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.
After the set, some tall guy comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, Ace Frehley’s leaving Kiss. Will you be interested in auditioning?’”
— Steve Farris
“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.'”
— Steve Farris
“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.
