bring everybody out on stage,’” he details.

It felt natural — pleasantly predictable, even – that the stars of the band’s long, often turbulent history, all got a look in at their blockbuster bow out. But that’s not the way it panned out.

“A few months before the concert, they both changed their tune and said, ‘Ace and Peter aren’t going to do it,’” Frehley continues. “In fact, Paul went on to say, ‘If Ace and Peter got on stage with us, the band could be called Piss.’ So, I kind of got into an argument with him.”

Frehley’s last show with the band came in 2001, at the end of Kiss’ first farewell tour. Since then, he’s focused on his solo career, releasing seven albums. Despite the animosity felt towards his former bandmates, however, he isn’t ruling out donning the Spaceman make-up again in the future.

“I’m the kind of guy that never says never,” he says, diplomatically. “I don’t hate Paul or Gene. We’re rock and roll brothers, and Peter, too. So, anything can happen.”

That being said, there are caveats. A reunion is far from impending, because he’s “having too much fun doing my own thing.”

“And maybe,” he adds, “I’ll eventually get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist.”

Kiss were inducted into the Hall in 2014. If Frehley manages what currently seems a slightly unlikely feat, he’d become the 29th musician to double dip in its annals. He’d follow the likes of Eric Clapton (The Yardbirds, Cream, and as a solo artist), Ronnie Wood (the Rolling Stones, Faces), and all four Beatles.

The latest to follow in those sizable footsteps was Ozzy Osbourne, who, following Back Sabbath's 2006 induction, was honoured for his solo career last November. That ceremony saw Wolfgang Van Halen seemingly put the EVH-Randy Rhoads rivalry to bed by joining members of Metallica, Tool, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers to play “Crazy Train”.

There were hopes among the Kiss fandom that Frehley would feature at November’s Kiss Army event in Las Vegas, where Simmons, Stanley, and Bruce Kulick are set to reprise the band's unmasked era. This time, Frehley takes full responsibility for his absence.

“They asked me and I declined,” he states, leaving no room for misinterpretation. “There’s no way I’m gonna be involved with that. Their biggest mistake is that they should have done that at [the 19,500 capacity] Madison Square Garden, not in Las Vegas in a 5000-seater, or whatever it is.”

Back in February, Frehley sat down with Guitar Player to offer his thoughts on his Kiss replacements, and he didn't hold back. He’s also said the band are lying about his two departures from the group, and has offered his side of the story.

It’s no secret that Kiss’s 1975 album Alive! was doctored in the studio with overdubs. Guitarists Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss have confirmed it in their autobiographies, while bassist Gene Simmons has discussed it elsewhere.

While the album was intended to capture the energy of a live Kiss show, getting all the pieces to work with a group like Kiss proved difficult. Stanley’s animated stage moves meant he wasn’t always on mic, and the heat from the stage lights could throw the guitars out of tune.

Overdubbing and re-creating those parts in the studio allowed them to rectify the issues while maintaining the live energy of the original recording.

Alive! producer and engineer Eddie Kramer confirms that the shows’ production elements were largely to blame.

“Bombs going off, Gene spitting fire, rockets from Ace’s guitar. And imagine leaping about the stage in those super-high-heeled boots!” he tells Guitar Player today. “It’s no wonder things got a little bit out of whack.

“Kiss was a new band and the effort they put out in those shows was monumental, so we did a bunch of guitar and vocal overdubs at Electric Lady Studios,” he says, referring to the facility he helped Jimi Hendrix build in the heart of Greenwich Village.

By coincidence, Peter Frampton was at Electric Lady working on Frampton Comes Alive, his monumental live album that topped the charts in 1976. And as Frampton revealed to this writer in a 2005 interview, Frehley and Stanley made ample use of his gear while sweetening up Alive!

“We were mixing Frampton Comes Alive, and Kiss were next door doing the same thing for Alive!,” Frampton said. “But they kept on coming to us and asking if we got guitars, amps or basses, as they were doing some fixing on their live record.”

Among the guitars Frampton had with him was his famous mid-1950s Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty,” the iconic instrument featured on the cover of Frampton Comes Alive! and the same electric guitar he played on Humble Pie’s breakthrough album, Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore. Frampton would dub the guitar Phenix after it survived a 1980 plane crash and was considered lost before he recovered it some 32 years later.

“They just kept on coming in and borrowing all sorts of different stuff,” Frampton confirms. “So my equipment is on that album — but not me!”

Kramer confirms Frampton’s account but doesn’t recall if any of his guitars made an appearance on Alive!

“I do remember Peter’s amps in Studio A other than the Marshall stacks that Ace and Paul had,” he says. “Aside from them doing lead vocals and some harmonies, that’s all the gear I can remember now, as it’s ‘only’ 50 years ago now.”

Although some critics have taken shots at Alive! over the years, given the studio work that was performed, Kramer has no regrets about the decision to improve upon the performances.

“After having heard all of the original shows and the rehearsals, they were remarkably good,” he affirms. “The essentials were there and well played, and we did whatever was needed to make that a great live album.

“In the end, it was the album that broke Kiss big time by going multi-Platinum and selling close to eight million copies.”

As for Frampton Comes Alive!, it also gave the guitarist his breakthrough and became the best-selling album of 1976 after spending 10 nonconsecutive weeks on the charts and producing three smash singles. Like Alive!, it has gone on to move eight million units, putting Frampton’s gear on two of the biggest-selling live albums of the 1970s.

As a band that made its name with outrageous makeup and costumes and a stage show that combined fire breathing and smoking guitar pickups, Kiss was certainly not known for its subtlety.

But as the group's producer Bob Ezrin says in a new interview, that's exactly why everyone sat up and paid attention when Kiss released a piano ballad devoid of the sonic trappings of electric guitar and pounding drums heard on their previous singles.

The song in question, is "Beck," from the group's fourth studio album, 1976's Destroyer. Co-written by Kiss drumer Peter Criss, his former bandmates Stan Penridge and Ezrin,

“It was such a big departure for them,” Ezrin tells CBS News’ The National.

But it was just what the band needed following a difficult start to their recording career. The three studio albums that preceded Destroyer — Kiss, Hotter Than Hell and Dressed to Kill — failed to capture the band at its best, in Paul Stanley’s estimation.

That changed with Alive!, the group's 1975 live album, which purported to capture the group's raw energy direct from the concert stage. In fact, the album was heavily reworked in the studio — even the audience was faked, according to some sources — but it didn't matter. Alive! was the hit the group needed. It not only saved their careers — it saved their label, Casablanca, from bankruptcy.

In a bid to continue moving in a more commercially viable direction, Kiss enlisted Ezrin’s production talents. The producer was renowned for his work behind the desk across a successful four-album run with Alice Cooper — from 1971's Love It to Death to 1973's Billion Dollar Babies — alongside his work with Lou Reed and Aerosmith. The band saw him as the Svengali who could take them to the next level.

Little did they expect Ezrin would do it with "Beth." Criss co-wrote the song with Penridge while the pair were members in the rock group Chelsea, several years before the drummer joined Kiss.

The tune was written in jest about Becky, the wife of their band's guitarist Mike Brand, who had an annoying habit of interrupting rehearsals with pestering phone calls. The original chorus featured the line, “I know you love complaining, but Beck what can I do?”

Ezrin immediately heard the song’s potential and set about revising it.

“The story about 'Beth' is that, politically, it was always important that the drummer gets at least one song,” Ezrin explains. (It's a lesson the Beatles learned all too well with their drummer, Ringo Starr.) “So we went through a bunch of songs that Peter Criss had.”

The producer, who had succeeded in bringing shock-rocker Alice Cooper a huge audience with singles like "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” also believed it could solve one of the band’s biggest problems.

“I went to see them play live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to 9,000 pimply 15-year-old boys,” Ezrin says of Kiss in the mid 1970s. “There wasn’t a single girl in the audience.

“We started to talk about working together, and I reminded them of an old 1950s Marlon Brando movie called The Wild One, where he was the leader of a motorcycle gang and Lee Marvin was the leader of the rival gang.

“Lee Marvin and his gang were real bad guys. On Marlon Brandon’s side, yes, they were a motorcycle gang, but he had something — and of course, the girl in the town saw that something in him and thought maybe she could fix him. And a romance grew between them.

“So I said to those guys, ‘Right now you’re Lee Marvin. You’re everything that scares the girls of America, and I would like us to do something where you become Marlon Brando — where you can still be bad boys, but there has to be an element of vulnerability.

“You have to let the girls of America feel that maybe they could fix you.”

He says he sensed “a real opportunity” with Criss’s song, even though the original version of it “was a little more jaunty, a little less vulnerable. It was kind of like, ‘Screw you, me and the boys are gonna go play.’”

Ezrin set out to change that, first by centering the arrangement around piano.

“I slowed the song way down, and it just felt like suddenly it was almost like a lullaby," he says. "It became this gentle sweet thing. And I tweaked the lyrics because I wanted it to be about the singer being the one that was hurt.”

As such, “I know you love complaining” became the more sensitive, understanding, “I think I hear you calling.”

Ironically, for a song that helped humanize the band, Criss was the only member to perform on it. Ezrin played piano, and the New York Philharmonic provided the cinematic flourishes that gave the song its magic.

Perhaps because they were mere bystanders to the song’s creation — and the fact that it lacked their usual Black Sabbath frightening bravado — Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley weren't keen to include it on the album. Reportedly, manager Bill Aucoin fought against it on the grounds that his ex-wife's name was Beth.

The song was released as the B-side to the testosterone-fueled Destroyer track “Detroit Rock City,” but to everyone's surprise, radio stations began playing "Beth." Resigning themselves to the obvious, Kiss reissued the single with the sides reversed, and "Beth" went on to reach number seven on the Billboard chart, a height no other Kiss track has topped.

“People thought it was like heresy!” Ezrin says with a laugh. "What the hell is he doing? We had this band that was cock and balls and appealed to 15-year-old boys.

"But that was the point. That was the point."

Asking a seasoned guitarist to name their favorite album is like asking a mother to choose her favorite child.

Paul Stanley was involved in every one of Kiss’s 12 studio albums released between 1973 and 2023, when the group quit touring (and presumably went into retirement).

That makes picking a favorite all the more difficult.

Yet, when asked to do just that while guesting on the Broken Record podcast, Stanley wove through the band’s wide-ranging back catalog to pick one that was important for something more than its music.

His pick? Alive!, the band’s first live album. Released in 1975, it arrived following a tireless two years during which Stanley and Gene Simmons recruited guitarist Ace Frehley — who got the gig after nailing a solo while jamming “Deuce” — and drummer Peter Criss.

They released three records in that time, but, as Stanley admits half a century later, the band’s plans for world domination hadn’t fully kicked into gear. Alive! would change that.

“We wanted an album that immersed you in the experience,” he says. “Which means being surrounded by people, which means bombs going off that are deafening, which means fixing any mistakes or a broken string.”

indeed, Kiss repaired much of the live tracks in the studio. It's said little remains of the original recordings other than Peter Criss's drum tracks.

Regardless, the album gave fans the impression they were experiencing Kiss in all their live, unfettered glory.

Speaking in the 2013 book Nothin' To Lose: The Making of KISS (1972-1975), Stanley said: “I never thought any of our first three albums captured the intensity of what the band was going for or was. And it was a problem because people would come to see us and many of them weren't buying our albums.”

As a tour with Black Sabbath in ‘74 demonstrated, Kiss were a dangerous live act. Bottling that energy, however, had its issues. Kiss were often distracted by the craziness of their shows, which regularly saw the stage engulfed in pyro, to give the performance a live album deserved.

Producer Eddie Kramer (Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin) declared that heavy overdubbing was needed to fix botched chord changes and missed cues. As such, some look at the album with a degree of cynicism: Is it really live?

Stanley shrugs off those doubts.

“Snobs or purists may have looked down their nose at that idea,” he says. “But the truth is that album is still considered, if not the greatest, one of the greatest, and in a lot of circles greatest live album ever. Not because everything was live, but because it captured the live experience.”

It certainly strikes a topic for debate. Two other classic rock and roll live albums, Thin Lizzy’s seminal Live and Dangerous and Motörhead's No Sleep 'til Hammersmith were not each recorded on one night, as they may appear. Lizzy's includes recordings from four shows, having listened to 30 hours of material to find the best takes and Motörhead's five nights.

Even in more recent times, Machine Head's Machine Fucking Head Live is notoriously cheeky for splicing recordings from several nights together to present one full song. On “Halo”, guitarist/vocalist Robb Flynn clearly states the names of different cities throughout their run times. So is Alive! dishonest, or was it a means to an end?

Regardless of allegiances there, the record was a success. But it did more than shift units. And it's the one Stanley cherishes the most.

In late March 2025, it was announced that Kiss would be “storming Vegas.” People weren’t sure what that meant at first, other than some version, or perhaps a partial version of Kiss, probably with founders and forever holdovers, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, performing at the event.

Soon after Kiss Army Storms Vegas was announced, onlookers found out that it was, in fact, true and that Stanley and Simmons would be performing. But not only that, but that they’d be doing so without their trademark kabuki makeup. And as is always the case when Kiss does anything, the rumors began to swirl, and the reactions began to swell. Such is life within the world of Kiss.

In recent weeks, Simmons has made it clear in interviews that, no, Kiss won’t necessarily be performing a whole set. And no, this is not Kiss doubling back on their promise to get off the road, an era which ended on December 2, 2023, at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

And now, in conversation with Guitar Player, Kiss’s Starchild, electric guitar player Paul Stanley, has weighed in, clarifying, with outright simplicity, what Kiss’s forthcoming Vegas shindig actually is. “Let’s just call it a Kiss Kruise,” Stanley says. “But landlocked in Vegas.”

Within that context, the idea of Stanley, Simmons, and company, climbing up onstage as Kiss, without makeup, isn’t a state-of-the-art idea. Historically, Kiss Kruise’s, throughout their 12-year existence, as per the name, have always featured performances by Kiss, without makeup.

They’ve also always featured a roster of bands and artists, ranging from Kiss alumni, such as Bruce Kulick, who will be in Vegas come November, current members of the band, like Tommy Thayer, who will be with Stanley and Simmons in Vegas, and Ace Frehley, who, much to the chagrin of the Kiss Army, will not.

Elsewhere, the Kruises have featured all sorts of period-correct acts, and to that end, Kiss Army Storms Vegas will be no different. Still, Kiss’s ranks are part of an ever-evolving beast, populated by career rule-breakers.

To that end, there’s more to be announced when it comes to this impending Vegas shebang. “There’s so much yet to come,” Stanley says. “We’re not any other band. We don’t live by those rules. And I think that’s the double-edged sword.”

“It makes people love us, and it makes other people despise us,” Stanley says. “And that’s good! You know, I judge myself by the people who love me, and by the people who hate me.”

What’s the story behind Kiss Army Storms Vegas?

Well, there’s going to be some really exciting changes that enhance what it already is. Let’s face it, it’s what we’ve spent 12 years building, and really, polishing, which is the Kiss Kruise. But does a Kiss Kruise really need to be on a boat? Everything that we do on a Kiss Kruise can take place virtually in any place.

So there’s even bigger news with regard to the event to come?

I think everybody is going to be very excited. Whether it’s the Kiss Army, the Navy, the Kruisers, or fans, in general, it’s turning into something that everybody has loved and that we’ve nurtured over the last 12 years. So I’m looking forward to it. More will be coming shortly, and I think all the announcements are going to make everybody that much more excited.

When you put it into perspective, performing in this fashion, as you’ve done on Kiss Kruise’s, isn’t new per se. So you must have had to laugh when everyone got the idea that this was the proper live return of Kiss.

I’m flattered by suppositions, or any ideas that people have, but they often go way deeper than reality. You know, the Kiss Kruises have been something that everybody has loved, including us. And again, the lack of a ship this year doesn’t mean the lack of a Kruise, you know?

It’s really not down to its location; what we’re going to do is going to be very, very exciting. And quite frankly, it has us that much more excited. When everybody reads, sees and hears about what’s going on, as far as the new announcements, I think everybody is going to be very excited.

You must be excited about getting back up onstage with Gene and Tommy?

As far as playing live, other than either somebody who is deaf, or somebody who decides that they vehemently don’t like the band… Gene is a phenomenally ferocious and creative bass player, and I certainly miss the camaraderie onstage and with Tommy. It's going to be exciting. I look more and more forward to it as we polish the diamond, so to speak.

When this was announced, the first thing that came to people’s mind is that Kiss hung it up after the End of the Road tour. But to be fair, I don’t recall you or Gene saying you’d never perform again in any capacity, just that you wouldn’t tour. What is it about Kiss that every time you guys do anything, everybody's imagination runs wild? Does that come with the territory of the band?

Well, it’s flattering. I mean, it’s either very positive in terms of people’s reaction, or venomously negative. And to the people who want us to go away, we pick and choose when and if we go away. And for the other people, they’re thrilled with any prospect of us doing something.

Among the roster of artists playing at the Vegas event is Bruce Kulick, a key cog in Kiss’s non-makeup era. Seeing as you and Gene won’t be performing in makeup, will we see Bruce join you onstage?

Well, Bruce has been at our events before. And he’s a storied part of the history and our past foundation. But I don’t see any plans for him to play with us, but that’s me speaking at the moment.

But as a rule, we’ve had Bruce there before; it’s just another way to celebrate the history of the band. And regardless of whether he plays with us, or another band, his contribution to Kiss is huge.

How about Ace? He’s performed on Kiss Kruises before, but he doesn’t appear to be on the roster for the Vegas event. Are there any plans in the works for Ace to be a part of this, or did he decline?

We always invite, or open the door to, past members. But I also respect their declining, or unrealistic, required requests, or demands. So no, I don’t believe… I would be fairly certain that you won’t see, you know, the two original guys [Ace Frehley and Peter Criss] there. And that’s nothing new, either.

What makes Kiss unique is that the band doesn’t play by the rules of conventional rock groups, a template you set a long time ago. So, do you see Kiss Army Storms Vegas as a yearly event in lieu of the Kiss Cruise? And if so, do you see yourselves performing in makeup again at these types of events?

Let me just say that I’ve never called it Kiss Army Storms Vegas. Now more than ever, it deserves to be called a Kiss Kruise. And that goes against, you know, some people’s definition of a cruise, but everyone who has any questions will soon find out that it is indeed a Kiss Kruise in Vegas.

Ultimately, be it on the water or on land in Vegas, these events are a great way to celebrate the Kiss Army and keep you and Gene connected to them.

Well, the Kiss Army is not only important to us, but it’s the template for every other band’s fan club. It was snickered at when it first came about because fan clubs weren’t considered cool. But in reality, it came from the fans. The army is a volunteer army, and the Kiss Army started with fans in Terre Haute, Indiana, in the ’70s, demanding that the local radio station play Kiss music.

With that said, why is the Kiss Army important to you, and where would Kiss be without their support?

Those fans in Terre Haute, Indiana, if the station didn’t play Kiss music, they would surround the building. And they did that, and that was the birth of the Kiss Army. So, I can’t say enough about them. I’d like to believe that their feelings toward us are based on realizing and seeing our feelings toward them.

So, lo and behold, every band has an Air Force, or a Tank Squad, or a Bubble Bath Brigade, or whatever they have. [laughs] But it all started with the Kiss Army.

It’s seems everyone has a good Ace Frehley story. Gene Simmons has one about the time Ace auditioned for Kiss, on December 8, 1972, in the space above the former Live Bait Bar on 23rd Street in Manhattan’s Flatiron District.

“And Ace plugs in and starts playing while we’re talking to another guy,” Simmons told Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast last February, “and I walked up to him and said, ‘Buddy, you better sit down before I knock you out. What are you doing? We’re talking.’”

In the end, it was Ace who knocked out Simmons — as well as Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley — when he started the audition in earnest.

“Paul and I looked at each other, ‘Wow!’” Simmons recalled. “You don’t know what you’re looking for, but you certainly know it when you hear it — and see it. And… it just kind of happened.”

Frehley’s account jibes pretty closely with Simmons’. But in his January 1979 interview with Guitar Player, he added recollections that lend additional nuance to the story.

At the time it wasn’t Kiss,” he told the magazine. “It became Kiss after I joined the group. Peter, Paul and Gene had a trio and a record deal, and they advertised in the Village Voice. At the time I was unhappy with the group I was working with, and I just thought I would try out for the audition.

“We worked out pretty good, and they said, We can’t give you a definite answer today, but call us back in a week or two. They called me back and said, ‘Come back and jam with us again; we really like the way you play.’

“After the second audition they said, ‘You’re the one.’

“And I said, ‘I’m the one — I’m not sure you’re the one.’”

Ace laughed at the memory. But as he added, he knew he’d found the band he’d been looking for after he auditioned by playing a solo on “Deuce.”

“They just blew me away with volume. I got very excited, and I said, ‘This is terrific material — I want to jam with these guys.’

“We hit it off. I just played all my cool licks, every lick I ever knew; I jammed from beginning to end.”

What kind of equipment were you using when you joined the band?

I was using a reverse Gibson Firebird with one pickup and a 50-watt Marshall amp. Once we got our advance money from Casablanca I bought a Les Paul and a 100-watt Marshall. There’s nothing like a Les Paul through a Marshall for that hard rock sound.

What are you using now?

Well, I’ve got about 20 Les Pauls of various models. I have a couple of ’59s, but I don’t use them onstage because we really jump around with acrobatics and everything, and I wouldn’t want to take a chance with getting them hurt or with getting them stolen on the road, because they’re really irreplaceable.

What kind of amplifiers are you currently using?

Still Marshalls, about eight 100-watt heads and 20 speaker cabinets. How many of them we use onstage just depends on the size of the auditorium. We use a minimum of four bottoms and two heads. I’m not really using any special effects except an Echoplex and a Mu-Tron octave divider on a couple of tunes.

Have your guitars been modified?

Yes, I put DiMarzio pickups on the Gibsons. About a year and a half ago I started using three pickups on all my guitars onstage. There are two reasons for that: One, you get a little more variety in tone, and second, it looks cool. I like DiMarzio’s Super Distortion humbucking pickup. It’s really good for getting a ballsy sound. As I said earlier, I used my old vintage guitars on the solo album, not really any of my stage guitars.

I also like to record with vintage amps. After traveling all around the country for four or five years on tour and going into pawnshops, I’ve been able to find some nice ones — about 30 different little amplifiers. There’s a couple of really funky-sounding old Vox AC-30s, the English ones, and an old Ampeg Jet, and an old Fender Harvard model — that’s the one I really like. It’s dynamite.

Are there certain settings on the amplifiers that you stick to?

I’ve tried every setting and, to me, you take a 100-watt head and put every knob on 5. Sounds pretty cool.

Are the amps modified?

No. For a while we experimented — you know how it is when you’re a new group on tour. For a while we had little Fender amps and miked them. But sometimes we couldn’t hear what was coming out of the amps because it was going through the P.A., and even though the sound might have been a little better with the small amps it just didn’t feel right not to be able to hear exactly what was going on, so we did away with that.

Now we just go direct into the mixer and also through the amps, and the sound man will mix the right blend between direct and the amps, depending upon what the song calls for.

Are there certain keys that Kiss songs tend to be in?

You should make a note of this: I guess a lot of guitar players who try to copy Kiss records pull their hair out, but we tune down a half-step. So like when I strum an open E chord, it’s really an E♭. That’s the way we record. We’ve been doing it ever since I joined the group, so it’s been a long time.

As a hard rock group, we like to use a lot of open strings, and I guess tuning a half-step down also makes it a little easier to sing. That was probably the initial reason, and we just carried it on. I don’t even think about it now.

Are there certain scales or runs that you tend to work from?

When I’m in a major key, I kind of like to play a run where sometimes I go up and drop into a minor scale. I like to do that — I like minor sounds. Every time I hear a major line, I hear a minor one humming. I always had that problem with [producer] Eddie Kramer. Eddie’s such a purist, a classical pianist at heart, and every time he hears that minor third over a major chord, he cringes.

Could you describe how your smoking guitar works?

Well, it is something that me and our engineer developed together. Basically it was my idea that I wanted to have a smoking guitar, and it smokes, you know? It works with a smoke bomb; I mean, how do you think it works? There is an area in the back that was reamed out, and there’s a plate covering it. The smoke bomb is inside, and I trigger it with a button. It looks terrific, doesn’t it?

It’s a great effect. Do you think that all of the flash and excitement that surrounds Kiss ever obscures what you are trying to do as a musician?

I think it might to an extent. Unfortunately, I have felt frustrated at times. I remember in the early days I used to go out, and if I didn’t think I played well I would come off the stage and not be pleased, but if the theatrics went really well most of the audience wouldn’t know.

Then if we did a show and sometimes certain bombs wouldn’t go off or an effect didn’t work, even though you played your ass off the audience reaction might not be as good. You are dealing with people reacting to not only music but also special effects, and in some cases they are reacting to special effects more than to the music.

Whether it is good or bad, I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve been frustrated as a musician at times because the special effects got more reaction than maybe a solo. Sometimes the music gets lost in the barrage of bombs and lights, but the main reason we are involved in the group is entertainment, and we seem to be giving a lot of people enjoyment, and a lot of people get off on the show.

That’s our job, and it’s a give and take; sometimes, you know, you have to take the good with the bad. I am sure I could play better if I didn’t move around, just stood still like most guitar players do. I’d definitely be much more proficient, but you’ve got to give and take a little.

When it comes to Kiss memorabilia, John 5 is like the proverbial kid in the candy store.

Hell, even at 54 he is a kid, especially compared to Kiss patriarchs Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, and even to his current bandmates in Mötley Crüe.

John 5's Kiss fandom — stoked while growing up in the near suburbs of Detroit Rock City, in fact — has led him to accumulate a supersized collection of more than 2,500 items from 1973 to ’83, which he's dubbed the Knights in Satan's Service Museum of Kiss Memorabilia. He'll be putting it on public display for the first time ever this month at a space in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, guiding fans through the experience himself.

But there's a coveted latter-day item that won't be part of the exhibition that is nevertheless near and dear to John’s heart — what is, by all accounts, the last photo of Simmons in full makeup and costume, taken backstage at New York's Madison Square Garden following the group's farewell concert on December 2, 2023.

It was a moment John — who's co-written and played on songs for Stanley and original Kiss guitar player Ace Frehley — wasn't sure he'd have, either. The timing of the show came near the end of Crüe’s World Tour, just as John 5, Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee and Vince Neil were arriving stateside.

"We'd just gotten back from Japan and Australia with Mötley,” he says. “That flight is, like, two months long or something.’

“Tommy and I were going to fly to the Kiss show, and he goes, 'Are we going? I'm just so jet-lagged. I'm so tired.' And I go, 'Yeah, man, I'm really tired, too.'

“So we weren't going.

"And I get home and my wife, being so kind, surprised me and said, 'Get dressed. There's a car coming for you in 20 minutes.' She got me a plane ticket.

"So I jumped on a plane to New York, took the red-eye and got there at six in the morning, slept and went to the show. And it was wonderful because it was the last time they're gonna do 'Love Gun' and 'Detroit Rock City,' and this and that, with their makeup on.

"Afterward, I was gonna leave through the backstage, and I was waiting for the crowd to go out. I was there for about 20 minutes. When I got backstage, I figured I wasn't gonna see any of the guys, 'cause I was so tired and they had just finished.

“I walked through the hallway and saw Gene, and he called out ‘John!’ We said hi to each other, and I thanked him for the music and the memories and, y'know, everything.

“Then he goes, 'I'm gonna get undressed.’ And right before we said goodbye we took a picture, and then he went to his dressing room.

"I was talking to a couple of tour people, saying goodbye to them, and I could see people going in and out of his dressing room while he's taking his makeup off. And I was like, Is that the last picture of Gene Simmons in makeup? We took it together, and it was pretty special."

As he gives us a virtual Zoom tour through the Museum, it's clear that John 5 will have no shortage of special artifacts to show fans during the public showings. Remaining dates include May 19–23 and 27–30, and tickets can be purchased at John5Store.com.

The collection offers a dizzying array of T-shirts, costumes, buttons, posters, backstage passes, guitar picks, toys, action figures, specially designed mirrors, record store displays, tour books, keychains, press kits, photos, promotional pillows and underwear. Pick a spot and you'll find a holy grail–type item there, so many that John should really hand out slobber towels for fans when they enter the site.

It also includes ticket stubs from, he estimates, more than 60 percent of the concerts Kiss performed between 1973 and ’83, which was the end of the band's first makeup era.

"It's quite an extensive collection," John says, playing the master of understatement. "It's taken a lifetime to build, and it really is never-ending. It's so strange a band had this much merchandise in just nine years. It's just endless, endless, endless things to go through. And this stuff is unbelievably hard to get — almost impossible to get, and worth thousands and thousands of dollars."

John 5 started collecting early, in June 1977, when he saw a display for the Love Gun album in a local Sears store and convinced his mother to buy it for him.

"I loved monsters and I loved music, and I was like, 'Please, please get this for me!'" he recalls. "I loved it, and I was so happy. Ever since then I've been collecting. Having all this stuff under one roof, I think it's really important."

Some of collection's items came to John directly from members of Kiss, but the bulk of the collection came through searching and connections with networks of collectors.

"That's what's so interesting — the thrill of the hunt," he says, although he says "I've only really 'scored,' like, maybe three or five times. A lot of this stuff I just had to pay up for."

One of his best acquisition stories was finding a Kiss toy microphone-and-speaker set buried and covered in dust in an antique store. He also has Peter Criss’s bass drum head and other artifacts from the Kiss Alive! photo shoot at the Michigan Palace, which were given to his brother-in-law when the long-closed theater was being cleared out.

Another cherished item is a promotional Frisbee from a July 31 (John 5's birthday) concert in 1976 at the Toledo Sports Arena. There’s also the original Kiss Army flag that was waved outside WTVS-FM in Terre Haute, Indiana, by fans urging the station to play Kiss’s music; the key to the city of Cadillac, Michigan, from the band's famed 1975 visit to the local high school; and a politically correct German pinball machines that swapped the group's usual SS font to something more straightforward.

Speaking of that, John 5's use of the Knights in Satan's Service moniker is a bit of an eyebrow raiser — although the museum also includes a 1976 handbill from a parent's group protesting Kiss as devil worshippers trying to convert their children.

"I didn't want to call [the exhibit] Kiss," John explains. "I never want to make the band upset, 'cause they're all friends. I know what to do and what not to do."

One thing you won't find in John's collection is instruments, for a simple reason. "Obviously I'm a guitar player, and I like things completely original," says John, whose own collection of rare and vintage guitars includes numerous custom examples. "With guitars, they can be refinished or the pickups changed or the tuning pegs changed or anything like that.

"So I don't get into a lot of instruments because you don't know what is original and what is not."

You also won't see the museum displayed anywhere outside of Los Angeles, he adds.

"Everything is so fragile — I don't even want to look at it for too long," he says. "The guitar picks, they can just crack and snap, 'cause they're 50 years old. The lights, the temperature, everything has to be done perfectly."

While the museum is occupying his May, John 5 has plenty of plans for the rest of the year. He's working on his next solo album — which he gave a hint of in a YouTube post last March — that he hopes to have out during the fall, with an accompanying tour. That roadshow will likely prevent him from attending the Kiss Army 50th anniversary event during mid November in Las Vegas, where the band will be performing sans makeup.

Mötley Crüe, meanwhile, has its delayed residence in Las Vegas coming up in September, and John 5 says he's ready to keep working new music for the band to follow up last October's Cancelled EP.

"I always have my guitar around," he says. "Nikki is such an incredible lyricist and writer; he'll call, like, when he's driving, 'Check out this lyric,' and, wow, it's really incredible. And Tommy's an incredible writer as well. I've worked with a lot of songwriters, and those two guys are really something special."

Kiss fans had much to celebrate in 1998 when the original lineup announced they were returning for a new album. Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss hadn't recorded together since 1979's Dynasty, which meant Psycho Circus should be a record for fans to savor. Sadly, that wasn't the case.

The album sessions began following a hugely successful reunion tour that had taken up much of the two years prior. All things considered, the quartet should have been in top form after a long road stint, but the sessions proved to be highly disjointed.

To get the album on track, the band called in Bruce Kulick, the guitarist who'd lost his job in Kiss when Ace Frehley stepped back into the fold. Kulick had joined the band in 1984 during their unmasked era and remained for 12 years, until Frehley returned.

As he reveals, he wasn't gone for long. Stanley hired him to assist with demos for Psycho Circus. When the album sessions began to stall they brought him in to help.

"It was flattering because I knew it wasn't like I was fired,” Kulick says. “They went off to do the original four. So, it felt good, and it was ironic that I could so naturally perform for them.”

He’d go on to co-write “Dreamin’” with Stanley and predominantly play bass when it came to tracking the song, but some of his guitar playing can still be heard.

“I didn't play any guitars [in the studio], but there is some guitar from 'Within', from a demo that I did with Gene that they used,” he explains. “I played bass on quite a few of the songs, some of the Paul songs. I was excited to be there.”

Frehley and Criss proved fringe characters during the record’s creation, contributing to three songs each. The guitarist plays lead guitar on "Into the Void", which he co-wrote with Karl Cochran, "You Wanted the Best" and the Japanese bonus track "In Your Face". Criss, meanwhile, only plays drums on "Into the Void" and sings on "You Wanted the Best" and "I Finally Found My Way".

Tommy Thayer, who would later fill Frehley’s shoes in the band, describing himself as “the glue that kept the band together” also played lead guitar and bass on two songs. It might not have been the reunion anyone dreamed it would be, but Kulick was simply happy to be involved.

“I mean, they paid me well,” he says. “[They] even rented some gear I had because they were looking for certain things.

"I never saw Ace or Peter. It was just Gene and Paul. So it was an interesting time. I was obviously flattered that I could help. It wasn't the 'magical record' anyway, but it's another Gold record for me to have on the wall."

The album debuted in at number three on the Billboard 200 and was certified Gold a month after its release. But its success was mired when Alice Cooper issued a lawsuit claiming "Dreamin'" sounded suspiciously similar to his 1971 hit "I'm Eighteen." (Kiss settled out of court.)

Kulick, who released a new line of “period-correct” guitars inspired by his Kiss era, a stint that included the worst gig of his life, is set to reunite with the band for a maskless show in Las Vegas later this year.

Rock and roll has had its feuds. Kurt Cobain vs. Axl Rose, Dave Mustaine vs. Metallica, David Lee Roth vs. Sammy Hagar.

And lest anyone forget, John Lennon and Paul McCartney weren’t exactly friends in the years after the Beatles broke up.

But perhaps no feud in the history of rock is stranger than the one between a celebrated, spiritually driven electric guitar player and a makeup-clad bass guitar player who wears seven-inch platform boots.

Yes, we're talking about Carlos Santana and Gene Simmons.

Santana is famous for his view of music as divinely inspired. He said in 2000 that he communicates with an angel called Metatron, but he has also drawn on the so-called “saints” of guitar.

“I had only one concern when making my new record,” he explained to Guitar Player in 1999 while speaking about his then recently released hit album, Supernatural. “Would Jimi Hendrix like it if he were here? Would there be enough guitar? It's important for me to appease Jimi and Wes Montgomery, because I play for them, too.”

But Carlos was in a much less positive frame of mind in 2005 when it came to Kiss and, in particular, Gene Simmons.

“He's not a musician, he's an entertainer,” the guitarist declared. “A musician is Coltrane, Bob Marley. Kiss is Las Vegas entertainment, so he wouldn't know what music is anyway. That's why he wears all that stuff.

“Simmons hides his talent beneath costumes and makeup. A musician doesn’t need the mask or the mascara. There’s a difference between an entertainer and a musician.”

Santana would know. After all, he's performed with some of the greatest, including John McLaughlin.

Even so, it was an unusual statement coming from a guitarist better known for his messages of love and peace.

Simmons’ response was surprisingly diplomatic: “Not everyone likes the same meal,” he offered.

Besides, the bassist couldn’t entirely object to what Santana said. He has himself admitted that, from the start, Kiss aimed to bring a more entertaining element to music and, especially stage performance. It was something he and Kiss cofounder Paul Stanley felt was sorely missing from American rock and roll, but not from the British acts that the two musicians so deeply loved and admired.

“The thing that we liked was English music,” Simmons told Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, "the Kinks and the Stones. American bands just weren't writing that kind of music, and the American bands didn't look that way.

“Especially Jimmy Page and Zeppelin. The guitar was worn way down on the crotch. They'd hit a chord and for no reason whatsoever the hand would swing up in the air, and a lot of these guys would do the Jesus Christ pose. American bands didn't do that. [British rock] was more theatrical and grand, and it was glamorous.”

And when he got the makeup on, Simmons was transformed. “It's in my DNA,” he said, referring to the time he scared the bejesus out of Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler while in full costume. “Once the war paint was on, I became the Demon.”

But four years later, it was apparent that Santana’s words had found their mark, and Simmons felt compelled to speak up. In a 2009 interview to talk about Kiss’s then-new Sonic Boom album, he let loose.

"It's time for us to go out and show the little boys how the big boys do it," the bassist declared. "I'm sick and tired of these bands like Carlos Santana looking at his shoes and thinking that's a rock concert.

"Get off the stage!"

Santana did not, of course.

And apparently Simmons hasn’t either. Although Kiss claimed to have brought their 50-year reign to an end in 2023, the glam rockers recently announced they’ll be returning for a one-off show in November of this year as part of the Kiss Army Storms Vegas event at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.

The show will also feature a special performance from former Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick — who recently told us about his best and worst shows with Kiss — as well as other special guests.

Speaking on the origins of Kiss and the vision he and Paul Stanley had for the band, Gene Simmons has said he molded Kiss in the image of a British group in order to stand out from their "cookie-cutter" American peers.

His comments come from a grueling, nearly three-and-a-half-hour chat/ramble on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast in which the bassist praises British bands for their sense of adventure and love of chaos, which stood in stark contrast to what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic.

“We had the Grateful Dead. They had rhe Crazy World of Arthur Brown,” Simmons says. “Robert Plant was wearing women's tops and not afraid to have a semi-feminine kind of physicality onstage — the androgyny of it — although clearly they were heterosexual. Those mores were being toyed with.”

Kiss's musical DNA is undeniable. Even on their 1974 self-titled debut, the essence of British rock and roll was evident in music and guitar playing that borrowed from the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, Slade and Led Zeppelin, to name a few.

“The thing that we liked was English music,” Simmons says, "the Kinks and the Stones. American bands just weren't writing that kind of music, and the American bands didn't look that way.

“Especially Jimmy Page and Zeppelin. The guitar was worn way down on the crotch. They'd hit a chord and for no reason whatsoever the hand would swing up in the air, and a lot of these guys would do the Jesus Christ pose. American bands didn't do that. [British rock] was more theatrical and grand, and it was glamorous.”

A young impressionable Simmons kept up to speed with British bands via American magazines — “Circus and Raves, and it was in full-color” — and he sensed that American bands just weren't comparable.

“You looked at Page and Plant, and you'd go 'I wanna do that!'” he reminisces. “When I first heard Zeppelin, when I was in college, I was convinced Page was a white woman doing an impression of Janis Joplin. I never knew a guy could sing that high!”

Simmons, ever the astute businessman, saw a gap in the U.S. market. Kiss were tailor-made to fill it.

“We decided to put together the band we had never seen onstage,” he explains. “The bands we saw that we loved. We loved Townshend smashing guitars. What's that about? And you're seeing Keith Moon destroying his drums. The American bands simply did not do that.”

As further evidence of the British influence, he points to Jimi Hendrix who was a man reborn once he left the States.

“Jimmy James and the Flames couldn't make any headway,” he says. “He goes to England and all of a sudden this guy's on the floor humping his guitar, setting it on fire, and playing the guitar over his head or with his teeth. It was insane. American bands: We love the Temptations, but I didn't want to be in a band like the Temptations It was too cookie-cutter.”

Simmons has also recalled how Kiss scared the life out of Black Sabbath during their David-and-Goliath tour together in ‘74, seeing it as a defining moment for the band.

Ace Frehley, meanwhile, says Kiss are lying about the real reason he left the band — on both occasions — while the guitarist has been accused by his former bandmate of lifting a Doors’ solo note-for-note and passing it off as his own.

Spats, temper tantrums and scathing retorts within the Kiss camp are no rarity, and Ace Frehley has been at the center of his fair share of them.

Now the guitarist, who hasn’t donned his Spaceman outfit since the turn of the millennium, wants to set the record straight regarding his two departures from the band.

The facts are straightforward.

Frehley successfully auditioned for the band in 1973, despite his antics nearly leading to Gene Simmons punching his lights out. He stuck around for nine studio albums, and helped turn the band into one of the most commercially successful acts around before making his unceremonious departure in 1982.

After reuniting for the band’s 1995 MTV Unplugged performance, the original lineup — Frehley, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss — regrouped the following year. Ace bowed out for a second time after performing at the closing ceremony for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake, Utah.

But why did Ace leave both times? According to Stanley and Simmons, he was fired. But as Ace tells Guitarist, that's not what happened.

“A lot of the misconceptions were created by Paul and Gene,” he says. "They still say in interviews that they fired me, but I was never fired from Kiss. I hate when I hear that. And they say that both times I was fired. I quit both times.”

According to Ace, he was unhappy with the group's change of direction as the 1970s classic-rock era gave way to the glossy sounds of the 1980s. Although he is credited as a performer on the 1982 albums Killers and Creatures of the Night, his contributions were very minimal. As he tells Guitarist, he already had one foot out the door.

“They didn't want me to leave,” he says. “The first time I quit, Paul showed up on my doorstep, took me out to lunch, and was trying to change my mind, but I had already made up my mind.”

Frehley says he was interested in pursuing a solo career after the success of Ace Frehley, his 1978 solo album. Each of the four Kiss members released self-titled solo albums, but none had the success of Frehely's record. The single "New York Groove" hit number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the highest placement of any solo Kiss record at that time.

“The success of my solo album made me realize that I was more creative away from Paul, Gene and Peter than I was around them,” Ace says, bluntly.

“So time marches on. They've said shit — like, I'm late and I'm lazy. And yeah, maybe not as much as they've said it, but it's true. As far as when I'm working, and I've got an idea, and I'm excited about it — I have tunnel vision.”

Frehley's stints away from the band yielded several solo albums under his own name and Frehley's Comet.

As for Kiss, they did just fine without Ace. His first departure paved the way for guitarists like Vinnie Vincent and Bruce Kulick – who survived one of Kiss's most disgusting gigs, while his second exit saw Tommy Thayer step into his platform boots and walk them all the way to the band's finale.

And as you might expect, Frehley has had plenty to say about his replacements.

In related news, the guitarist has recalled the shocking on-stage incident in 1976 that should have left him for dead, while Gene Simmons reckons the Space Ace stole a classic Doors solo “note-for-note” and claimed it as his own for "She".

Simmons has also recalled the band’s fabled touring days with Black Sabbath. He was determined to one-up the heavy metal heavyweights across those shows, saying, “Once the war paint was on, I became the Demon.”

Rush already had one album under their belt when they went into Toronto Sound studio at the end of 1974 to record their sophomore set, Fly by Night. But the Canadian trio's endeavors 50 years ago marked what guitarist Alex Lifeson considers "a new start" for the band.

That year, 1975, featured not one but two impactful studio albums for Rush. Caress of Steel followed Fly by Night's Valentine's Day release by just nine months. It was a one-two punch that put the band on a new creative path and solidified its stature, providing beacons for where Rush would be headed. Key to that was Caress of Steel's side-long, six-part opus, "The Fountain of Lamneth,” which set a benchmark for the following year's triumphant 2112.

"For us it was quite a departure," Lifeson tells us via Zoom from his studio in Toronto ahead of Rush 50, a new 50-track compilation (out March 21) that includes both studio and live takes of the two albums' favorites such as "Anthem," "Fly by Night” and “By-Tor & the Snow Dog."

"We were stretching ourselves more and trying to find somewhere that we wanted to go as a band,” Lifeson explains.

That was made all the more impressive by the fact that, as Lifeson notes, "we were playing 250 shows a year back then. We would be out for three months, come home for a few days and then go back out. I think we spent a couple weeks in the studio on each of those albums. We didn't have much time."

Rush's self-titled 1974 debut and the tour to support it brought about many of the changes the trio would enact for its 1975 releases. The first was the arrival of co-producer Terry Brown late in the making of Rush.

"He saved the first record," Lifeson remembers. "The original mix of the first record was diabolical. It was horrible. We had an in-house engineer/producer, and he mixed it in, I think, two nights or one night or something, and it was terribly disappointing. And we had a couple songs on it that we hated, that we were talked into putting on 'cause they were more 'commercial,’ and all of this crap.

"So we went to Terry and asked if he could remix the record and make it sound more like a rock record rather than this dinky piece of crap that the other guy did. He had the pedigree we wanted. He was English, he came from a very robust musical family environment.

“We went back in to add some things and drop those crappy songs we hated and put in a couple newer songs. And that whole experience with Terry was so comfortable. We didn't work more than a week with him remixing and adding some new songs. It was really the perfect relationship for us. He had great ideas and we could trust him and leave stuff with him. It was a really great, balanced environment."

By the time they made Fly by Night, Lifeson and singer-bassist Geddy Lee were joined by Neil Peart, who came onboard in July 1974, during the Rush tour, to replace founding drummer John Rutsey. In addition to his impressive chops, Peart brought his skills as a lyricist. He dipped into the philosophy of novelist Ayn Rand for "Anthem" and created the multi-pronged fantasy battle in "By-Tor & the Snow Dog.”

“After touring for three or four months with Neil, we were so excited to go in the studio and make a record together," Lifeson says. "This was very fresh, very exciting."

Rush had some fairly lengthy tunes under their belt by this point. Rush tracks like "Working Man" and "Here Again" pushed past the seven-minute mark, while Fly by Night's "By-Tor and the Snow Dog” exceeded eight and a half minutes. The group would exceed those lengths on their next album, Caress of Steel. “The Necromancer” ran for 12 and a half minutes, while “The Fountain of Lamneth” extended to 20 minutes. The musical explorations also became more virtuosic and sophisticated, built on suite-like arrangements with intricate parts and changes.

"I think at the time it was just such a progressive rock thing to do these long, conceptual pieces," Lifeson explains. "We were fans of [the Who’s] Tommy. maybe not quite so much of Quadrophenia, and of course Pink Floyd with the way they were creating their records, Genesis with their long, conceptual pieces…

“That's the world we were in at the time. It was always in our blood, I think, to make records that way, more symphonic in concept with longer movements and moving within that context. It's a nice way to approach it."

At the time, of course, Lifeson did not have the arsenal of instruments and other gear that now decks out the wall and floor space of his studio. He owned a Gibson ES-335 semihollow and a 1970 Les Paul Standard electric guitar (he borrowed an acoustic guitar for the sessions), and was using Marshall amplifiers.

"Eventually I started turning things around,” he explains. “Hi-Watt, then back to Marshall and back and forth to other things."

But Lifeson adds that he did not feel at all limited by the smaller "tool box" at his disposal.

"I was getting so many different tones, even then," he notes. "I would think that if you ask any guitarist about their tone, it's not just one tone but a lot of tones. You can have a trademark tone, certainly, like David Gilmour does. But I hear things different for different songs and different ideas. Lyrics inform me, what the bass line is... All that stuff inspired me to mess around with my tone.

"I pulled back my volume on the guitar to around seven for the rhythm kind of playing, then up full for solos. I kind of relied on my hands and the guitar to create the kind of tone I wanted — cleaner. dirtier, whatever. Now, of course, you have so many tools you can create any kind of tones, but I've always really enjoyed that whole discovery of tone, and I was trying out a lot of things on those albums."

Unfortunately, the musical growth wasn’t always successful. The extended arrangements on tracks like “The Fountain of Lamneth" and “The Necromancer" were "something very new to us," Lifeson remembers. "It was, 'How do we put that together?' We were really feeling ourselves out. We were young and just trying to find the direction with that record."

Not everybody liked it at the time, however. Reviews were mixed, and radio stations who had warmed to Fly by Night didn't find Caress of Steel as accessible.

"That record didn't do very well," Lifeson acknowledges. Rush even called its subsequent road trek the Down the Tubes Tour because of the album’s commercial failure.

"People didn't respond to it. I remember playing Caress for Paul Stanley when we were touring with Kiss," Lifeson says. "We played it, and he had such a look on his face, like 'What the hell is this?' He started smiling and nodding, 'this is great guys...,' then nodding and quickly leaving.

"We were quite disappointed with that, because we thought we'd made something really, really special.”

But their frustration with Steel’s failure pushed them harder on their next album, 1976’s 2112.

“That's what really informed 2112. We were just doing the same thing we did with 'The Fountain of Lamneth,' but we were more pissed-off,” Lifeson reveals. “It was, 'We're gonna do this, and if it doesn't happen we'll just go home and get jobs, I guess. At least we'll go down in flames, fighting.”

2112 did indeed right the course — eventually, as it took awhile to gain momentum — and Rush maintained a steady and ambitious course until it ceased in 2017, with more side-long and conceptual work throughout.

"We were always about exploring and changing," Lifeson explains. "We didn’t really want to be just one thing. We always wanted to move forward from the last thing we did. that was part of that whole mindset."

Brown remained the band's "fourth member" through 1982's Signals and remains a friend, working on remixes for archival releases. Lifeson and Lee have remained best friends since Peart's death in 2020. They’ve performed together at special events — the South Park 25th Anniversary Concert and the Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts, both in 2022 — and still jam with one another, privately. Lee told Rush's story in his 2023 memoir My Effin' Life (his next book, 72 Stories, is due out June 10), Lifeson is part of the band Envy of None, whose second album, Stygian Waves, comes out March 28.

"I go over to Geddy’s house quite often," Lifeson says. "We're just gonna jam and cuck around. We wind up sitting on the couch and drinking coffee and laughing. That's our relationship, best buds.

“We'll always play together. We'll always do something musical together, I think. It doesn't matter whether people hear it or not."

“Being asked to be the guitarist in Kiss was a career highlight,” former Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick tells Guitar Player. “I would be one of the four members onstage, so the pressure was very real. While touring the world with the non-make-up version of Kiss, I knew I had to deliver onstage every night.”

As Ace Frehley's most successful — and beloved — successor on the electric guitar, Bruce Kulick did deliver, show after show. During his 13 years as Kiss’s primary six-stringer, Kulick — who last year launched his own brand to offer period-correct guitars inspired by his Kiss era — played on six studio albums and two live records. But more importantly, he participated in hundreds of shows while on tour.

We asked him to turn back the clock and reveal his best and worst live moments with the Hottest Band in the Land.

The Best

Although I’d grown up in New York City and seen many famous performers at Madison Square Garden, those NYC shows were more of a hometown hero vibe for me. Sort of a ‘look at me now’ to family and friends.

“So, thinking of my best show with Kiss would take me to a very faraway place: across the Pacific Ocean In 1988, during the Crazy Nights tour, Kiss went to Japan, and it was the first time the band had been there without their Kabuki makeup. I was super excited, and it was also my first time out of the United States. My fascination with the Japanese culture — and especially their electronics — was always part of my life. I loved Sony Walkmans, Panasonic boom boxes, Lafayette stereos, and especially ESP Guitars, which Japan was home to!

“Tokyo’s most famous venue is called Nippon Budokan. The arena was created for the first martial arts competition in the 1964 Olympic Games. The Beatles performed there in 1966, but more iconically, it would host Cheap Trick’s fantastic live recording, At Budokan, released in 1978 in the United States. So the name Budokan was forever etched in my brain as somewhere I would love to perform.

“Having said that, when we played there on April 22, 1988, the Japanese fans, who were almost trained to restrain their enthusiasm, showed their love for Kiss! Knowing that this concert was filmed professionally by Japan’s best broadcasting company, NHK, gave me the opportunity to relive the show. They captured the evening's magic, and my playing was filled with accuracy and emotion.

“My solo in the set meant I had to work the stage running from one side to the other, never stopping riffs from my red ESP Horizon guitar. I played flashy, but with tons of emotion. It felt like I was at my best, and between the venue and the crowd, it’s certainly a career highlight. Possibly my best show ever.”

The Worst

“My worst gig ever would have been a Kiss show in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The religious and political strife in this region of the U.K. was not easily understood by this Brooklyn-born musician. The feeling of danger when arriving in Belfast and seeing the armed police in full force gave me an uneasy feeling.

“The venue we played at was called King’s Hall, and bands like the Beatles, Thin Lizzy and U2 had performed there in previous years. This show would be our last show of the long Crazy Nights tour, taking place on October 3, 1988.

“At the time, I could never really figure out why — and maybe it was due to unrest in the city of Belfast — but the excited fans at King’s Hall were spitting all over us! They were quite gifted at spitting, even reaching my fingerboard, while I was doing my best to play guitar!

“As you can imagine, this was incredibly horrific. I had their spit in my hair and all over my clothes! Gene [Simmons] and Paul [Stanley] suffered as well, though Eric Carr was spared being behind the drum kit.

“Later, we were told that’s how audiences in Ireland express their love for a band — by drenching them in phlegm. Sorry, no, thank you! I was glad when that show ended and happy to return home to America.”

Karl Cochran, the rock guitar player who worked with Kiss and performed with singer Joe Lynn Turner, died on February 19 in Bridgewater, New Jersey. He was 61.

Cochran was the passenger in a car driven by his 90-year-old mother when she struck a tree while backing up the car. The guitarist was ejected from the vehicle. Cochran was flown by helicopter to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Cochran performed electric guitar with the solo group of former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley in the 1990s. When the original Kiss lineup regrouped in 1996, Cochran’s career got a boost. Along with Frehley, he co-wrote “Into the Void,” a track from the group’s 1998 reunion album, Psycho Circus. He and Frehley had demoed the song on their own before they succeeded in getting it into the album's lineup.

Cochran recovered from a stroke in 2014 and continued to work as a music producer and engineer and teach guitar and bass.

Upon hearing the news of his passing, Kiss shared a post about Cochran with a photo of him and guitarist Paul Stanley.

“Our dear friend Karl Cochran was killed in a car accident on Feb. 19th,” it read. “Karl was a vocalist and guitarist extraordinaire who suffered a massive stroke but never stopped fighting to make his way back. He was loved by our fans worldwide through his appearances worldwide and was a constant inspiration as our guest on our KISS Kruises.”

Cochran began working with singer Joe Lynn Turner in 2003, when he performed on his album JLT. He went on to work on subsequent albums with Turner, perform onstage with him and co-write songs, including “In Your Eyes” from 2007’s Second Hand Life.

Joe Lynn Turner wrote a tribute to Cochran on Instagram, stating: “I have lost a brother, friend and partner. Now there will always be a missing part of my heart. I shall always remember and celebrate with love for the time I was fortunate enough to share with his incredible character and boundless spirit.”

Cochran was also a member of the Eric Singer Project, featuring the Kiss drummer.

Kiss’s ever-outspoken bass-playing, blood-drinking ringleader Gene Simmons might define the band’s notorious 1974 tour with Black Sabbath as the making of “a lifelong memory,” but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a fierce rivalry at play.

The English heavy metal band were five albums deep into their career at that point, still basking in the success of their 1973 LP, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, as they continued their meteoric rise.

Conversely, Kiss were new kids on the block in the summer of ‘74, having dropped their self-titled debut album months earlier. They'd scored an opening slot with Sabbath for what Simmons recalls as "three or four shows." But while it may have been a David-versus-Goliath matchup on paper, that didn’t stop the makeup-clad glam rockers from putting up a fight.

“I've always loved and admired Black Sabbath, and can proudly say the early days of touring together will be a lifelong memory," Simmons tells Classic Rock.

“The Sabbath of 1974 had all the adrenaline of a new band in a strange land doing what they believe in. There was no question Sabbath was going to do things their way. Love them or hate them, this would be a band that would mark its own territory like an animal.”

Rather than wait, Simmons decided to lay into the group first. His victim? Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler. It happened at the Boston Theater, where the bands performed for some 12,000 fans.

“I was backstage fully made-up and ready to go out onstage with the band,” Simmons recalls. “Standing next to me was the great Geezer Butler. All five feet six inches of him! In my platform heels, I stood at about six feet nine inches tall.

“It's in my DNA — once the war paint was on, I became the Demon. And Geezer didn't quite know what to make of me.”

Simmons knew this was his chance to leave a mark on the headline act.

“As he stood next to me, he looked me up and down,” Simmons adds. “I looked down at him. I glared at him and stuck out my tongue, lowered my head so we were face-to-face with each other, and I said, ‘Aaahhhh!’

“Many years later, Ozzy either told me or I read it someplace — Geezer had come back and told him he felt threatened by the bass player in the opening act. He didn't think that was a good sign.

“And he was right,” he adds. “Our intention was to go out onstage and destroy all living things. We did.”

Ozzy would later tell Kerrang! that following the band each night was “frightening,” which would have been music to the Demon’s ears.

Indeed, Simmons may have felt Kiss won the first battle in Boston, but the war was far from over and the two bands would soon lock horns once more

“At the next show in Rochester, New York, our road manager was told that we would have to go on immediately,” Simmons says. “The problem was that the Sabbath amplifier line was too close to the edge of the stage, so we did not even have enough room to go by each other to get to the other side.

“What followed was a staring contest. We would not go on until the Sabbath amplifier line was pulled back.”

It seems Kiss claimed another victory. Says Simmons, “It was pulled back.”

Despite his obvious gloating, Simmons says his recollections come with "a great deal of admiration, respect and love for one of the few bands who forged the way for countless others to follow.

“I will never forget the first time I ever heard the name Black Sabbath. It was an advertisement for their first album. It appeared in Rolling Stone. It said: 'Black Sabbath — louder than Led Zeppelin!' Louder and prouder, indeed.”

In related news, former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley has admitted to stealing a Robby Krieger guitar solo for a classic Kiss song and recalled the electrifying onstage incident that should have left him for dead.

Frehley has also opened up on how the band's “weird chemistry” was a recipe for success, which Simmons has likened to George Lucas' Star Wars franchise, believing “We created a culture with Kiss.”

Rock music is full of licks, riffs and songs that writers and musicians borrowed or stole outright from others. The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ USA” is a copy of Chuck Berry's “Sweet Little Sixteen,” George Harrison's “My Sweet Lord” closely follows the chord pattern from the Chiffons’ “He's So Fine,” and Neil Young admitted to taking the melody from the Rolling Stones’ ”Lady Jane” for his own appropriately titled “Borrowed Tune.”

You can add Ace Frehley to that list. According to Gene Simmons, Ace was so enamored of a Robbie Krieger electric guitar solo that he lifted in virtually note for note for “She,” a track from the 1975 Kiss album, Dressed to Kill. The Krieger solo comes from the Doors’ “Five to One,” from their 1968 album, Waiting for the Sun.

Simmons made the revelation on The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan podcast. The former Kiss bass guitar player recalled how Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready told him Ace Frehley’s guitar work had been a big inspiration to him. Specifically, McCready cited “She” as one of the first guitar solos he learned and said it had served as the inspiration for Pearl Jam’s hit “Alive.”

“I said, ‘Mike, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that’s a note-for-note guitar solo from the Doors,” Simmons explained. “Ace liked it so much, he just reproduced it. He goes, ‘No!’”

Simmons went on to point out that there was nothing nefarious or unusual about Frehley’s appropriation of Krieger’s solo.

“My point is, it’s always very appreciative when somebody says, ‘Loved your stuff,’ ” Simmons says. “Everybody’s got bits and pieces of stuff. Listen to Zeppelin songs, you’ll hear lots of blues, very recognizable, blues songs.”

Indeed, even Led Zeppelin have been accused of plagiarism, as when they took words from Willie Dixon’s “You Need Love” for their own 1969 hit “Whole Lotta Love.” Guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant were famously sued in 2014 by the estate of Spirit guitarist Randy California, which claimed the famous arpeggiated guitar lines to the Led Zeppelin track “Stairway to Heaven” were inspired by California’s own song “Taurus.”

Remarkably, “Alive” was not among the tracks McCready selected when Guitar Player asked him to name the five songs that best define his career. But the guitarist has spoken at length about his Kiss obsession, which began when he was a youngster in school.

“I remember being on a school bus in sixth grade in 1976, with my friend Rick Friel, who eventually played in my high school band Shadow,” McCready told Rolling Stone in 2014. “He had a lunchbox that had Kiss on it. ‘What is that?’ Then he played me some music and I was hooked immediately.”

McCready spoke further about his Kiss love with Chris Schiflett’s Shred With Shifty podcast, “I obsessed on it,” McCready said. “It was exciting, and then that turned me on to all sorts of other music. I just wanted to emulate that stuff.”

Despite taking inspiration from Frehley for his “Alive” solo, McCready told Shiflett,” I don't do the solo the same live all the time.”

Ace Frehley recently told Guitar Player about his top five Kiss tracks, and spoke with us about the group's infamous 1979 interview with Tom Snyder that upset Simmons when Frehley stole the spotlight with his jokes and incessant laughter. “I was nervous as hell,” Frehley said about the interview. “I think I drank half a pint of vodka, and then I did some blow to wake up.”

From a casino burning down to channeling "The James Bond Theme" at sound check — rock and rollers have taken inspiration from some of the strangest things.

But as Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gary Rossington once said, “The more wild experiences you have, the better songs you can write.” And for former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley, a brush with death provided the genesis for one of the glam rocker’s biggest hits.

Looking back at his event-filled Kiss days during a new MusicRadar interview, Frehley first pointed out how his platform boots — a quintessential part of his stage outfit — led to a series of mishaps that would leave him worse for wear.

“I used to fall a lot in those boots,” the guitarist relays. “A lot of times. Paul would cover for me by walking over to me like it was part of the show. He made it look like it was choreography or something.

“If nobody realized I’d fallen, I play on my knees and get back up. It was just part of the show!”

Playing into this, the band decided Frehley would drop to his knees for the solo at the end of "Black Diamond," from the group's self-titled 1974 debut. But doing was the precursor to a series of injuries he would incur while gigging with Kiss.

“I screwed my knees up doing that… the weight of the Les Paul really killed them,” he reflects. “During the Reunion Tour, I ended up chipping a bone in my knee, and the doctor said, ‘Listen, you gotta stop doing that or you’ll end up in a wheelchair.’”

As the old saying goes, the show must go on, and the group devised a compromise. “We ended up putting a pad under the carpet where I’d fall," Frehley explains. "I tried to hit it. If you look at old videos, you can see that I’d go down one knee at a time.”

But that injury was tame compared to others involving his electric guitar. The instrument was designed to emit smoke from the pickups cavity at a crucial point in the show. At one point it even had a rocket launcher.

“I burned my leg real bad once back in the ‘70s," Ace says: "A smoke bomb ignited too early inside the cavity of the guitar, and it melted the asbestos—which our f**king costumes were made from—to my thigh,” he says.

Before then he'd accidentally shot a rocket at bass player Gene Simmons when his prop guitar misfired. "It almost f**king hit him,” he laughs.

While those injuries were more painful than life-threatening, one incident nearly had far more fatal consequences. While playing a show in Lakeland, Florida in 1976, Frehley was electrocuted after a grounding issue unknowingly left a staircase rail that was part of the band’s stage setup, electrically charged.

“I should have been dead that night,” he tells MR. “The fact that I got electrocuted and didn’t fall forward was a godsend. There must have been angels pushing me back.

“I was standing on top of four Marshall cabinets on a staircase when I got shocked. I had a heavy Les Paul around my neck, and my body should have fallen forward. I would have broken by neck, but I fell back, and the road crew dragged me back off of the staircase.”

Whether he has angels or his luck to thank matters not; Frehley survived and saw out the gig, despite having “no feeling in my hands for five to 10 minutes”.

“I maybe had feeling in half of my fingers by the time it was done. It was crazy shit, man, but I did get 'Shock Me' out of it," he says, referring to his track from 1977's Love Gun. "So I guess it wasn’t all for nothing.”

The song helped the band score their first top-five album on the Billboard 200. Nearly being zapped to death by his own stage was a small price to pay.

It was also the first Kiss song to feature Frehley as the main vocalist.

“I hope the fans realise that I’m for real,” Ace continues,. “All the stuff I’ve done was not contrived or remotely premeditated. It was always spontaneous. With my guitar work, how I wrote songs, and how I play live: None of that spontaneity has changed.

“That makes things magical. You can do the same thing over and over again if you want, but eventually, it’s gonna get stale. But if you come out with something that’s magic, man, that’s the one. My career is a testament to that.”

When Love Gun dropped, few American rock bands could rival Kiss' popularity. Two years later, they sat down with Tom Snyder for a now-iconic interview, of which the guitarist has recently dished the dirt.

He's also admitted he should have better honed his guitar playing skills throughout his career, while he is said to “still get excited like a little kid, like a true rock fan,” at 72 years old.

Frehley released his aptly titled eighth solo album, 10,000 Volts last year, which is set to be quickly followed up by the third installment in his Origins series of records later this year.

At one time, Ace Frehley was a manifestation, if not an outright snapshot, of rock and roll excess. That came in the form of balls-to-the-wall, Les Paul–into-a-Marshall badassery and a party-hearty lifestyle.

Things are different now, of course. Frehley is coming up on 18 years of sobriety. But in his early years with Kiss, the electric guitar player was anything but a teetotaler. “People ask me questions about stuff I did 40 or 50 years ago,” he tells Guitar Player. “They expect me to have total recall.”

Given his drug and alcohol intake, that's hardly possible. “I make stuff up sometimes because I don’t remember,” he admits. “I had no idea these songs would have this type of longevity, or that I’d go on to be a part of one of the biggest groups in the world.”

Spaced-out as Frehley was in the 1970 and early ’80s, he insists it was all business when he sauntered into the studio. “For me, it was about going into the studio and getting the work done — and then I’d go party," he cackles. "I’d go hit Studio 54. That’s where the action was."

“Even when I performed with Kiss, I’d have a couple of drinks, maybe a couple of lines of blow, but the heavy partying happened after the show. I had pride. I wanted to be able to play the solos the way the kids heard them on the record. I didn’t want to disappoint people. I saved the partying for after the show.”

If the part about pre-show drinks and blow sounds contradictory, that’s because it is. And it's easy to see Frehley made no bones about indulging his habits even when the band were making an important TV appearance. For evidence, let's look back to Kiss’s ’79 appearance on The Tomorrow Show, with host Tom Snyder.

Snyder was, at the time, one of the most-watched talk show hosts in late-night TV. He was known for bringing on important and controversial guests, and had hosted everyone from John Lennon and Yoko Ono to philosopher Ayn Rand.

Kiss's appearance on The Tomorrow Show was timed for Halloween, for obvious reasons. Snyder was providing the four members — Ace, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss — a chance to discuss their rise and worldwide success. But while Simmons and Stanley were keen to follow the script, it was clear almost from the beginning that Ace was going off the rails, making wisecracks and telling jokes, often at the band's expense.

“I was nervous as hell,” he explains. “I think I drank half a pint of vodka, and then I did some blow to wake up.”

That sounds like a lot of drugs, but for Frehley it was business as usual. “Yeah… it was crazy,” he shrugs. “But I was crazy back then. Anything went when I was in my 20s. I mean… everybody was doing that shit.”

Watching Snyder’s interview with Kiss, one can’t help but laugh, as much for Ace as for Stanley's and Simmons' pained reactions. Even before the interview was over, it was obvious Ace had stolen the show. “When I was on, nobody was funnier than me,” Frehley insists.

“Paul and Gene would try to compete with me but always fail,” he says. “If you look at the old interviews, even when I was loaded and buzzed, once I got into the groove, you couldn’t top me. Gene would try and throw a line in there. I remember Gene tried to tell a joke to Tom Snyder, but he got completely ignored.”

With Frehley doing everything from drunkenly howling to playing with teddy bears and making a lewd joke about being a plumber, one can understand why Snyder fixated on him.

“The plumber thing came completely out of the blue,” he says. “I didn’t plan that; it’s just a line that I came up with. Why this shit flies into my head… I have no idea. It’s probably all the substances I was doing.”

He laughs, but he’s serious. Funny as Frehley’s antics were, it was apparent that Simmons and Stanley weren’t pleased with their lead guitarist's behavior. “Kiss had a weird chemistry back then,” Frehley says. “We had a weird dynamic, which is one of the reasons that group worked.”

Still, Frehley asserts that Kiss thrived on that sort of push/pull. “The four of us were different,” he explains. “Somehow, someway, we got together. That energy… sometimes we’d argue, but when we got together, most of the time, it worked.”

What’s more, Frehley offers a counterpoint to the long-running theory that Simmons and Stanley were furious over his behavior on Snyder's program. “I watched it about six months ago,” he says. “I noticed that toward the end of the video, Paul and Gene were put off by me going off on crazy tangents, but at the end they started joining in with my insanity.”

“It might have been because they couldn’t win,” he adds, with a laugh. “Tom was in love with me. He was so surprised that I was such a maniac and a funny guy. The only way for Gene and Paul to win was to be as zany and nutty as I was; it helped. But earlier in the interview, yeah… they were resistant. It looked awkward.”

Less than a year after Kiss’s appearance on The Tomorrow Show, Criss was out of the band. Two years later, Frehley quit, too. But Frehley doesn’t see the infamous Snyder appearance as a precursor to any of that.

“That’s not necessarily true,” he says. “I knew I was going to leave Kiss. I quit, though I was never fired. Peter was fired, but I never was. I quit Kiss because I realized I was more creative away from those guys. And with the show, I think that was just an example of how different our four personalities were.”

The end of Kiss’s golden era and its excess are in many ways defined by their appearance on Snyder's show. As for how Frehley looks back on that era?

“You take everybody’s personalities for what they were,” he says. “That’s who we were at the time.”

“That evolved over time,” he concludes. “You know, Paul isn’t the same as he was back then as he is now… or maybe he is. But I know I’ve changed a lot, though I’m still just as funny as I was back then — even if I don’t get loaded anymore. That’s for sure.”

Ace Frehley was one of the original masked group members in the iconic lineup of Kiss from 1973 until his untimely exit in 1982, before returning again for another stint between 1996 to 2002. Taking on the stage persona of the Spaceman, which he inhabited as lead guitarist for the pyro musical circus that was Kiss, it became one of the most recognizable characters in popular culture. Frehley’s distinctive unschooled six-string meanderings went on to connect with a generation of electric guitar players that followed in his wake, influencing players from Kim Thayil to Ty Tabor to the late Dimebag Darrell to name but a few.

After his departure from Kiss, Frehley took to fronting his own outfit Frehley’s Comet before segueing into numerous solo outings. While having achieved some of the greatest heights of fame that being a member of Kiss bestowed, he never lost sight of who he was and where he came from, always holding firm to the belief that he was “just a kid from the Bronx who got lucky.” To Frehley, the mass admiration shown to him by fans and fellow guitarists alike causes much pause for reflection.

“I’d probably have practiced a little more If I knew I was going to affect that many people’s lives,” he says. “It does make me proud and very happy though that I influenced a lot of great guitar players. And with so many of them, I can't even begin to name, I have become friends with too. I recently went to see John 5 play and he gave me a picture of when he had met me when he was only 15 years old, and it made me feel old! But look at him now? He is such an amazing guitarist and now playing with Mötley Crüe!”

Frehley's most recent outing is 2024's 10,000 Volts, on which he's continued to prove his talent for pumping out heavy doses of attitude, high-energy hooks and riffs to die for.

“Steve Brown [Trixter, lead guitarist], my co-producer of 10,000 Volts was a huge fan of mine, and told me that his two biggest influences were me and Eddie Van Halen,” Frehley says. “And he's not only an amazing guitar player and songwriter, but he's also a great engineer. He's been engineering for over 30 years on Pro Tools. So I didn't even have to hire an engineer to record this latest record. Steve lives 45 minutes from me, and has a studio in his basement. Sometimes I'd go to his house and we'd work, and then his wife would come down around six o'clock and say, ‘dinner's ready’. We’d go upstairs, have dinner, and then I'd do magic tricks for kids.

“The process in the way I record music hasn't changed since my 1978 solo record or even before that with Kiss. I have a certain sound and it's very recognizable. I don't really think too much about what I do or how I do it, largely because I wasn't trained and I can't read music. I just kind of do things by feel and just do what feels right to me.”

And while simplicity may lay at the core of Frehley’s signature guitar work on record, additional layering of guitars to enhance the tonal colors to his rhythm tracks have always been part and parcel to his studio modus operandi. “I actually learned that technique from Pete Townshend,” he says. “If you listen to the early Who records, a lot of times when Pete recorded with an electric guitar, he would also support it by doubling it with an acoustic guitar. It's buried in the mix so you really don't hear it sometimes, but if you pulled it out of the mix, you would definitely miss it..”

With Kiss officially behind him — heck, behind them as well — Frehley is at peace with what’s gone before. He even owns up to the fact that the late studio ace Bob Kulick recorded some of his guitar parts on a number of Kiss tracks.

“I normally don't look back,” Frehley ponders. “The past is the past. Bob was a great guitar player and I was really good friends with him. We’d talk to each other every now and then, and I’d meet him at places where we would jam together. I didn't, and still don’t have a problem with Bob playing on those tracks. To be honest, I was probably doing other things anyway. Or I was drunk.”

“COLD GIN” (1974)

“I wrote this song when I was in my early 20s in the subways of New York City on the way down to a KISS rehearsal one day. The main riff came into my head, and when I got there, I played it to the rest of the band. Paul, Gene and Peter said that it could make a good song, so I played with it some more and then wrote some lyrics. And next thing you know, we got a song that became a Kiss classic!

“I used a Gibson Les Paul Standard ‘honeyburst’ that I bought at Manny’s Music. It was only a couple of years old. I plugged that into a 100-watt JMP Super Lead Marshall. My whole career has been pretty much Les Pauls and Marshalls in the studio. Sometimes I'd overdub with Fenders and Danelectros and acoustics, but the Les Paul has always been the guitar I would cut the basic track with. I probably did this in one take. I don't exactly remember. It’s been over 40 years ago.”

“STRANGE WAYS” (1974)

“This is one of my all-time favorite guitar solos. It was recorded through an early model MCI automated console. I had a Marshall Stack set up along with my Les Paul, and once we recorded the basic track, I switched over to bass and threw down a bass part along with some vocals. When it came time to try and get a guitar solo down, I wasn't happy with the sound I was getting — I wanted more feedback, but we were having some issues internally with the equipment. So I said to the engineer, ‘I'm just going to go out in front of the Marshall stack and stand right in front of it and play the solo.’ So I stood in front of the stack, laid down the solo in one take. And that was the solo we kept.”

“ROCKET RIDE” (1977)

“I don’t have much recollection of this. I’m sure it was the usual Les Paul–and-Marshall combo. I vaguely recall using a Vox wah too. It was one of the older models. I just did things on the spot; I was never schooled as a musician, so I’ve always done solos without thinking, for the most part.

“With Pro Tools now, it's become a lot easier. I can just do multiple solos and piece them together. A lot of times I'll do six solos and then I'll take the front half of one, the center of another and the tail end of a third, or sometimes it'll be one solo from beginning to end. There's no rhyme or reason why anything happens, because I don't think when I play; I just play. I'm still playing this song live today. It’s a staple in my set.”

“NEW YORK GROOVE” (1978)

“To be honest, I actually didn't want to record this song. It was originally recorded by some English glam-rockers called Hello. Eddie Kramer my producer, introduced me to it. He kept saying to me, ‘Ace, you’ve got to record this song,’ and I kept saying, ‘I don't think it has anything to do with any of the other songs.’ But once we had finished recording a lot of the album in Connecticut, we went down to Manhattan to do the overdubs and vocals, and once we got down there, he finally talked me into doing it.

“We tracked ‘New York Groove’ at Plaza Sound Studios and the song turned out to be my biggest hit! Who knew? I used my sunburst ‘59 Les Paul, which I don't own anymore. I bought it in a guitar store, and it was really faded, but it was a great guitar. Gibson actually ended up putting out a copy of it several years ago. They got ahold of a guy that owned it and did a version that was aged and a regular version too.”

“RIP IT OUT” (1978)

“This is a track I wrote prior to Rock and Roll Over [1976] album. So I had it ready for that album, but because I knew that my solo album was coming up after Rock and Roll Over, I decided to keep it. I actually kept a couple of good ones — just held them back for my solo record.

“After the success of the solo record, I realized I was being more creative away from Paul and Gene and Peter than I was being with them. So the writing was kind of on the wall that I would leave and put together my own band. Plus, I was also having issues with alcohol and drugs and that kind of set things back for a while after I quit. But once I got my head screwed on straight, I put together a band and put out the first Frehley’s Comet album on Megaforce Records. But that’s a whole other story.”

Bruce Kulick has entered the world of luthiery by teaming up with Johnny DiFatta's AXN Guitars for ‘80s-style Super Strats that pay homage to his days in Kiss.

Together, they will craft boutique, vintage-inspired instruments under the brand name Kulick Guitars, as the guitarist seeks to establish himself off the stage as much as he has on it.

Kulick enjoyed a 12-year stint in Kiss that produced eight studio albums. Last year he wrapped up a 23-year run with Grand Funk Railroad.

Upon leaving the band, he told Guitar World he wanted to return to the “powerful instruments” that weren’t appropriate in the band. To do so, he noted he had “jumped down the rabbit hole of discovery” to learn “what made my Kiss guitars so great.”

He subsequently forged a partnership with DiFatta, whose USA-made AXN guitars — and diehard passion for Kiss — made them a perfect match. The duo have already crafted re-creations of Kulick’s unmissable banana ESP M-1 and an M-1 style guitar inspired by the cover of Kiss’s 1985 album, Asylum, that features Kulick's face. Kulick has been test-driving the guitar on the road.

"Johnny’s knowledge of these instruments is tremendous, and matches my experience as a guitar slinger of the time, inspiring many spirited conversations," Kulick says. “My early Kiss Super Strats were Charvels with the gold decal and angle headstock, loaded with EMGs. But, after [1985’s] Animalize, I was introduced to ESP. The early M-1 models had necks that were better in my hand.”

Ultimately, he says he wants to create instruments worthy of having his name on the headstock. In addition to Kiss and Grand Funk, the guitarist has toured with Meat Loaf and Michael Bolton, and recorded with Paul Stanley and Billy Squier.

Kulick’s first M-1, a 1985 model, had what DiFatta calls “a flip-flop paint job”. Today, it hangs on a wall in London’s Hard Rock Cafe next to one of Eric Clapton’s Stratocasters.

“I went on to manufacture and produce a replica of that M-1 ESP, but it had a chunkier neck on it,” DiFatta says. “We applied some guitar math and used a caliper tool to examine his favorite ESP guitars. Bruce settled on a slightly thinner neck profile that was very 1980s-ish, with an R2 nut.”

Kulick and DiFatta thought it would be fitting to show the guitarist's face on the instrument's body, especially as Asylum turns 40 in 2025. That flip-flop paint job has returned, too.

The Asylum guitar features a two-piece alder body and a rosewood fretboard with a quartersawn maple back, fitted to a 25.5-inch-scale neck. Hardware includes a German Floyd Rose with AXN's signature SuperWide sustain block and an AXN/Seymour Duncan JB Custom humbucker.

“Bruce wants to offer boutique guitars,” DiFatta says. “His fans are constantly asking for more guitars that celebrate his Kiss era. We started talking about the woods, the hardware, all the specifications, and the pickups.

DiFatta, who manufacturers only a few guitars a year, says he has no plans to increase output with the new Kulick range. "AXN will continue to be concerned more about uniqueness and individuality instead of quantity and high production," he says.

He adds that the collaboration “isn't about money. I'm a Kiss fan first and foremost, yet it's also about our crazy obsession with era-correct guitars of the '80s.”

Kulick echoes that sentiment. He says: “In the past five years, I’ve seen a revival of my Kiss era… I’m always flattered that it’s not just the music that moved them. The guitars I played also matter.

“I can’t say when I’ll have stock to offer. Anyone who knows me will say I give a lot of attention to detail. That fits well with how Johnny works. This collaboration will help me create boutique-quality guitars worthy of my name on the headstock.”

"At the end of the day, Mother Nature and Father Time get their comeuppance,” Gene Simmons offers, philosophically. “They put their hand out and say, ‘Okay, time for you to pay us for this wonderful life you’ve led.’ You have to have the dignity, self-respect and pride to know when it’s time to get off that stage.” 

Making that move hasn’t been easy for Simmons. When Kiss wrapped up their nearly four-year-long End of the Road tour last week, it brought the group’s 50-year reign to a rousing finale. Kiss may have taken their sweet time crossing the finish line, but when it’s over, the 74-year-old bassist will be able to look back at a life and career of his own choosing and making. 

It’s not an exaggeration to say no dream was impossible to achieve for Simmons. He was born into a “dirt-poor” family and immigrated to the United States from Israel when he was just eight. 

He learned to speak English from watching TV and, later, in 1964, was inspired to become a rock musician after seeing the Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. Fueled by a tsunami of ambition, ego and a relentless work ethic, his larger-than-life vision brought him and his bandmates unfathomable fame and fortune and entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

As Kiss play the final dates on their End of the Road tour, which winds up, aptly, in their hometown with a two-gig engagement at Madison Square Garden, we caught up with the Demon for a look back at how it all began — and what happens when the curtain rings down on Kiss for the final time.

Let’s go back almost 50 years to the first Kiss gig at Coventry, formerly the Popcorn Pub, in Queens, New York. 

I remember passing by a place that used to be the Popcorn Pub in Woodside, Queens, New York. It was not a very cool place. Paul and I were just coming off of Wicked Lester [their pre-Kiss band]. We had a manager whose name was Lew Linet. He managed [singer-songwriter] Diana Marcovitz and a band called J.F. Murphy & Free Flowing Salt, who were signed to Elektra, I believe. Eddie Kramer may have engineered their record, or produced it. 

Lew was a nice guy, but he was not a rock guy. As Paul and I were transitioning from Wicked Lester to Kiss, Peter [Criss] joined us in the fall of 1972 and we played as a trio for two months before Ace [Frehley] came in. 

I paid for the loft we were rehearsing in, because I had a job and I was able to afford to pay most of the $200-a-month rent. Paul would chip in every once in a while when he drove a cab. Paul and I went down to Manny’s Music Shop on 48th Street to buy a Peavey sound system, and I remember he did contribute some money, but whatever shortfall there was, I’d have to cover. 

What kind of bass were you playing for those shows? 

We hadn’t as yet done shows. We were rehearsing. There was a guy named Charlie LoBue who made handmade guitars. I remember telling him to build me a smaller-body bass guitar, almost the size of a Les Paul Junior, with that kind of body style and with two horns. That would later become the prototype for what became my Punisher, a bass with a fully exposed neck so I could slide all the way up the neck and play harmonies with the guitar, so it wouldn’t sound like a bass playing it. 

So we were a trio at this point, and for a short time we thought, Hey, we’re going to be a power trio. Paul could sing, I could sing, and Peter could sing. We liked his “whiskey” voice. Paul could write songs, and I could write songs, so what else do you need? And maybe we’d write songs more like the Who, where you didn’t have to have lots of solo guitar playing. We were not yet called Kiss. As a power trio, we were playing new songs we’d just written, like “Deuce,” “Strutter” and “Black Diamond.” 

Originally, we thought, Gee, this doesn’t sound bad; you don’t need a lead guitar. But then when the middle section of “Deuce” came up, we couldn’t just keep playing the chords over and over again. Paul didn’t feel comfortable enough to do the solos, so we started to look for a lead guitar player. But before that, Lew Linet came in and had ear plugs on, and he kept saying, “Why are you guys playing so loudly?” So we immediately knew, this is not the guy for us; he doesn’t understand.

And in the nicest way, we went up to his office and said we should split, and that it’s just not working for us, and he agreed and was a gentleman about it, and so were we. And we wished him well. And then, of course, when Ace joined the band, those stories we’ve told about that day are like a fictional cartoon show. 

It might have been a segment of The Simpsons, where this guy comes in with an orange sneaker and a red sneaker and, oblivious to anybody else auditioning any other guitar player, he just plugs in and starts playing. 

And you screamed at him and told him to shut up. 

Exactly right. Poor Bob Kulick was just finishing up auditioning, and we knew it wasn’t working. Bob could play, but it was left up to me to give someone the bad news. I walked up to Ace with poor Bob Kulick in the room, looking around and not knowing what’s going on. 

I said to Ace, “Can you shut the fuck up? What are you doing? Sit down. We’re in the middle of auditioning.” Ace said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” He was oblivious to the fact that there was anybody there. But even with his eccentricities, Ace was our guy. 

Ace joined in December 1972, and less than two months later Kiss played their first gig at Coventry, on January 30, 1973. Why did you choose this club? 

I called the Daisy in Amityville, New York to get us gigs, and I was also the guy that called Coventry. For one thing, we couldn’t play anywhere else. There was no demand. We were a brand-new band, and we weren’t playing hits. You could get a gig more easily at a club if you played the local hits. 

We were not playing covers. We were a totally original band. Not only that, right around that time, we decided, Hey, let’s wear makeup. So that was happening at the same time, but we didn’t have a manager. 

For our first gig at Coventry, which we played a few times, we got the sum total of $35 for two or three nights. The fact that we got those Daisy and Coventry gigs is because I’m a silver-tongued devil. I tell people what they want to hear: “Oh, we’re the best thing since sliced bread,” and, “We’re heavy metal masters” — we used that term when it wasn’t commonly used, and we didn’t have a clue what it meant. 

For that first show at Coventry, there were about 10 people there: my then-girlfriend Jan Walsh; her best friend, who was going out with her brother; Lydia, Peter Criss’s wife at the time; and very few others. Nobody knew and nobody cared. But when we were onstage doing “Strutter,” “Deuce” and “Black Diamond,” we felt it.

We knew it. It was finally the chemistry, finally the sound and the vibe and the look, with the right guys that we had imagined, and very few things in life turn out that way. It’s that chemistry thing. Now, of course, some chemistry can be volatile. You put the wrong chemistry together and it burns up or explodes. 

When do you think you, Paul, Ace and Peter really started to find your mojo as live performers? 

Well, initially, there was that sense of, Wow, this is a real band, and that happened at the Daisy. People had come to see us. This was after Coventry. When we were onstage, there was a real energy. You’d look across the stage and we’re doing all this original material, and some of it, like “Too Young” and “Life in the Woods,” we only played back in the club days. “Too Young” was written by me and was cut down and turned into the song “Acrobat.” 

But there was a full three or four minutes after that, and we’re listening to ourselves and playing, looking across the stage and really getting off on it. In fact, Ace, had the makeup on without the white face, and when he looked into the Mylar reflection of Peter’s drum kit, he started laughing. He was getting off on his own thing. 

Later on in our set, we’re hearing the guitar playing and it sounds really good, and Ace is rocking out. And then we look across the stage — and he’s not onstage! Somehow he’d climbed onto this ledge off the stage and was rocking out. He’s always been like that. 

And of course, during the performance of “Life in the Woods” — a “clap your hands together” kind of song — I remember stepping off the stage, in makeup, and going up to a girl who was clearly pregnant and taking the drink out of her hands, grabbing her hands and forcing her to clap. There was also a conga line that formed during that song. All kinds of crazy stuff was happening. We were finding our way at that early stage.

As Kiss ramps up for the last dates on “The End of the Road” tour and the final shows the band will ever perform, take us through the evolution of a Kiss show — from the formative days playing in local dives into the ’70s OG band’s heyday and to the present day with the End of the Road tour and its over-the-top theatrics and bombast. 

Managers either have vision and see the future — the big picture — or they’re like a bookkeeper, just keeping tabs on things. We were lucky to meet a guy named Bill Aucoin, who had a music TV show called Flipside, where they interviewed John Lennon in a recording studio. He was one of the names I found in the Billboard year-end issue, where they list all the major movers and shakers in the music business. 

I was working in an office at that point, the Puerto Rican Interagency Council, and I put together the bio kit. Peter, Paul and Ace were putting up posters around town. I remember mailing out invites to everybody, every record president. 

Bill Aucoin, even though he was not a manager or a producer or with a record label, he got the photo and the invite, and he showed up at our show at the Hotel Diplomat. For our show, we were still doing what we did at Coventry and the Daisy. Bill saw us and said, “Okay, I’m going to get you a deal in two weeks or you don’t have to use me as a manager.” 

And he did. From there, he became the captain of the ship. He started talking early on about trademarks, and we didn’t know what that was. “Yeah, we’re going to trademark your faces so nobody can copy you.” 

“Oh, that sounds like a good idea.” 

Then he said, “We don’t want to let people see your real faces.” We said, “Well, why not? What about chicks and all that?” “No, no, you’ve got to keep up the mystery.” “Oh, okay, that sounds like a good idea.” He came up with that. 

And it was Bill Aucoin who said, “Okay, we need to find gags.” Bill scoured around and found a company that could levitate the drum set. Bill brought in a magician named Amazo or something, a fire-breathing guy who was completely bald. We asked him, “Why are you bald?” and he said, “I have hair, but I shaved my head.” “Well, why do you want to do that?” And then when he spit fire in Bill Aucoin’s office and singed the ceiling, we said, “Oh, that’s why you shaved your head!” [laughs]

And for some reason Bill said, “One of you guys has got to spit fire during ‘Firehouse.’” We said, “What? We’re a rock band.” And he said, “Yeah, don’t worry about that.” And somehow I wound up being the guy to spit fire. And the lit candelabra we used onstage was also the idea of Bill Aucoin. 

Whose idea was it to introduce the lighted Kiss sign? 

That came from Bill Aucoin. Sean Delaney, who was Bill’s romantic partner and wrote songs with Paul, Ace and I, became our first tour manager. What happened in those early days is bands would just show up and play; you wouldn’t have any logos or anything. But we had this very heavy sign with our name that had to be connected to electricity. And when the Kiss logo turned on, it was blinding, so much so that when the blackouts happened, you still saw the Kiss logo etched into your retina. 

We’d be opening for bands like Manfred Mann, Argent and Savoy Brown, and after we came off the stage, our logo would still be above their heads. As the English would say, we went down a storm and did very well, and we were called back to do encores. 

The Destroyer tour ushered in a new level of theatrical presentation, which continues to evolve over the decades with the End of the Road stage set. 

Yes, that’s right. Later on, Paul and sometimes I would sit down and draw ideas for a new stage show. But in the beginning, Sean Delaney and Bill Aucoin would bring in technical people and designers who would sit there and go, “Okay, how about this and how about that?” The stage show for the Destroyer, Rock & Roll Over and Love Gun tours, all those were clearly not our ideas. 

In fact, we were rehearsing in a big airplane hangar in upstate New York, and when we came in and set up, in front of our eyes was something like a Disneyland haunted house, which was used on the Destroyer and Rock & Roll Over tours. We had no input in that. 

How about the risers and the lighted stairs? 

It was either Paul or myself that said, “Hey, how about lighting coming on, like Las Vegas? When the girls come down the stairs, the stairs light up.” That idea might have come from us, but I never want to take away from the fact that we had a real manager. 

Bill Aucoin was a very important part of the creative vision, and so was Sean Delaney. I’m not sure who came up with the idea for the risers, but we continue to use that idea even today.

December 2nd at Madison Square Garden is the last Kiss show ever. During the last song, which will surely be “Rock and Roll All Nite,” what emotions will be running through you? Do you feel you’ll have a hard time keeping it together? 

Yes. I can glibly sit here and talk about how I’ll be feeling for our last show, but I’m sure it’s going to be a different kind of a thing, and much deeper. I mean, what a journey it’s been! What a trip! 

What are you going to miss the most when it’s over? I feel that Paul will be able to deal with it a little better. I think it’s going to be harder for you. 

I feel like George Lucas, where you helped create this thing that becomes not just movies and stuff but a culture. Like, when you go to Comic Con or Star Wars conventions, people dress up and it’s how you look, how you walk, how you talk. 

We created a culture with Kiss. And after Lucas sold to Disney, that doesn’t mean it goes away. You can see the vestiges, the conventions and the TV shows that continue on, and we intend on keeping Kiss going, but simply not as a touring band, and that comes out of pride. 

So you’re thinking the December 2nd Madison Square Garden concert will be Kiss’s last show ever? 

Yes, it will be the last Kiss show of all time. We’re not going to put on the makeup and put on shows anywhere. We have too much respect for what we’ve been able to accomplish, and every member that’s been in the band deserves a slice of the accolades. That includes [former guitarists] Mark St. John and even Vinnie Vincent, no matter how much trouble he caused us, or anguish. 

Everybody contributed to this thing and they have a right to be proud, because it takes goddamn hard work. If you think it’s just about putting makeup on your face and you can have a 50-year career, boy, are you dreaming.

Kiss’ latest album: Kiss off the Soundboard: Live in Poughkeepsie is available to buy and stream now

From his solo work to his stints with Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie and Mötley Crüe, John 5 has been hailed as a modern-day guitar hero. Through the years, he’s also had the opportunity to work with the original members of Kiss. 

John appears on Paul Stanley’s Live to Win album, performing on songs that include “Where Angels Dare,” which he co-wrote with Stanley and Desmond Child. He also shows up on Ace Frehley’s Origins Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 releases, and he enlisted Peter Criss to play drums on “Georgia on My Mind,” from John 5 and the Creatures’ 2021 album, Sinner. It all results from a fascination with the group that began in his youth. 

“It was spring of 1977 and I was walking through Sears when I saw the Love Gun display,” John recalls of an early encounter with the group’s music. “I loved monsters, and I was like, ‘I’ve got to have this record!’ I went home and I put it on, and it changed my life forever. It was such an epiphany. It’s the same thing that happened for people watching the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Kiss made millions of people want to pick up an instrument and play guitar, play drums, sing and write songs, and that’s why we have certain guitar players and musicians today. Kiss definitely did that for me.”

One of this generation’s most groundbreaking guitar players, we asked him to lend his expert opinion on six of his favorite Paul Stanley solos.

“Hold Me, Touch Me”

Paul Stanley — Paul Stanley (1978)

“The ‘Hold Me, Touch Me’ solo is one of my favorites because of the emotion and the slow hand vibrato, and that’s hard to do. Sometimes playing fast is easier to do than playing something with beautiful emotion and a slow hand vibrato that’ll just tear your heart out. It might be my favorite part of the song.” 

“Sure Know Something”

Kiss — Dynasty (1979)

“Listening to these solos, you can really tell when it’s Ace and when it’s Paul, and
I think that’s so cool. With ‘Sure Know Something,’ you can tell that this is planned out and this solo was written around these certain chord structures. It’s not just someone improvising, and that’s what I really like about it.” 

“Easy As It Seems”

Kiss — Unmasked (1980)

“This is one of my favorite songs from Unmasked. For this song, Paul took the approach of a rock and roll solo over this rock-pop disco beat, and I really think it’s an amazing juxtaposition.”

“You’re All That I Want”

Kiss — Unmasked (1980)

“We’re so used to hearing Ace that when these solos come in  you think, This must be a session player, because it sounds so different. This solo is mature and sounds like Steve Lukather or something from a Steely Dan record. We know Paul loves Zeppelin and bands with cool guitar players, but it doesn’t sound like that.”

“A World Without Heroes”

Kiss — Music From “The Elder” (1981)

“It’s a beautiful melodic solo, with the perfect choice of notes. It’s not like, ‘Let’s see what I can improvise over this.’ This solo is sophisticated, and the note choices couldn’t be more perfect.”

"Just a Boy”

Kiss — Music From "The Elder” (1981)

“Listening to these solos, we can start to see Paul’s formula. And it works perfectly, because he’s playing to the song. You can tell he’s a songwriter and a guitar player that knows what to do and what not to do for the song. I would have played something totally different that probably wouldn’t have fit as well. But Paul shows you don’t have to be a shredder to be an incredible guitar player. This is sophisticated songwriting and playing.”

"We wanted to be a band that had heavy guitars but also songs with strong melodies and choruses. That’s the school I grew up in,” Paul Stanley says, reflecting on the birth of Kiss, the group he co-founded some 50 years ago. “It was coming more from the Brill Building kind of writers than headbanging. 

"The idea was to combine some of the old Tin Pan Alley sensibilities with the Beatles’ style of songwriting and make it more guitar-driven, like Led Zeppelin, or the Rolling Stones and the Who. Interestingly, most of it was about rhythm guitar, which is the foundation of everything. Without it, everything falls apart.” 

From humble roots in Queens, New York, through equal measures of talent, ambition, hard work and self-belief, Paul Stanley willed himself into becoming a rock star. His Kiss persona is the Starchild after all, and he’s been championed as one of rock’s greatest frontmen. In concert, he’s part game-show host, part gospel preacher, espousing the life-affirming spirit of anthemic, fist-waving rock and roll thunder. 

More than most guitarists, Stanley embraces his vital role as a rhythm player. Think of him as the bastard child of Keith Richards’ raucous riffery, the arena-rock power-chord majesty of Pete Townshend and the boogie-rock splendor of Humble Pie’s Steve Marriott. 

And like all three of those guitarists, Stanley has taken to the task with a mixture of swagger and attitude. His rowdy rhythms and arena-ready riffs on Kiss classics like “Strutter,” “Got to Choose,” “C’mon and Love Me,” “Rock and Roll All Nite” and countless others were the sonic fuel that helped transport four struggling New York City musicians into superstardom and, decades later, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

Throughout Kiss’s storied career, both on record and in concert, lead guitarists Ace Frehley, Vinnie Vincent, Mark St. John, Bruce Kulick and Tommy Thayer have done the heavy lifting as fleet-fingered six-string soloists. But on the rare occasion when Stanley steps up to peel off a guitar solo, it’s always special, memorable and instantly hummable. 

Neither a flashy soloist nor a speed merchant, Stanley makes each note count. He’s a distinctive stylist plucked from the George Harrison school of guitar playing, who hunkers down and takes the time to meticulously craft picture-perfect guitar solos that tell a story within a song.

When Stanley chooses to lay down a solo, whether it’s the exquisite Kossoff-flavored slow-hand finery on “Hold Me, Touch Me,” the searing metallic attack on “I Stole Your Love” or the epic David Gilmour–esque sonic flights of atmospheric fancy on “A World Without Heroes,” it’s always melodically inventive and in service to the song. 

For much of the band’s ’70s heyday, his arsenal of axes leaned heavily on Gibson guitars, including the L6-S Midnight Special, Flying V, Firebird, Explorer and EDS-1275 double-neck. That all changed in the late ’70s with the introduction of Stanley’s first signature guitar, the Ibanez PS10, which became his go-to six-string. 

Through the decades, his onstage rigs included models from a wide range of brands, including Hamer, B.C. Rich, Steinberger and, of course, Gibson. Stanley later aligned with Washburn and Silvertone on the creation of new signature models, but he is now back in the fold with Ibanez and involved in the development and design of his own line. 

Now, as Kiss end their live career, Stanley graciously sat down with Guitar Player for a talk about his guitar journey — how it all began, and the sights and sounds from along the way. Sit back and enjoy his most in-depth and comprehensive conversation about all things guitar.

What’s your earliest memory of seeing a guitar? 

Probably Eddie Cochran or Elvis. And with that you get Carl Perkins and everyone else from that era who fits the model — the guitar player as a frontman. But I’d go with Eddie Cochran and Elvis. 

What made you want to play guitar? 

The guitar was the messenger of rock and roll — the primary instrument. Certainly, you’ve got Little Richard with a piano, but the guitar was always the instrument of rock and roll. People think about the guitar solos and lead playing, but it was really the strumming — that was the call to arms. That’s usually what you heard first. 

What was your first guitar, and how did you come to own it? 

I bugged my parents, and for my 13th birthday I figured that I’d finally got them to get me an electric guitar. And as it turned out, they got me a really crappy used nylon-string guitar. I was heartbroken, because nobody that I had seen on American Bandstand or in [rock and roll concert promoter] Alan Freed’s shows, or rock and roll movies, like The Girl Can’t Help It — nobody was playing an acoustic nylon-string guitar. So I looked at it and put it under the bed and didn’t pull it out for quite a while. 

But as I would eventually learn, to play guitar with some sort of depth and understanding, you really should start out playing an acoustic guitar. I think that an acoustic guitar is so much less forgiving, and it also requires nuances that the electric guitar doesn’t — or it does so in a different way. So at the end of the day, I think I was fortunate that I started out with an acoustic guitar. 

How long did you play acoustic before you got your first electric? 

Probably a year or so, if not more. My parents, God love them, they thought love meant denying your kids certain things, to toughen them up. So my first electric guitar I bought myself, and it was a two-pickup and pretty much a three-quarter-sized Vox copy of a Strat. It was a salmon color that Fender also used, one of their classic DuPont-type colors.

Where did you buy that guitar? 

Back then, 48th Street was the holy land for guitars and amps. I used to do an almost weekly pilgrimage down there. I’d take a bus and a subway down to maybe 50th Street and then walk over there and go into all the guitar stores. It was very different then. Now you go in and they want you to play the instruments, much like bookstores. 

If you went into a bookstore back then and pulled out a book, they’d say, “You’re going to buy that?” and it was very much the same with musical instruments. They were basically behind glass, and if you wanted to try something, you had to show them the money. Their first question was, “Are you buying today?” And if you said yes, they’d say, “Let me see the money.” 

So I wound up buying my first guitar on 48th Street, but not at Manny’s. Manny’s was like the premier instrument store, with drums, guitars and woodwinds — everything. I would just go down there and drool and wait for rock stars to come in so I could see the people I’d seen on television. 

I saw Hilton Valentine, who was the guitar player from the Animals. I also saw Leslie West. Leslie, God love him — he looked like Jimi Hendrix if Jimi Hendrix weighed 400 pounds. So it was exciting for me, and I made it a weekly trip. 

What gear did you have circa 1967–’68? 

I could only afford one guitar at a time, so at that point I had an SG Les Paul that cost me $120 at a pawn shop right near Tompkins Square Park in New York City. There used to be a pawn shop there, and my mom had hawked a diamond ring, which was wonderful, and got me a Fender Twin Reverb. I had no pedals or anything like that. 

The people who I was most enamored with and the bands that I saw at the Fillmore East were plugged into amplifiers. Hendrix had pedals, as did some other guitar players, but for the most part your sound came from a great guitar and usually a Marshall amp, and if you couldn’t get that sound, you needed a new amp or a new guitar. 

Prior to that, I had a Hagstrom 12-string electric guitar, because I couldn’t afford a Rickenbacker and I was very into the Byrds, and for that you needed a 12-string. Then I got rid of that and got the SG Les Paul. And from there, for quite a while, I would trade out a guitar to get a different one. 

My next guitar after the SG Les Paul was a Gibson double-cut Les Paul, which was $200. Guitars were not out of reach at that point. Dan Armstrong on 48th Street had all these classic vintage guitars and a wall full of mid-’50s to ’59 and ’60 Les Pauls: gold tops, sunbursts. 

The expensive ones could be $700, $800, which to me was a fortune. But compared to what they wound up being valued at now, they were attainable. Guitars were not investments at that point. People weren’t buying them like art or stocks. 

What was your practice regimen? Were you picking up songbooks and learning from those, and slowing down records to learn and master parts? 

Early on, I realized that I didn’t want to be the flashy lead player. As much as I admired them and wanted much to be like them, I became much more involved with being a rhythm guitarist. Very often, rhythm guitar was looked at as what you do before you can play lead. And there were certainly consummate guitar players who, yes, they could play lead guitar, but that wasn’t their wheelhouse, really. 

Whether it was Keith Richards or Pete Townshend — or even David Crosby or one of the greatest right hands ever, Richie Havens — that was more fascinating to me: not what the left hand was doing, but what the right hand was doing. 

When my son, Evan, started playing guitar — and by the way, he’s just a smoking great guitar player — in the beginning I said to him, “Right now it’s all about your right hand. It’s all about your wrist. It’s all about your palm. It’s all about those subtleties.” And that, I think, is a great foundation to start with. 

How far you want to go after that is really up to you. I mean, Jimmy Page is just a killer rhythm player who happens to also be a spectacular lead player and arranger. But his rhythm playing is as good as anybody’s, and better than most. 

What was the first holy grail guitar that you bought? 

Well, I started collecting guitars in the mid-’70s, when I could finally afford to have more than one guitar. And I found myself wanting to acquire a prime example of what were the top guitars. At that point, the word went out and people started bringing guitars to our shows, and when we would pull in there’d be people standing out back with guitar cases. So it made it really fun. 

The first guitar I bought that was of that stature was a ’58 sunburst Les Paul with cream humbuckers, and I paid $2,200 for it, which was a fortune. I wound up with nine guitars that were really outstanding examples of each specific model, and the start of it was the ’58 sunburst. 

Let’s talk about some of the guitars you used early on with Kiss. 

Early on I played a Gibson Les Paul ’54 reissue that came out in the ’70s. The first really good guitar I had was a 1960 Gibson SG Les Paul, which is when they were making the transition from Les Paul guitars to what later became SG guitars. 

I also had a custom-made guitar, a half Flying V. It was made by a guy in the Village named Charlie LoBue [who also made Gene Simmons’ basses early on]. It was stolen at our first New York gig, with [first-wave punk artist] Wayne County. 

Then one of my favorite guitars, a Gibson Firebird, got wrecked. This guy, Corky Stasiak, who was the assistant engineer on Destroyer, knocked it over in the studio and broke the neck off. It couldn’t be repaired. 

So Gibson made me a copy of it. Ultimately, I lent the copy to somebody, and they sold it. [laughs] 

Were you using some of these vintage guitars in the studio, onstage or both? 

I would use them in the studio. I would never take them on tour, for a couple of reasons. The look of the band has always been so specific that the idea of being up there with a sunburst Les Paul wasn’t character consistent. So ultimately I wound up designing the Ibanez PS10, which really was based upon all my favorite Gibson guitars. 

The specs came off a bunch of guitars that I loved, and the construction was based on a mahogany body with a maple cap, and a mahogany neck, so it was very familiar. And if you play one, it feels very familiar, because the specifics — as far as the measurements and construction and all the hardware go — are classic. They’re tried and true.

A glam-rock hero inspired the creation of your cracked mirror Ibanez Iceman guitar.

Yes, that’s right. My mirror Iceman guitar was actually not a unique or original idea. Noddy Holder from Slade had a top hat with these huge circular mirrors on it. So when they hit Noddy’s top hat with the lights, these beams seemed to come out of his head. It was such a cool idea, and that’s where the idea for the mirrored guitar came from. In many ways, Slade was the English counterpart to us. They wrote these great anthems. Live, they were simple, but, boy, did they put their boot up your ass!

Humble Pie were one of your primary influences for the sound of Kiss. 

Yes, they most certainly were one of the inspirations behind Kiss’s sound. Steve Marriott was a terrific rhythm player. Seeing them perform at the Fillmore and watching Steve Marriott command and preach to an audience was something that inspired me, and his approach was something that I wanted to do onstage, but in my own way. 

In terms of your chord choices, positions and inversions, who were you channeling?

In the early days of Humble Pie, Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton created a sound like one big guitar. That was a part of the template for what I wanted to do. I’ve always wanted Kiss to be like one big guitar, which means that the other guitarist and I play different inversions. The goal was to do something that one guitar couldn’t, but play it in a way so that it becomes like one big guitar. 

My first exposure to the blues was Albert, Freddie and B.B. King and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. I really appreciated what they were doing, but I was more intrigued with where things went from there. 

Still, I think to do your best as a musician, you need to be exposed to a variety of music that’s outside of what you innately do. That’s why there are Kiss songs where I can point out the Spinners; there are Kiss songs where I can point out the Four Tops, Free — all kinds of groups. 

I grew up listening to opera and show tunes and R&B, and I went to bluegrass hootenannys and over to the Village and saw Dave Van Ronk at the Gaslight Cafe. For me, it was all about funneling everything that I was exposed to and loved into something else. 

With Keith Richards, when I heard things like “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” or “Brown Sugar,” I didn’t realize that he was playing in open G, so a lot of my playing was about using sus chords and trying to get that feel. It wasn’t until, gosh, the ’70s that I realized I could take my low E string off and tune to an open G. So a lot of my playing was rhythm-based. 

My songs and a lot of the riffs I came up with were based on my limitations, which sometimes can be your biggest asset. I might start a lick and not know where to go and just throw in something basic. That’s what I did with [1976’s Destroyer cut] “God of Thunder.” I had the beginning of the riff and I didn’t know where to go, so I bent those chords after the riff. 

With “I Want You” [from 1976’s Rock and Roll Over], I had the riff and I didn’t know where to go halfway through it, so I did a bunch of hammer-ons on the G string. So I was inspired by a lot of people and took what I could within the scope of what I could do, or wanted to do. 

With songs like “Flaming Youth,” “Shout It Out Loud”, “Comin’ Home” and countless others, I hear a lot of Pete Townshend in your playing and approach. 

Well, if an orchestra played the same figures the same way time and time again, it would get repetitious. But it’s how you build on a theme, and that theme can be chordal; it can be a riff. But to me, the best themes don’t stay stagnant; they evolve as the song evolves. 

Back to Zeppelin, Jimmy is Beethoven. Jimmy uses textures and layers, different kinds of guitars, and builds parts and elaborates on themes. I’ve said to him, “The first time I saw Zeppelin, I was 17, and it raised the bar for me to a level that I felt I can’t achieve. But it’s important to know that that level exists.” 

Jimmy Page reigns supreme as your guitar god. 

I was aware of the lineage and the history of the role of the hot-shot guitar hero in the Yardbirds, starting with Eric Clapton who left to join John Mayall’s Blues Breakers and was replaced by Jeff Beck, who at one point was joined by his friend Jimmy Page. 

Although I didn’t see that lineup, I saw the Yardbirds in New York after Beck had left and Jimmy was playing lead. When I saw the Yardbirds live, I was blown away by his ability to play what had already been done and still give it his own interpretation. For me, in many ways, he was the future. 

What was interesting about the guitar players in the Yardbirds is how they all had a love for the blues and took it in different directions, particularly when you listen to Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, who seemed less purist and more adventurous. It’s interesting to note that both the Jeff Beck Group, which Beck formed after his stint in the Yardbirds, and Led Zeppelin virtually came about at the same time. 

Led Zeppelin’s first show as Led Zeppelin was October of 1968, and they were rehearsing before that. The Jeff Beck album Truth came out in late July of ’68, so both in a sense were incubating at the same time. 

It’s interesting how Jimmy Page’s vision of what was possible was so much broader and wider. He understood the complexities and subtleties of producing and arranging and brought that to his band. 

As brilliant as Jeff Beck was, that’s something he couldn’t do, whether it was the limitations of the people he played with, which he himself has said he found frustrating, or just the fact that Jimmy Page consistently turned out to be a visionary. Beck had to use his phenomenal guitar talents to compensate for a lack of interesting or original material. 

Ace loved Jimmy Page. He very much had a Page sensibility to his playing. The idea of having another guitar player, at least to me, was to play the stuff I couldn’t. I had no problems holding down the fort in terms of chords and rhythms, but somebody had to blow the roof off with a wailing solo, and Ace really had the goods. 

As much as Ace loved Clapton, Beck and Hendrix, and he really did, there’s so much Page and so much swagger in his early playing. It’s so clear and so obvious that some of Ace’s signature licks are very much inspired by Jimmy Page. There’s a lot in “100,000 Years” [from Kiss’s self-titled 1974 debut]. There’s loads of things there that are, at least for my money, quintessential Page. 

Let’s talk about your guitar interplay with Ace. What made that chemistry work for such a long time as a complementary partnership? 

Ace was a very good rhythm player and really played methodical solos. His solos made sense. They weren’t noodling. They were thematic, and as a rhythm guitar player he was solid and could play more than your basic first position. So it helped to create what I wanted to do, which was have that sound of one big guitar. And as I said, that has always meant two people playing different inversions and playing tight enough that it’s something that neither one could do on their own. Ace and I played well together. We really did.

In the studio when you’re working up songs, was there a lot of discussion between you and Ace coming up with complementary parts for each to play? 

Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of that. We didn’t have to work at it. It was intuitive, and we were both capable of playing rhythm, and that gave us the flexibility and the ability to pretty instinctively play different inversions of chords and do things that at least to our ears were sonically pleasing. 

What was the process in terms of layering guitars? Would you change up guitars if you were doubling a rhythm track yourself? Would you try an SG and then bring in a Les Paul, or would you pretty much stick with the same guitar? 

Depends on what we were doing. At one point, we would record a guitar part, and then we would vari-speed the tape ever so slightly when we doubled it so that between the two guitars there was much more of a shimmer as opposed to just doubling it. That’s something Bob Ezrin taught us. For the most part, a “double” meant doubling my part, not changing and using another guitar. 

I think that, at least for this kind of music, you can overthink it. It’s not unlike when we were in the studio at one point with one producer and he brought in all these amps and said, “Well, this sounds like a Marshall and does this, this and this, and this amp sounds like a Fender.” And I said, [laughing] “Well, if it sounds like a Marshall, then let’s just get a Marshall.” 

All the bands and all the people that I loved and saw and inspired me, they were basically playing a Gibson guitar plugged into a Marshall amp. And if you got a Gibson guitar and a Marshall amp and it didn’t sound good, you either needed a new Gibson guitar or a new Marshall amp. It was just that simple. 

Even in the last decade, there have been times where guitar players and other bands have said, “Your guitar tone is so great. What are you using?” And it’s a guitar and an amp and all those other things that people use to try to replicate that vintage sound. I think they’re on the wrong track. It’s in your hands and it’s in your guitar and amp. 

With respect to your lead playing, I definitely hear a lot of Paul Kossoff, with that great slow vibrato. When I was speaking with Bob Ezrin about your guitar solos, he described them as vocal melodies that are beautifully constructed. 

Bob is right. I tend to think melodically and vocally when I play a solo. It’s not enough to me to play scales. I’d rather memorize a solo based upon a melody as opposed to a scale. 

Your solo on “A World Without Heroes” from (Music From) The Elder may be your shining moment as a lead player. Did you experiment in the studio to come up with that, or was it prepared beforehand as a written solo? 

I just created it while in the studio. It had an emotional feel to the song, and all I was doing was connecting to that. A solo has got to be so much more than playing in the right key. It’s about the expressiveness and the emotion. I think that comes more from a solo that somebody can sing. That’s going to have more emotion in it than somebody doing acrobatics. I may be impressed by the acrobatics, but it does nothing for me emotionally. 

I’m not that kind of player, and I’m not interested in others who do that. I certainly respect and appreciate people who can play with dazzling speed and cram more notes into a measure than the average player, but it does nothing for me. It’s an exercise in futility. It’s nothing more than gibberish. 

With Ace, and then later with Vinnie Vincent, Mark St. John, Bruce Kulick and Tommy Thayer, how much input would you have into their solos? 

I have to say that when Ace was great, he was great, and he came up with so many memorable parts and solos. I can’t remember anything that he was told to do, except the run up in “Love Gun,” which is from a Blues Magoos song called “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet.” Deep Purple nicked that same run. 

But other than that, Ace really came up with some very identifiable and really stellar guitar solos, not because they were incredibly intricate but because they made a lot of sense and some of it was counterpoint to what we were playing rhythmically. He did some very interesting things. 

So when it came to working with Ace, I don’t remember ever suggesting anything to him. He took the reins and galloped on. I can say that there are solos later on after Ace was gone, that, if I didn’t play them, I sang them to the guitarist and they learned it. I will say that many of the solos and pieces on Creatures of the Night certainly sound familiar to me. I mean, just because I can’t play something doesn’t mean I can’t sing it, right?

Gear Tour

T.J. Silljer, Paul’s End of the Road guitar tech, fills us in on the Starchild’s stage arsenal for Kiss’s final shows.

When it comes down to it, all it takes for Paul Stanley to get his game on is a guitar plugged straight into an amp. ”We have tried different things in the rig, as far as modular effects or overdrives,” explains T.J. Silljer, Stanley’s guitar tech on the End of the Road tour. 

“But at the end of the day, we usually just plug directly into the amp and Paul ends up saying, ‘Nothing sounds better than a great guitar plugged straight into a great amp.’ We only use one channel on the amp for the whole show. 

“If he wants a little less gain, he uses his volume knob to clean it up a bit. That’s one of my favorite things about Paul: I love how old school he is with regard to guitar.”

MAIN GUITARS: Ibanez PS10 (Black, Gold, Cracked Mirror, Rhinestone) Gibson Custom Shop “Custom” V Modified by Billy Rowe Ibanez PS60 (used as breakers) According to Siljer, “Each V was customized to suit Paul’s specifications. Body contour, neck profile, frets, hardware, finish and pickups were all changed to make a unique Paul Stanley version of a Gibson classic. 

“Paul doesn’t want to play the same thing everyone else is playing, so he prototyped his own version of the V, making changes to the neck, hardware, body, finish, frets, pickups and adding a custom tailpiece. He wanted a great-playing and great-feeling guitar, but also wanted a unique piece of art you can’t find anywhere else.” 

PICKUPS: Ibanez PS10 Seymour Duncan SH-1N ‘59 Seymour Duncan SH-14 Custom 5 Gibson V Seymour Duncan SH-1N ‘59 Silljer Pickups True Heritage P.A.F. 

STRINGS: PS10 Ernie Ball Custom Gauge 13–52 Gibson V Ernie Ball Beefy Slinky 11–54 PICKS Dunlop celluloid .73 

GUITAR TUNINGS: D standard on all guitars 

AMP & CABINET: ENGL Paul Stanley signature model Marshall 1960B Cabinet 

“Paul knows exactly the sound he is looking for,” Silljer explains. “When playing the PS10 guitars, we have the Duncan Custom 5 in the bridge. That pickup is straight rock and roll tone, and his custom ENGL amp was built around this guitar and pickup. 

“With this guitar-and-amp combination, we usually run everything at 12 o’clock and make small adjustments from there. For the Gibson V, we run a slightly lower-output PAF-style pickup I wound, and I bump up the gain to match output for the front of house.” 

STRAPS: Custom leather beaded strap by Carlino Guitars

MICS: Shure SM58 

For more information, visit paulstanleyguitars.com

50 years ago, four New York City punks set the music world on fire with their swaggering brand of rock and roll and ghoulish costumes. It was a minor victory, seeing as the greater number of music listeners were simply shaking their heads in wonder at this band of cartoonish costumed wags. It took time, but within a few years, the tide began to turn — first in cities like Detroit, where teen fans made “Rock and Roll All Nite” a party anthem, and then in towns and metropolises throughout the country and, eventually, the world. 

Before then, Kiss had simply been a quartet: guitarist Paul Stanley, lead guitarist Ace Frehley, bassist Gene Simmons and drummer Peter Criss. Afterward, they were an institution, cutting 20 studio albums and seven live discs, and revolutionizing the industry with their elaborate stage sets and endlessly inventive merchandising.

But don’t let the size of the Kiss juggernaut obscure the fact that they were one of the most influential groups to emerge from that great decade. Don’t believe it? Just ask countless guitarists who grew up on the band in their greatest era, the 1970s.

And now it’s rolling to a close. On December 2, Kiss brought down the curtain on their 50-year reign as rock and roll’s biggest live act. Their next step is immortality, with a digital version of the band set to tour indefinitely. To mark the occasion, we reconnected with Paul, Gene, Ace and Peter, and conferred with former Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick, current guitarist Tommy Thayer and a host of the group’s friends (Joe Perry, Rick Nielson, Tom Morello, Phil Collen, Bob Ezrin) for insights into Kiss’s influence on guitar rock — and more significantly, Paul’s enduring influence as a guitarist on some of rock’s most inspiring players.

GENE SIMMONS

Paul Stanley’s partner and musical foil since they teamed up in the pre-Kiss group Wicked Lester in 1971, bassist Gene Simmons knows better than anyone what Stanley brings to Kiss’s music. 

"When we first started the band in 1972, there was this sense that Paul and Ace would complement each other and try not to play in the same chord range. The result would be this big guitar sound with different voicings of the same chord. But clearly, a lot of that came from Paul, who is not given the respect and recognition he deserves. 

"Paul has never just been a rhythm player. He has also been mighty handy on lead guitar. That’s Paul doing lead guitar duties on “A World Without Heroes.” That’s Paul playing the harmony on the “Detroit Rock City” solo. That’s Paul at the beginning of “C’mon & Love Me,” and it was Paul who came up with the chordal intro on my song “Deuce.” Without those chords opening the song, it simply wouldn’t have the same impact. “Deuce” without Paul’s opening chords is more one-dimensional. 

"Paul’s musical background stretches from ’60s and ’70s English bands, especially Zeppelin, to the Byrds. But clearly, his lead guitar playing owes a lot to Jimmy Page and Page’s approach to the construction of a solo. Paul’s vibrato, when he bends a note, is overlooked for some reason. But any good guitar player will tell you his vibrato is as sweet as honey."

PETER CRISS

Kiss’s founding drummer, Peter Criss was part of the trio, with Stanley and Simmons, that made up the first Kiss lineup. The original Catman was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Kiss in 2014. 

"The music speaks for itself. Paul has always strived to be creative. He’s accomplished that. His guitar playing is part of our creation of Kiss, which has inspired many. That in itself is a great honor for him as a musician. In my opinion, anyone who’s inspired somebody musically should be proud that they’ve touched people’s lives in that way. That’s how I feel about Paul’s guitar playing. He’s touched people’s lives musically, in a good way."

BRUCE KULICK

During Kiss’s “unmasked” period, from 1984 to 1996, Bruce Kulick served as the group’s lead guitarist, appearing on Asylum, Crazy Nights, Hot in the Shade, Revenge and Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions, as well as Alive III and MTV Unplugged. 

"Working with Paul Stanley for 12 years gave me a keen insight to his guitar playing and musical talents. In the studio, he’s a solid rhythm player. He has a large vocabulary of power chords in all positions, even complex inversions, as well as learning a few tricks from another hero of his, Keith Richards. He adopted the five-string tuning Stones sound from Richards for Kiss hits like “Heaven’s on Fire” and others. Paul was brilliant with lead guitar suggestions.

"On “Tears Are Falling,” one of the best representations of my contributions to Kiss solos, Paul guided me with the melodic start of that solo. We dressed it up with a sweet harmony line, and then he handed the tricky work over to me, with my choice of Steve Howe–like flashy riffs, and then a fast flourish to end the solo. That collaboration would continue throughout my years with Kiss."

TOMMY THAYER

Since 2003, Tommy Thayer has served as Kiss’s lead guitarist, as well as co-writer for many of the group’s songs. Even before then, he helped Frehley and Criss re-learn their parts when the original group reunited in 1996. He is, as he told Guitar World in 2020, “the glue that kept the band together for a long period of time.” 

"The thing that always impressed me about Paul were his voicings and the alternate rhythm guitar parts he would add to complement what the other guitar player was doing. For instance, on “Cold Gin,” the main riff is what I do, or what Ace did, and then Paul’s doing this suspended A chord thing that just kind of stays in one spot, but it’s really cool and interesting. 

"In “100,000 Years” he hits these kind of augmented E suspended parts — I’m not even sure what it is — but he plays all these really interesting chords that complement the two-guitar approach. 

"Last year, when we were in Australia, we decided to do “Shandi” [a Stanley-composed hit from the group’s 1980 album, Unmasked] as one of the encores, because that was a big song over there at one point. 

"We were rehearsing “Shandi” before we left, and I had always assumed it was played using big open chords. But Paul said, “Oh no,” and started showing me these different positions on the neck. I had no idea that this stuff was in that song. I grew up loving two-guitar bands and I thought Kiss was one of the bands that did that better than anybody. 

"But part of what makes the sound of Kiss is Paul’s approach. It’s very rhythmic and very soulful, with a lot of feeling. But his style is not a super-clean style; it’s kind of rough and loose and not a precise kind of approach. It’s a “feel” thing, so it creates a certain kind of a sound when you put all the guitars together. 

"When it comes to lead, he knows what he wants to hear, and that’s almost more of a pure approach, because he’s going to figure out what he hears in his head that actually can be more of a signature and more memorable. The solos he plays are very cool and you never forget them."

ERIC SINGER

Kiss’s drummer since 1991 — barring several years during the original group’s late-1990s reunion — Eric Singer has appeared on the studio albums Sonic Boom and Monster. He is the band’s longest-serving non-original member. 

"I always use the Rolling Stones analogy — Paul being like Keith Richards. Some people play really tight and on the money, and others play with a looser, scrappier approach. And that scrappiness, that rawness, is what helps create a person’s style and feel. I’ve noticed when somebody else plays a Kiss riff, they play it differently. 

"With Paul, since he wrote a lot of those riffs and those parts, it always sounds right. It’s his idea and his feel and interpretation of it, which makes it him. 

"Here’s the best example I can give: We were recording a new song we had cut with Tommy, Gene and myself. I said, “Paul, it needs your guitar. That’s what’s going to glue it together, and your guitar playing will give it that Kiss sound.” And as soon as Paul put the guitar on, it was like, Okay, now it sounds like Kiss."

Ace Frehley

As co-captains of Kiss’s six-string guitar army, both on record and in concert, Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley created a towering body of powerful anthemic music that rocketed them to superstardom and decades later earned them entry into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 

"In the early days, Paul and Gene were writing a lot of the songs. Paul was doing the chord work, and he laid down the heavy rhythm parts. Paul’s a really good rhythm player, Gene’s an underrated bass player, and I was the icing on the cake. 

Paul and I had a strong chemistry together, which really worked well. The way we’d divvy up guitar parts was pretty natural. There wasn’t much discussion. I knew what Paul was going to do. He played me the song before, and then I’d try to figure out a rhythm part that would complement what he was doing. 

A lot of times, Paul would come up with a rhythm part and I’d do an octave part above it. That would make the song sound thicker. 

"“Strutter” is a good example of that. Paul would be playing parts that were lower, and I’d be playing it in a high register. I learned that if two guys play chords in the same exact position, it can sound muddier. I was always trying to do inversions of what Paul was playing to make it sound thicker. It’s the same idea I use in the studio. I’ll put down a rhythm track with a Les Paul and then double it with a Fender, which has a completely different harmonic range. 

"I thought all the lead work Paul did over the years was good because it was simple, straight to the point and melodic. His riff that kicks off “Deuce” is really cool. Paul and I co-wrote “Rock Bottom.” I wrote the picking part in the front of the song, and he came up with something that complemented what I was playing. 

"Bob Ezrin was a big help in getting me and Paul to play together. For instance, the guitar solo on “Detroit Rock City” — that harmony Paul and I did together — always stands out in my mind as a dual lead that we played together. When I look back on our history, I wish we would have done more of that."

Joe Perry

In the ’70s, Kiss and Aerosmith were hard rock’s reigning champions. Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry wasn’t just a fan — he also appeared on Gene Simmons’ 1978 solo album and in 2003 would be the first musician to ever jam with Kiss onstage at two shows on the Kiss/Aerosmith co-headlining tour. 

“I remember hearing their album for the first time at [Boston DJ] Maxanne Sartori’s apartment — her boyfriend at the time was Billy Squier. I really liked it. ‘Strutter’ just struck me as a really cool song, and almost any kid can pick up a guitar and learn that pretty quick, which to me is a sign of a really good rock and roll song. 

“I look at Paul as a frontman who plays great guitar and great riffs. He plays exactly what needs to be played. Paul has a swagger, and the guitar is just part of his body. I can relate to that, because I feel the same way. It becomes an extension of your body and you move with the music. And he’s got a fucking lot of moves. He plays it over his head, between his legs, swinging it around. And he makes it all work. 

“We were out on the road with Kiss in 2003 and they asked me to come up and play with them, and I was like, ‘Hell yeah!’ I got to jam with them on ‘Strutter’ at two shows [Oklahoma City and Los Angeles]. I said the only way I was gonna do it was if I could wear the platform boots. Paul loaned me a pair of his. They’ve been wearing those boots for years and years, but man, it’s a bitch. [laughs]”

Bob Ezrin

As producer of three Kiss albums — Destroyer, (Music From) The Elder and Revenge — Bob Ezrin has also served as arranger, songwriter and band coach, spurring the band to their creative apex. 

“Paul’s superpower as a guitar player is his melodic sense. He has a unique understanding of the power of melody and rhythm, and he combines the two in his rhythm playing in particular, but also in his lead playing. There’s always a memorable, hummable component to Paul Stanley’s lead guitar. 

“To me, there’s a melodic structure to his rhythm, the positions of the chords that he plays. And when you add them all up, they actually create a melody. And I think he’s very sensitive to that as he’s putting his parts together, as opposed to many guitar players who will play the chord for that specific moment without regard to the next one that’s coming or the one that came before. 

“What Paul creates is a melodic structure to his rhythm parts. So the voicings that he selects from one chord to the next are the ones that feature the leading note. 

“When he and Ace would play together, you could hear each part individually, but they sound together as one. If Paul was in first position, Ace would move up, and vice versa, so they were not treading on each other’s toes. They were trying to be a bit of an orchestra between the two of them, and I think they did a great job. 

“I’ve heard from people from all genres — Garth Brooks to start with — who have said to me that Kiss was a huge inspiration and influence on them. I don’t think people looked at the individual membership of the band as being responsible for this note or that note. I think they just took the overall of the band and said, ‘Oh God, I want to be able to do that. I can do that.’”

Rick Nielsen

Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons were such big fans of Cheap Trick that they brought them out as openers on their Can-Am Tour ’77. In the Cheap Trick anthem “Surrender,” Nielsen famously name-checked the band in the lyrics, “got my Kiss records out.” Like Joe Perry, Nielsen guested on Gene’s 1978 solo album and decades later jammed with the band at a 2016 gig in Cheap Trick’s hometown of Rockford, Illinois. 

“Gene and Paul saw Cheap Trick play in New York City at Max’s Kansas City. There was hardly anybody there, but they were clapping and really enjoyed the band. I jumped up on the table where Paul and Gene were, and there was a bill there, and I picked it up and I put it in my mouth and ate it. I think Gene told the story that it was a $100 bill, but I think I shit out a $20. [laughs] 

“We did three months opening for Kiss in June, July and August of 1977, which went across the whole United States and Canada. The Japanese press was there to see Kiss, because they were huge in Japan. They liked our band so much that we started getting a lot of press in Japan, and that’s what really boosted our career, which made us do that record at Budokan [1978’s Cheap Trick at Budokan]. 

“Back in the ’70s, I was at Paul’s New York apartment and he had a lot of guitars on the wall. He knew I was a guitar collector too. A few years ago he introduced me to a guy named Gordon Miller, and he’s built me some guitars and cases because of Paul. “My favorite Kiss songs are all the ones they played on the tour we did with them. But if I had to pick one it’s ‘Love Gun.’ Why? Because it reminds me of the Sex Pistols. Same word connotations. Love Guns. Sex Pistols. There you go.”

Tom Morello

The Kiss Army owes a deep debt of gratitude to Tom Morello. He single-handedly duked it out with the snooty Rock and Roll Hall of Fame brass over the merits of Kiss’s long-overdue induction. Victorious in his zealous mission, he’s responsible for getting Kiss on the ballot and paving the way for their ultimate induction into the hallowed institution. 

“What makes Kiss great is the chemistry of the members, especially the classic Kiss lineup, and Paul Stanley’s guitar playing is a huge part of that. ‘Strutter,’ ‘C’mon and Love Me,’ ‘God of Thunder,’ ‘Creatures of the Night’ through ‘Psycho Circus’ — he’s writing and playing those riffs, and those songs are some of the most rocking and important tunes in the history of rock and roll. 

“So, he’s not Yngwie Malmsteen or Nuno Bettencourt. But thank goodness, because he’s writing these jams that make up one of the greatest bands of all time. 

“Listen, rock and roll is not just about moving your fingers around fast on the frets. One of the most iconic and identifiable guitar players in the history of rock music is Paul Stanley, and his guitar playing is directly connected to his seven-inch heels and his hair. 

“His guitar playing is directly connected to his makeup and the tone of voice he uses when addressing the crowd, and the way that he’s swinging on guitars and swinging around the arena and pointing to the back row. His guitar playing is a part of all of that. It’s a crucial reason why Kiss is great, and it’s a crucial reason why he’s a very important guitar player.”

Phil Collen

Along with Joe Perry and Rick Nielsen, Def Leppard’s Phil Collen is in elite company as one of only a few axe slingers who have shared the stage jamming with Kiss. 

“Ace would play the solos, but the meat and potatoes of it was all the Paul Stanley rhythm stuff. It’s really substantial, and he gets the song over with singing and playing. Kiss created this kind of Marvel superhero thing and they put it to music. 

“What surprised me most about Kiss is that it’s all about the show. But they also had the concert anthems to back it up. When they asked me to come up and play with them, I was honored. I’ve known them for years and they’re great. I like their approach and their whole vibe to it; they take it very seriously. 

“The hardest part was trying to walk around in those boots! [laughs]. I had to walk around all day in them to get used to them. I wound up wearing a set of Paul’s boots, which had seven-inch heels. You had to be really careful, because you could easily bust your ankle. I had to have some supports around the ankles, like a skier. 

“As I was walking onstage, the production manager said, ‘Oh, by the way, don’t go past that line.’ I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because the flames will get you.’ I was like, Oh my God! So I’m trying to stay balanced wearing these seven-inch boots playing ‘Deuce,’ and you could feel all this fire coming up from behind you. But that was such fun. It was such a thrill to play with Kiss. I was honored.”

Kiss’ latest album: Kiss off the Soundboard: Live in Poughkeepsie is available to buy and stream now

For about five decades, the original Fender Jazzmaster and Jaguar suffered a distinct lack of alternatives for their bridges, the components that many players consider the weak links in their sonic chains. But functional replacements have roared forth in the past several years, the latest of which comes from German maker Kiss My Strings (KMS).

Their JAM Advanced Offset Bridge partners a unique saddle design with a sturdy approach to mounting, making it a viable alternative to anything on the market.

What’s more, the company has applied a similar approach to a range of compensated Telecaster saddles, for an impressive solution in a field that’s far more crowded. On first blush, the results are encouraging. KMS boasts cutting-edge CNC machining and advanced plating and coating technologies to form high-quality materials.

JAM ADVANCED OFFSET BRIDGE

The original bridge Fender partnered with the Jazzmaster’s and Jaguar’s floating vibrato system is designed to rock with gentle whammy action, ideally returning to an accurate zero point. Set up just right, and usually using heavy-gauge strings, they often work fine, though rarely perfectly. Tonally, they can be a sustain-squelching rattletrap.

Part of KMS’s solution is to supply custom “thimbles” and chunky bridge posts that fit into them precisely, eliminating the rocking action entirely. These are partnered with sturdy, intonated saddles cut with “V” slots that hold the strings securely, and made from solid brass that’s plated to let the strings slide through the groove and return to pitch more easily. The approach promises not only improved tuning stability but also increased resonance and sustain.

I tested the JAM bridge on my all-original 1963 Fender Jaguar and found it easy to install and set up after a little guidance from online tech forums about removing the guitar’s original thimbles. The set includes three hexagonal wrenches for installation and adjustment, as well as spare grub screws and intonation screws. (I also removed the Jag’s mute in the process, which I never use, but the JAM bridge installation doesn’t require that.)

Once installed, the new bridge sat rock-solid in the replacement thimbles, and with the guitar restrung the precision saddle slots held my .010-.046-gauge strings firmly in place.

Intonating the JAM bridge involves a process much like that used for compensated vintage-style Telecaster saddles, with strings sitting in pairs on a shared saddle. In theory, this always implies a compromise between the strings of each pair. In practice, however, I was able to dial in each individual string precisely, and tuning was great all up and down the neck.

Even before plugging in, I noticed a clear improvement in the solidity and sustain of the Jaguar’s acoustic tone, which translated beautifully to an extended amped-up session into a 65amps London tube amp head and 2x12 cab.

In short, the old Jaguar sounded better in every conceivable way. Tuning stability with moderate use (such as these offset vibratos are made for) was also excellent, and even a few stray dive bombs – something they’re not made for – came back remarkably well.

Impressive stuff on all fronts.

COMPENSATED TV-RAIL TELECASTER SADDLES

Engineered with alternating “V” string grooves much like those of the JAM Offset bridge, KMS’s Tele saddles use barrels of a larger diameter, similar to vintage-style brass saddles, and are available in four different sets.

Three options for standard unplated saddles come in brass, steel and aluminum, but each of these three-saddle sets also cleverly includes one of each of the others. As such, you can mix and match saddles to best enhance the string pairs atop them.

The fourth set, TV-Rail Saddles+, includes just three brass saddles coated in a hard, low-friction surface that KMS recommends for Tele-style guitars with vibrato bridges, or for players who do a lot of string bending.

For the ideal mixed-saddle set, KMS recommends using brass for the high E and B strings, aluminum for the G and D, and steel for the A and low E, so that’s what I put on my war-horse ’57 Telecaster.

Installation is as easy as with any other Telecaster saddles, and KMS ingeniously includes a second smaller spring for each saddle, which sits inside the larger intonation-screw spring for improved stability. Each set also includes spare grub screws of different heights, as well as three shorter intonation screws, so the longer screws don’t stick up between the strings and gouge your hand in certain positions.

The TV-Rail saddles intonated easily, but what impressed me even more was that they simply sounded fantastic. The guitar had noticeably more string-to-string separation and articulation, excellent sustain and good ringing harmonics, and was just a little less blurry and hazy overall. After thinking this mixed-saddle thing was likely something of a novelty, call me a convert – for KMS’s rendition, at least.

Overall, I found the JAM Advanced Offset bridge and TV-Rail Telecaster saddles to be excellent in every regard. They’re beautifully engineered, easy to install and deliver exactly the results most players are seeking from such replacement parts.

Both land Editors’ Pick Awards, and my only concern is whether they’ll make me take them off my guitars.

Visit KMS for more information

40 years ago this month, New York City rock legends Kiss released their landmark Creatures of the Night album.

With a change of image beckoning, this 1982 LP was the last to feature Kiss wearing their trademark face paint before the release of Lick It Up the following year.

It would also be Kiss's last album on Casablanca Records – the label that had nurtured the band since their eponymous debut release in 1974.

All was not well in the Kiss camp during the recording of Creatures of the Night. 

Casablanca founder Neil Bogart sadly passed away that year, and co-founding guitarist Ace Frehley was in absentia.

Although Space Ace’s face is featured on the album’s cover he did not play on Creatures of the Night and quit the band shortly after its release.

He was replaced by Vinnie Vincent who recorded guitar parts on several tracks including “Keep Me Comin',” “Danger,” “War Machine,” “Saint and Sinner,” “I Love It Loud” and “Killer” (though he was not appropriately credited for his work at the time.)

Although Kiss were aiming to return to their hard rock roots with Creatures of the Night in an effort to reconnect with fans, they extended a somewhat surprising studio invitation to jazz fusion whizz Robben Ford.

Known for his work with the likes of L.A. Express, Yellowjackets, Miles Davis and Larry Carlton he seemed an unlikely choice.

And Ford couldn’t agree more.

In this interview for D’Addario, the guitarist responds to a question from a fan who asks what his weirdest gig was.

Tentatively, Ford begins with the disclaimer: “There's been a lot of water under the bridge,” before confirming that his weirdest gig was, in fact, “doing nine days in the studio with Kiss.

“I played on their record Creatures of the Night… It turned out there are two guitar solos on that record from me. ‘Rock and Roll Hell’ was the first song and the other one is kind of a rock ballad called ‘I Still Love You.’

“I spent nine days in the studio with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. And that was rather unusual. That whole situation there was rather unusual. I’d heard a lot about their stories and was playing music that I don't play, and I never listen to.”

Pre-order the Creatures Of The Night 40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Box Set here.

Nashville may be known for country music, but when the band Blonder Than Hell, fronted by the golden-haired guitar duo Philip Shouse and Jeremy Asbrock, began their fully costumed annual holiday KISSmas tribute shows in 2010, it quickly became a Music City tradition. Shouse, who plays guitar for Wolf Hoffman's Accept, and Asbrock – formerly of power-pop cult faves the Shazam! and an alum of John Corabi’s band – were lifetime Kiss fans who knew even their more obscure songs inside and out.

So was their pal, former Hair of the Dog frontman Ryan Spencer Cook, whose Big Rock Show homage to ’70s and ’80s arena rock was a mainstay on the bill of the first several Kiss Kruises.

Still, none of the talented trio imagined that within a few years they’d become the guitar frontline of both Gene Simmons’ and Ace Frehley’s touring bands, in many cases playing alongside their childhood heroes in the very venues where they’d first seen Kiss as kids.

“Yeah, it’s pretty nuts!” says Cook, whom Simmons invited to lunch aboard the Kiss Kruise years ago to ask for help forming a band for what was meant to be a handful of corporate gigs. “I said to Gene, ‘I know exactly who I’m going to call – you’ll love these guys,’” Cook recalls. “And he did. And it all went so well that two or three gigs became two or three years – the first Gene Simmons solo tours ever.”

At first, Cook recalls, Simmons was planning to leave his Gibson Signature bass at home and just sing. “I told him, respectfully, as a Kiss fan, if I came out to see you and you weren’t playing bass, I’d be pretty bummed.” Simmons, Asbrock says, “is absolutely one of the most underrated bass players in rock.

Shouse, who switches to bass in Ace’s band, agrees. “You’d think he’d hammer the bass really hard, but actually Gene’s touch is very economical and light,” he says. “He grew up on McCartney’s bass lines and ’60s R&B music, so Gene is a great walking-bass player.”

Cook, Asbrock and Shouse split the electric guitar duties three ways in Simmons’ band, allowing them to do things Kiss can’t, like have Shouse and Asbrock play main line and top harmony figures in “Detroit Rock City” while Cook holds down those syncopated backing riffs. And they encouraged Simmons to play more inside cuts like “Charisma” and “Got Love for Sale.”

When Ace Frehley joined Simmons for a show in St. Paul, Minnesota on that first tour in 2017, he was so impressed by the new blood – who collectively call themselves the Talismen – that he let his own band go and hired them on the spot.

Equipped with Vintage U.S. Pro Shop V100BLK and V120SM guitars and a VJ74MRGHB P-style bass for Shouse (all with Elixir strings), a Marshall cab backline, and a clutch of Kemper Profilers that lean on Michael Britt’s excellent vintage Marshall presets, the equally sharp Ace Frehley Band took to the road, performing Frehley’s 1978 self-titled solo record in its entirety at the Kiss Convention in 2018.

The Ace band recently completed a few months of arena touring alongside Alice Cooper. But even with all that firepower on the bill with him, Ace still proudly takes the solos himself – solos Shouse describes as “songs within songs. Ace’s solos in those classic Kiss songs are just as important as the lead vocal, and if you cover a Kiss song, you’d better not just ‘jam’ the solo, dude – you’d better learn it, and nail it. It’s that important.”

Beyond the precise arc and harmonies, Cook says, it’s the spirit behind them that makes it Kiss. “Can you deny how much those opening chords to ‘Love Gun’ hit you in the chest? Kiss understood that what people want from rock guitar is the bare essentials – not too much, but not too little. Kiss give you what you can digest, with a ton of attitude, and it hits you in that feel-good spot in the heart.”

Since Ace Frehley’s first departure from Kiss in 1980, the band’s lead electric guitar chair has been held down by many capable, creative players, including Vinnie Vincent, Bruce Kulick, Mark St. John, and, its occupant since 2002, former Black ‘N Blue guitar slinger Tommy Thayer. 

But if those players have served the band nobly, and even contributed a few fan favorites to Kiss’s repertoire – Kulick’s work on 1992’s Revenge is particularly noteworthy – the band’s melodic, hooky lead guitar legacy was framed, built, established and given enduring wings by one man: the inimitable Paul Daniel “Ace” Frehley, a.k.a. the Spaceman.

“Y’know, I can remember as a kid hearing Eric Clapton interviewed, talking about his solo on Cream’s ‘Sunshine of Your Love,’” recalls the 70-year-old Frehley, fresh from a soundcheck with his recently reinvigorated Ace Frehley Band. “And Clapton said the solo on that song was basically the melody from Elvis’s ‘Blue Moon.’ I clearly remember him saying that the best and most memorable solos are the ones you can hum. I never forgot that, and that's stayed with me my whole life.”

He’s not the only one it stayed with: Entire generations of players – while simultaneously pledging allegiance to Frehley’s idols, like Clapton, Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend (“the master of chordal work”) – were equally inspired by Ace’s savvy synthesis of blues guitar bends, wicked triplet licks and smart chord-specific note choices that always stuck to the chordal skeleton of the track, never devolving into what Frank Zappa famously called “spoo.”

Not that it was an exercise in quantum physics for Frehley, a spontaneous player who doesn’t speak the language of minor-sixths and the Mixolydian mode, however much he may actually play those very things.

“You take the whole extended after-solo on ‘She,” from Kiss Alive!,” he explains. “I mean, I’m just having fun there. It was always about having fun for me.” A little too much fun at times, admits Frehley, who practically lived at Studio 54 in its decadent heyday and has been proudly sober for the last decade and a half.

And while Ace’s original solos and riffs may have helped launch a thousand hair metal and grunge guitarists, he wasn’t above a little, um, creative borrowing himself, the main solo on ‘She’ being a prime example.

“I stole the ‘She’ solo from Robby Krieger of the Doors!” Frehley confesses. “I’ve got to give credit where credit is due.” Indeed, the first eight bars of the “She” solo are a practically note-for-note swipe of Robby’s iconic solo from the Doors’ pounding 1968 album track “Five to One.”

“And you know the solo in ‘Love Gun’?” he asks, as if anybody doesn’t. “I stole that whole solo from the Blues Magoos’ hit song ‘We Ain’t Got Nothing Yet.’ Listen to it – you’ll hear it!”

Not only does Frehley happily cop to the source of many of his best ideas, he has even built a few albums around it. His Origins Vol. 1 (2016) and Vol. 2 (2020) records are among the best of his career: raw, raucous and ripping covers of the ’60s and ’70s stuff that inspired the then 16-year-old Staten Island rawker: Leslie West’s Mountain, Humble Pie, Deep Purple, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, and more. 

“I was resistant to the idea at first,” Frehley says, “but once I started working on those albums, I put my whole heart and soul into them.”

Kiss fans invariably have their heart set on hearing iconic Ace moments, like the lightning licks in “God of Thunder” and the bursting Berry-bends on “Shout It Out Loud,” both from 1976’s Destroyer. But Ace has his own favorites, too: “I also love the solo in ‘Strange Ways,’ [Hotter Than Hell] and I love the solo in ‘100,000 Years,’ [Kiss] as well as the solo I played in ‘Deuce,’” he says, with pride. “Those are all the classic Ace solos that come to mind off the top of my head.”

A bit further afield, though, are cool, more unexpected moments you might not associate with Kiss’s raw and unruly approach. There’s the downright experimental stippling and sound effects on Rock and Roll Over’s “Almost Human”; Destroyer’s “King of the Nighttime World” solo, where Mayfield-approved R&B rhythm licks give way to furious post-Blackmore pick attacks; or Dressed to Kill’s “Love Her All I Can,” a funky up-tempo groove machine over which Ace lets fly with flange-y southern rock triplets, and moves into a wicked series of motivic move-over-Trower quintuplet licks.

And no assessment of Ace’s lead work would be complete without the titanic Gorham/Robertson–style natural minor harmony lead in Db (technically C, but Kiss always tuned down a half-step in their halcyon days) on Destroyer’s “Detroit Rock City.” To this day, though, you can hear a slight shrug in Ace’s voice when he explains how producer Bob Ezrin essentially sang him the melody and harmony for the epic lead break in “Detroit Rock City.” But really, so what?

Sometimes guitar playing is about coming up with the perfect part; sometimes it’s about executing the perfect part. The D-flat Aeolian/Harmonic Minor–based solo to “Detroit Rock City” kicks ass because it’s a great melody, performed by Ace with a wicked tone, slick slides and pull-offs, a cool harmony in thirds, and a ton of attitude. “Ezrin always did say I was the most rock and roll guy in the band,” Frehley says with a smile.

Gibson Les Pauls have been essential to that stance ever since. On his recent U.S. tour with his old friend Alice Cooper, Frehley leaned on his sunburst, three-pickup Gibson 1959 replica Ace Frehley Les Paul Custom Signature model; his famous black 1978 Les Paul Standard that was later routed for a middle pickup, and a three-pickup illuminated “Light Guitar” Les Paul modified by noted boutique luthier Jim Cara. The obvious irony here? Ace never uses the middle pickup. Or the neck pickup. “The bridge pickup really is my tone, completely,” he confesses.

Those bridge pups, says his longtime tech Rocco Monterosso, generally include a DiMarzio Air Zone or the Tone Zone humbucker, underneath a set of D’Addario EXL120 Nickel-Wound 009–.042s, struck with Dunlop Medium picks. 

From there, Ace’s sound hits a Shure Axient AD4D wireless unit, followed by a modest pedal drawer: a TC Electronic PolyTune, an Xotic Labs EP Booster and a Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler – used almost exclusively on “Rock Soldiers,” “Shock Me,” and a slap-effect on “Detroit Rock City” – and straight into a 100-watt Marshall JCM2000 Dual Super Lead, paired with a Marshall 1960AV cab loaded with Celestion Vintage 30s. The Marshall’s effects loop passes through an MXR Custom Audio MC401 Boost/Line Driver and a TC Electronic Hall of Fame Reverb for a little extra space for Ace.

So the obvious question is: Why have a middle pickup at all if you never even use it? Oh, ye of little faith – this is the Spaceman we’re talking about here, people! That middle pickup cavity contains the open end of a hidden tube that passes through the guitar from the routed-out large cavity on the back. In that cavity, Velcro’d to the guitar, lives the current secret to Ace’s legendary – nay, mythical – “smoking Les Paul” stage routine, which he performs during an unaccompanied solo following the Love Gun song “Shock Me.”

“I used to just use actual smoke bombs for years,” Ace explains, “but that can be a little complicated and dangerous. So for the last 10 years or so, I’ve been using these mini fog machines called Tiny FX [by Look Solutions]. They run off lithium batteries, and they use the same fogger liquid you see in the really big stage smokers. It’s crazy shit!”

Which, if you’ve spent any time following the career of Ace Frehley over the years, is pretty much par for the course.

“Look, there’s no rhyme or reason to why anything happens, as far as I’m concerned,” Ace says cheerfully. “I believe we live in some kind of matrix and it's all being controlled by some master computer. Somewhere out there, God's pulling the strings and playing the whole thing… on a keyboard!”

Buy No Regrets: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir by Ace Frehley here. 

Every long-running band has its defining album, a creation that emerges from a seemingly perfect convergence of creative forces. For the Beatles it was Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band. For the Rolling Stones it was Exile on Main Street. Numerous other examples abound, from the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.

For Kiss, the magic arrived on Destroyer, an album on which the forces didn’t combine as much as they cascaded forth like a fountain of stage blood. Coming after the clunky opening trio of Kiss, Hotter Than Hell and Dressed to Kill, 1976’s Destroyer was the studio follow-up on which the New York City glam rockers fine-tuned their mix of brawny rock and roll and theatricality into a musical vision that was both sonic and cinematic in its scope.

Yes, it has the hits, including “Detroit Rock City,” “Shout It Out Loud,” “Gods of Thunder,” “Flaming Youth” and “Beth,” but Destroyer has something more: a cohesiveness of sound and vision – amid a sonic collage that includes choir, orchestra and keyboards – that in 1976 elevated Kiss to the ranks of rock and roll gods. 

To many fans, it was and remains their greatest achievement.

Although the album’s anniversary has been celebrated before – witness 2012’s Destroyer: Resurrected, on which producer Bob Ezrin sweetened and amended the production – Kiss have gone all out with the new Destroyer 45th Anniversary Super-Deluxe Edition. Comprising four CDs, a Blu-ray audio surround-sound disc mixed by Steve Wilson, a 68-page hardcover book and numerous collectibles – including a replica 1976 Kiss Army Kit – it’s a celebratory box every true fan will rush to own. Best of all, it offers a total of 73 tracks, 48 of which are previously unreleased. Bear in mind, the completed album had a mere 10 songs, including the hidden closing track, “Rock and Roll Party.”

But just what was it that inspired Kiss to such heights some three studio albums into their career? Remarkably, it was their first live album, Alive!, released one year earlier. The album had been a runaway success, giving the band its first smash hit.

“You know how McDonald’s have a sign that ticks over every time they sell another burger?” guitarist Paul Stanley asks. “Kiss Alive! was like that for us. We went from 70,000 sales to a million sales, and it just kept going.”

For America’s most flamboyant sons, Kiss Alive! was a genuine education, proving in Gold and Platinum currency that the appeal of the band was based on more than just music. Which is not to devalue the studio recordings from 1974 to ’75, as some of the most popular Kiss songs ever were put to tape in that period, including the chart hit “Rock and Roll All Nite.” 

Think of it like this: If Kiss, Hotter Than Hell and Dressed to Kill were the foreplay, the whisper in the ear and the hand on the thigh, then Kiss Alive! was the moment when the passion finally peaked. It was all there: the heaving and the humping, the solos and the raps… the whole nine yards.

“Kiss Alive! was what we stood for,” Stanley affirms, “the embodiment and the magnification of everything we were as a band. It was Kiss on steroids.”

For Stanley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, the pressure was well and truly on. Achieving success is one thing; following it up is another. If Kiss Alive! was to be a springboard, they couldn’t afford to rest on their platform shoes. They returned to the studio – the Record Plant in New York – knowing that, however good their songs were, they needed a cheerleader and guru who would leave no stone unturned in the quest for musical greatness.

Enter producer Bob Ezrin.

“I’d first crossed paths with Bob up in Canada, where I was doing some promotion,” Stanley recounts. “He asked me if I liked the sound of my own records, and because I was young and full of piss and vinegar, I said that I did.

“However, I was well aware of what he could do in the studio, of the work he’d done with Alice Cooper.”

Ezrin had first joined forces with the Alice Cooper Band for their 1971 album Love It to Death. “Which was cinematic and atmospheric, yet still totally rock and roll,” Stanley continues. “His fingerprints are all over that stuff, so it was just a no-brainer that he should be our one and only choice for Destroyer.”

In making their first three albums, Kiss had simply written the songs, then gone into the studio to record them before heading out on tour. It was a straightforward process, the way presumably every record was made… except that in Ezrin’s world, there was a little thing called “pre-production” that had to be factored in. It was a first-time experience for Kiss, who must have suddenly felt like they were back at school.

“Actually, brutal boot camp was more like it,” Stanley says, wincing. “Bob definitely had a whistle round his neck. At the time, of course, we were basking in the glory of our success with Kiss Alive!, and we weren’t exactly open to outside opinion. But we listened to him because he was, well, right! With Bob, it was ‘Teach us!’ ”

Three years later, Ezrin would be in the studio with David Gilmour, Roger Waters et al helming the Pink Floyd classic The Wall, so the Kiss camp can at least reflect with pride that they put their faith in a hit maker. But it wasn’t a decision they reveled in at the time. Not only did the Toronto-born taskmaster insist that they tune their own instruments – he also arranged them in a circle, Alcoholics Anonymous style, going through the material with an attention to detail usually reserved for military maneuvers.

“Sometimes he’d ask for most of the band to leave the rehearsal space so he could focus in on a particular person,” Stanley recalls. “He might want to run through the drum beat to ‘Detroit Rock City’ with Peter, or maybe talk to Gene about the song’s bass part, which incidentally is based on Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Freddie’s Dead’ [from the soundtrack to the 1972 movie Superfly]. The rehearsals were long, but they were exciting. And it wasn’t just the music he was pushing us on; it was the lyrics too. The ‘fuck me’ songs were out.”

While most of the material was pieced together in the circle, with choruses, verses and bridges run up the flagpole in the hope of an Ezrin salute, a couple of Stanley songs were nearly in the can. “God of Thunder” was, to all intents and purposes, complete, while “Detroit Rock City” had a solid chorus but was still seeking a theme.

The song’s turning point came when Stanley remembered a show in North Carolina where, tragically, a fan had been killed by a car outside the venue. Straight away, Ezrin saw it could be the meat of the tune. He set about encouraging Stanley to complete the lyric, the end result being the story of a kid who hears about his own demise on the radio. (And despite what you may have read on the internet, Gene doesn’t voice the part of the radio reporter in the track’s intro.)

The choice of Detroit for the song’s setting was no arbitrary thing. It was the city that gave Kiss a boost early on. Though known primarily for Motown, the Motor City is a rock and roll town – witness acts like Bob Seger, Grand Funk, the MC5, Ted Nugent and the Stooges – and it embraced the group on its first tours. For that matter, when performing at the city’s Cobo Hall on January 26, 1976, Stanley introduced “Rock and Roll All Nite” as a song written in and for Detroit. Given the band’s relationship with the city, it was only natural to spotlight it in the title of Stanley’s new rocker. But in many ways, “Detroit Rock City” is about every place that likes to shake loose.

“God of Thunder,” meanwhile, would prove to be a double-edged sword for the man known as the Starchild. It was a great song, no doubt, but one Stanley had written for himself. “When Bob said Gene should take the lead vocal, I just couldn’t believe it,” he says, still sounding surprised. “That’s the thing about working with a real producer; he can keep the band focused by assuming control, and that’s generally a good thing… apart from when he disagrees with me.

“Of course, it was absolutely the right call, but it was hard for me to appreciate the logic at the time. I was speechless.”

And it wasn’t just Simmons who made his presence felt on the song – Ezrin’s young sons David and Josh were given a “big moment” too, providing the eerie-sounding vocals that stoke up the atmosphere. “They were wearing little space helmets with walkie-talkies built into them,” Stanley recalls, “and they were saying, ‘I’m King Kong, I’m King Kong…’ That’s what you hear on the track.”

“Kiss Alive! had all the muscle and the spit,” Stanley explains, “but Bob replaced that with a cinematic feel. It was a night-and-day difference to what we’d done before, an altogether larger picture of who we were.”

“God of Thunder,” of course, was destined to achieve great things, and swiftly became a signature tune for a man for whom breathing fire and spitting blood were already a way of life. That was the thing about Destroyer – it was a concept album, but only in the sense that the concept was Kiss itself. The tracks allowed the band members to further bond with the fans by exploring and expounding upon their individual personas.

Ezrin realized that turning these rock and roll heroes into rock and roll superheroes was the key to giving Kiss their biggest record to date, hence his insistence that Gene grab the mic for the self-trumpeting “God of Thunder.” Musical vehicles were duly constructed for other members too.

In Stanley’s case, it was “Do You Love Me?,” a song co-written with producer/songwriter (and Runaways manager) Kim Fowley. “It’s a song that deals with the age-old question, Do you like me for who I am or for what I have?” Stanley reflects. “But to be honest, I really didn’t give a rat’s ass. Back then, our lives were all about instant gratification. Commitment didn’t really come into it. We were enjoying our success.”

With Ezrin bringing the hammer down, there was little danger of filler creeping in below the radar, although the song that hovered closest to it was the tune selected for Criss: “Beth,” a grandiose orchestral outing that has been described by experts in the field of soft rock as the “proto-power ballad.”

Penned by the drummer and his former Chelsea bandmate Stan Penridge, the song received a serious sprinkling of fairy dust from Ezrin. Its roots stretch back to the early 1970s, when it had the title “Beck,” a name inspired by the girlfriend of Chelsea guitarist Mike Brand, who was forever on the phone while the band were in rehearsal. The title was tweaked to avoid confusion, and not only with Jeff Beck. “What’s a Beck?!” Stanley asks, with a shrug. “It just wasn’t a name that people could relate to.”

Originally released as the B-side of “Detroit Rock City,” the third single from Destroyer, “Beth” made an impact on radio as DJs flipped the seven-inch and gave it airplay. Soon after its release, the track received A-side status and charted at number seven, going Gold in the process and picking up a People’s Choice Award. Its success ensured Kiss’s hellfire-and-brimstone stage show would, for the foreseeable future, be tempered by the passing out of roses and the wafting of orchestral music through the PA.

Ideally, Destroyer would have seen the fast-living Ace Frehley taking vocals on a track, something the other members had been encouraging him to do ever since he turned up years earlier with the best part of “Cold Gin” in his pocket. Not wanting to fully embrace the limelight at this point, Ace chose to put all his effort into the melodic, in-the-pocket guitar work that made him Stanley’s most excellent axe-slinging partner.

It wasn’t until the 1977’s Love Gun album that a bona fide all-singing/all-dancing Ace song arrived by means of “Shock Me.” “And the funny thing with ‘Shock Me’ was that Ace did all of the vocals lying flat on his back in the studio,” Stanley recalls. “He wasn’t drunk; he just liked the extra pressure on his chest.”

Of course, the Space Ace wasn’t unfamiliar with the horizontal position, having quaffed deeply from the rock and roll goblet. But with Ezrin in charge, there were rules in place for the first time. “Looking back,” Stanley reflects, “this was the start of a new and necessary mindset for us. Basically, if someone doesn’t turn up, the show must go on.

“You know, Ace has got his life under control these days. I have great fun talking with him. But things were different back then. It’s all been written about already, but he was succumbing to the excesses of the rock and roll lifestyle rather than taking advantage of its perks.”

Ace did his best to fall in line with Ezrin’s approach and take direction. Listening to “Detroit Rock City,” the producer dreamed up the dual-lead guitar break that takes the whole thing to a higher level of enjoyment. “And Bob sang that solo section note for note, then asked Ace to learn it,” Stanley recounts. “Including the harmony.”

But Ace wasn’t always up to snuff, and one occasion when Ace was, to all intents and purposes, lost in space, Ezrin ushered in Detroit session player Dick Wagner to provide electric guitar and acoustic guitar. A session and stage pro who had previously played credited and uncredited with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed and Aerosmith, Wagner was the only musician, apart from the band members themselves, to play an instrument on Destroyer, most notably for the solo in “Sweet Pain,” and he made no attempt to disguise his presence by fretting in Frehley fashion. He was onboard to do the best job he could, guided by a producer determined to use every trick in the book to wring out the magic.

Of course, some of Ezrin’s tricks were decidedly low tech. Today, it’s normal for drummers to lay down their parts to a click track, but the technology didn’t exist in 1976. Which is why Ezrin opted for a cigar box with a microphone inside, which he would tap with a drumstick to keep the musicians as much in line as possible.

It was this kind of precision, married to an ambition larger than Godzilla, that was the hallmark of Destroyer. With the band having granted Ezrin the benefit of “final say,” the producer was free to execute his vision. There was no holding back – no idea too grand to execute.

Though it’s tempting to call it “kitchen-sink production,” Destroyer’s sonic execution is more like a rocket-firing washing machine, with all manner of extra-curricular elements boldly set on spin cycle. With the Bronx Boys Choir on “Great Expectations,” the New York Philharmonic on “Beth,” a calliope on “Flaming Youth” and the sound effect of a car crash on “Detroit Rock City,” Destroyer had plenty to catch the ear and spark the imagination.

Pianos and power chords worked closely together, and all sound effects were printed directly to tape. A less self-assured producer would have recorded everything au naturel and added the required delay, distortion and what-not in the mix, but not Ezrin, who preferred to add the icing while the cake was being baked. “If you were to play the multi-track of Destroyer back through the mixing desk, it would sound just like the album,” Stanley confirms. “Everything would already be there.”

In keeping with the mighty sweep of the music, Destroyer saw the band going for broke on the visual side too. Out went the old costumes. In came a suitably all-conquering post-apocalyptic comic-book-chic look that gave the group a much-needed update to go with their sonic rehab. It was this look that painter/illustrator Ken Kelly – a relative of fantasy/ sci-fi illustrator Frank Frazetta – was asked to capture for Destroyer’s sleeve, the result of which was perhaps the most famous representation of the band ever. 

It’s a magnificent piece of rubble-rousing art, sometimes copied, sometimes spoofed (as on the Sloppy Seconds album Destroyed), but forever loved. Unfortunately, when Kelly’s first painting showed the four members in their earlier Alive!-era costumes, he was forced to redo it.

Considering how much Destroyer defined Kiss at the back end of a decade that saw them move from rehearsal-room hopefuls to multi-Platinum gods, it’s interesting to speculate whether their growth would have been the same were it not for the complete merging of image, music and message that takes place on this album. The band would hook up with Ezrin again for both a low point – 1981’s (Music From) The Elder – and a celebrated return to form – 1992’s Revenge – but the mojo would never work harder than it did here.

The fact remains that time has been kind to Destroyer, a record still very much connected to its own hair and teeth. Even the previously hidden sonic montage “Rock & Roll Party” has come to sound like a relevant part of the album, when in fact it was put there purely and simply to soak up some time: Even with the inclusion of the roughly minute-and-a-half track, Destroyer clocks in under 35 minutes.

Ultimately, the album shows what can be achieved when the studio gods are grinning away like fools.

“I guess ‘swagger’ is probably the right word,” Stanley offers. “The songs have a truly majestic feel, without coming across as either pompous or contrived. Bob was just a joy to work with – the first genuine producer we’d put our trust in.”

Remarkably, for all Ezrin’s control over the proceedings, he couldn’t dissuade the band from their choice of title. “I know that he didn’t really like it,” Stanley says. “He thought ‘destroyer’ sounded negative, but for me it was too good not to use. This was one of those records where – from the music right through to the name – the planets were all in perfect alignment.”

Buy the Destroyer: 45th Anniversary Super-Deluxe Edition here.

Buy the Destroyer: 45th Anniversary Deluxe Edition here.

If you grew up in the 1970s and were smitten by loud, fast rock and roll, there’s a solid chance it was Kiss’s Ace Frehley who first inspired you to pick up a guitar – or, at the very least, sparked your urge to mime an air axe with unabashed gusto.

Kiss took showmanship into the stratosphere with their cooler-than-hell futuristic outfits, quasi-superhero makeup and tightly choreographed concert extravaganzas that included fire breathing, smoking electric guitars and tons of pyro.

All spectacle aside, however, the band played tight, solid hard rock and wrote some damn catchy tunes, too. And while bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons and rhythm guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley have kept an incarnation of Kiss going since the early ’70s, it’s the original lineup, which lasted until the departure of Frehley and drummer/vocalist Peter Criss in the early ’80s, that most fans consider the definitive one.

A wide range of guitarists, including Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and Guns N’ Roses’ Slash have cited Kiss – and Frehley in particular – as a key early influence.

In his Kiss heyday, Frehley relied heavily on minor pentatonic box patterns, often approaching them with a clever logic based on sequenced patterns and impressive displays of flash. Before we begin, make sure you’re familiar with three specific pentatonic forms. Ex. 1b shows the familiar root-position Box 1 form, which is based on the first note of the scale (the root), starting on the low E string.

Examples 1a and 1c detail, respectively, the Box 5 shape below the root, starting on the fifth note, or degree, of the minor pentatonic scale, which is the minor, or “flatted,” seventh; and Box 2, which begins on the scale’s second degree, the minor, or “flatted,” third.

Ace likes to weave in and out of these three adjacent, overlapping patterns, using Box 1 as a foundation. We’ve illustrated the boxes here in the key of A minor, which was a common key in early Kiss songs, although the group would often tune their instruments down a half-step, to Eb standard.

You can easily transpose the visual and physical shapes to any other key simply by shifting the box patterns up or down the fretboard to different tonal centers.

Ex. 2 is based on the C# minor pentatonic scale (C# E F# G# B) and is inspired by a sequenced two-string pattern Frehley delivers during his solo in the frequent Kiss concert opener “I Stole Your Love.” Notice how the pick-hammer-pull trill pattern works its way up through the Box 1 shape.

Ex. 3 is a similar C# minor pattern, this time incorporating the cool, low-string perfect-fourths double-stops that provide heft to the song’s main riff.

Ex. 4 is based on a lead break Ace plays in “King of the Nighttime World.” The song is mostly in the key of D, but the progression under the chorus and instrumental break works its way through a series of chords that are fourths apart.

Instead of changing keys and scale patterns, however, Frehley cleverly sequences a tasty bent-note motif up the top three strings of a Box 2 D minor pentatonic (D F G A C) shape to smoothly sail through the changes.

Ace’s guitar break at the beginning of “Love Gun” is arguably one of the most exciting and propulsive musical moments in Kiss’s early catalog, and although Ex. 5 is not an exact transcription, it’s based on a similar idea: a sequenced triplet motif that starts on the low strings of a Box 5 E minor pentatonic scale (E G A B D) and ascends upward through the next two forms (Box 1 and Box 2), climaxing with a series of whole-step bends on the high E string within the Box 2 shape. Pick cleanly and pay attention to the fret-hand fingerings to make the position shifts as smooth as possible.

Loosely based on Frehley’s epic lead in “Firehouse,” Ex. 6 demonstrates three of its key components: articulated bend-and-release moves in the first two bars, ascending hammer-ons in bars 3 and 4, and a four-note melodic riff sequenced up the neck in the final four bars.

Bars 1-4 are played within the A minor pentatonic pattern. In bars 5-8, a sequenced pattern ascends through different tonal centers and breaks with the scale, but the physical shape remains consistent as it moves up the neck to match each chord.

For Ex. 7, we drew inspiration from Ace’s unaccompanied solo at the end of “Shock Me,” which was a highlight of almost every Kiss concert back in the ’70s. Like Frehley, here we predominantly stick with A minor pentatonic forms.

We’ve transcribed the solo in 4/4, but in concert the Space Ace would often play the phrases quite freely. Kiss fans expected plenty of flash and spectacle, and Ace certainly delivered the goods, so let’s begin with some ear-grabbing rapid-fire double-pull-off triplets to open strings, grounded in the Box 1 A minor scale pattern (bars 1-4).

Next, use the bend at the end of bar 4 to transition to the high strings of the Box 2 A minor pentatonic form in bar 5, which features a chromatic passing tone and double pull-off on each string. In bar 6, this lick is displaced an octave lower to the middle two strings of the Box 1 shape, and, in bar 7, another octave lower to the bottom two strings in the Box 5 shape, before finally resolving with a few boldly articulated power chords in bar 8.

These are some cool licks for sure, but the raddest part of Ace’s in-concert feature is still the smoke and fire that shot from his Les Paul’s dummy rhythm pickup cavity during the solo’s climax. For that level of showmanship, you’ll have to experience Ace and Kiss in concert for yourself.

Chris Shiflett’s long career path has seen him perform in many bands and genres. After starting out with the punk rock bands No Use for a Name and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, he landed with arena rockers Foo Fighters and pursued a solo career playing twangy country rock. 

Through it all, he’s tapped into his deep, lifelong love of rock and roll. Although he’s often a lead electric guitar player, Shiflett has an ear for a memorable riff. Here are the top five that changed his life…

1.  The Rolling Stones, “Shattered” from ‘Some Girls (1978)

“This record came out in the late ’70s, when I was, like, seven years old, and it was one of those records you couldn’t get away from. So many of the Stones’ songs can be grasped even when you’re just starting out on guitar, and they sound great. "Shattered" hit me in the gut, just like a lot of their music. It’s got that cool phaser and slap echo. It just always stuck in my head.”

2. Kiss, “Detroit Rock City” from ‘Destroyer’ (1976)

“Kiss were one of the big reasons I picked up a guitar in the first place. I used to have Kiss posters plastered all over my bedroom walls, and I wore out all their records. Eventually my kids wore out all their records, too. One of the highlights of my rock and roll life was a few years ago at Dave Grohl’s birthday party at the L.A. Forum, which is where they recorded Kiss Alive II. Dave called up Paul Stanley and got him to play a couple of Kiss songs with the Foo Fighters. We played “Detroit Rock City” at that show. I even got to play the guitar solo!”

3. Rainbow, “Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll” from ‘Long Live Rock 'n' Roll’ (1978)

“My brother was, and is still, a gigantic fan of Ritchie Blackmore and all the different stuff he’s done over the years, including Deep Purple and Rainbow, which introduced the world to Ronnie James Dio, who is still my favorite rock and roll singer of all time. Ritchie had endless riffs. He wrote “Smoke on the Water,” so that tells you something about his riffs. My favorite Rainbow song is probably “Kill the King,” but this one is more riffy.”

4. Bad Religion, “You Are (the Government)” from Suffer (1988)

“Bad Religion literally changed my musical life. It was in 1988 that they put out a record called Suffer, and it totally changed punk rock. I think it also marked the first time that I was listening to what was then current punk rock music. “You Are (the Government)” is from that album, and like most of their riffs, it features power chords played fast and is super melodic. It’s all minor key, too. Bad Religion’s music had a kind of wordy sadness to it, and it was just aggressive. Punk rock was not something that I was really interested in at that time, but Suffer changed the game.”

5. Merle Haggard, “The Bottle Let Me Down” from Swinging Doors and the Bottle Let Me Down (1966)

“I’ve always loved rockabilly, and I got into the alt-country stuff in the ’90s. That, in turn, led me to older, classic honky-tonk-type country music. I had a band called Chris Shiflett and the Dead Peasants for a little while, and we just played old honky-tonk covers for a few years. It was really fun. I’d never tried to play that music before. It sounds so easy, but it’s so hard. However, we got down on this one by Merle Haggard.”

It’s taken the better part of 40 years, but Ace Frehley has finally come to terms with his stature as a guitar hero. “People say to me all the time, ‘You’re the greatest guitar player ever,’” he says matter of factly. “Or, ‘I picked up the guitar because of you.’ I get that one a lot. It’s weird, because I always looked at guitar playing as my job. Even when Kiss was at its height of popularity, I couldn’t take the acclaim seriously. It made me feel guilty, like I was pulling the wool over people’s eyes. I just did what I did, and things worked out.” 

Notable guitarists who have dissected his licks over the years include Dimebag Darrell, Slash, Mike McCready and John 5, to mention a few. When reminded of this, Frehley lets out a laugh. “I guess they just liked good riffs, same as anybody else. You take something like ‘Cold Gin,’” he says, referring to his classic Kiss-era tune. “It’s a catchy riff in a catchy song. There wasn’t a science behind it. I wish there was, then I’d write a lot more of them.” Frehley applies his blissfully instinctive approach to riffology throughout his newly released eighth solo album, Spaceman, on which the 67-year-old Bronx-born guitarist blitzes his way through a robust collection of gutsy originals, such as “Rockin’ with the Boys,” “Mission to Mars” and “Pursuit of Rock and Roll.” The album’s other highlights include a ripping take on Eddie Money’s soul-pop gem “I Wanna Go Back,” and two stomping tunes Frehley penned with his old Kiss mate Gene Simmons: “Without You I’m Nothing” and “Your Wish Is My Command.” Though there was bad blood between the two men for years, they’ve been on good terms as of late. In addition to making musical contributions, Simmons suggested Frehley name the new album for his former Kiss “Spaceman” persona.

“It was pretty easy working with Gene,” Frehley notes. “I called him up and said, ‘Do you want to write something for my new album?’ And he said, ‘Sure.’ He came to my house, and we wrote two songs. Gene came up with the basic riffs, and then I wrote the words and restructured the arrangements. After all these years, things are sort of the same between us.”

You left Kiss when the band was still an enormously popular outfit. Any regrets?

No, not at all. Everything got to be too much. I felt like I lost my identity. I had some alcohol and substance abuse problems, and I wasn’t playing the guitar anymore. I had to rediscover who I was, and I had to reacquaint myself with the guitar. Once I got my health back, my love affair with the guitar came back hotter than ever.

Is making records as exciting as it was back in the ’70s? So much about the music business has changed.

We definitely had the best of it. We made records, and they sold like crazy. Since I started, we went from records to eight-tracks to cassettes to CDs and then DVDs. Now people hear music on the Internet. Yeah, we had it made back then. I just found out that Best Buy doesn’t even carry CDs anymore. That surprised me a bit.

What’s your process for recording an album? Do you simply collect a batch of songs, or is it a more formal undertaking?

I don’t have a formal process for anything. [laughs] I can’t force myself to write — I have to be inspired. Gene Simmons used to tell me that he wrote a song a day, but you know, he’s a very disciplined guy. I can’t do that. I’ll play around and see if a riff hits me. If it does, I’ll work on it. If it doesn’t, I’ll wait till the next one comes.

What did you learn about recording guitars from producers Eddie Kramer and Bob Ezrin? Anything you still apply to your own records?

I do everything now at home in my studio in San Diego. I’ve produced my last three albums in five years, and I couldn’t have done it without those guys showing me the ropes. They showed me how to mic guitars and how to use preamps. I put two mics on a cabinet — usually an SM57 and a ribbon mic — and I blend them. The placement of a mic near a cabinet makes all the difference in how a guitar sounds. A lot of people don’t realize that.

In the studio, do you still stack a lot of guitar tracks for your rhythm sound? A lot of guitarists think that fewer guitars makes them stand out more.

Oh, yeah. I stack ’em high. I like layers and layers of Gibsons and Fenders. That’s how I get my fat sound. I’ll record one track with a Les Paul and then put a Tele on top. Usually I have six guitars on a rhythm track. I also put acoustics behind the electrics. I learned that from Pete Townshend.

He told you how to do that?

No, I can hear it! [laughs] I listened to the records.

Let’s talk about some of the new tracks. “Bronx Boy” has a pretty crazy riff. Do you always write riffs first?

It varies. I just play what feels good.

Your solo on “I Wanna Go Back” sounds structured in parts and improvised in others. Do you have a bit of an idea of what you want to play in a solo?

All of my solos are improvised. There isn’t one recent solo that I’ve planned out. I usually have my engineer record half a dozen solos, and then we piece them together. Sometimes I’ve made demos of solos, but I always wound up changing them to something different. I can’t read music, so I just do things as I do them.

What were the main guitars for the album? I assume a generous amount of Les Pauls.

A lot of Les Pauls, a lot of Fenders and a lot of acoustics. Gibson did a ’59 Les Paul reissue, and I’ve been playing that one a lot. Then I’ve got a bunch of Teles and Strats, and a lot of old Fender tweed amps. I use Marshalls — whatever I have sitting around. I just got a new Marshall at a pawnshop. It’s a solid-state, but it sounds great. A lot of people don’t like solid-state amps, but this one sounds good to me.

Any new effect pedals?

I don’t use pedals. I don’t like them onstage because I trip over them. If I want some reverb or delay, I add that later. I play pretty much clean. I’ll use plug-ins when I record, but that’s after the fact.

I recently watched a clip on YouTube of Kiss on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder from 1979. You were cracking Tom up, but it looked like Gene was kind of mad at you.

I was kind of loaded for that show. It was live television, so there wasn’t much they could do. I felt a little bit of animosity from Gene and Paul [Stanley], but halfway through they realized that they couldn’t win, so they joined in with me. That’s when they started telling stories about me to Tom. [laughs]

Okay, the question everybody wants to know is… Will there be another Kiss reunion with the original band?

I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Gene and Paul about that. I haven’t been asked to do anything.

If you were asked, would you be up for reuniting the band?

Yeah, if the price was right. [laughs]

Last question! Is there anything on the guitar you want to do but still haven’t?

In guitar design, yeah. I have a couple of new ideas for special-effects guitars. I invented the smoking guitar, the rocket guitar and the light guitar. I have a few other guitar ideas, but I can’t disclose what they are.

Not even a little hint?

I can’t say anything. I see them in my head, but I need to work on them and make ’em real.