Guitarist Magazine Interview

Lipstick, Powder and Paint
Kiss Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley
Guitarist, February 1997

Birmingham Rock City's Simon Bradley prostrates himself at the feet of two members of the now reformed, legendary rockers.
The blood spitting, fire breathing antics of Kiss captivated America back in 1977. The heavily made-up and costumed musicians, and most explosive stage show ever seen - complete with hydraulic platforms, fire columns, fireworks and mountains of speaker cabs - mesmerized audiences. Accompanying Gene Simmons circus tricks were guitarists Ace Frehley, with his smoking and rocket firing Les Paul; Peter Criss, sitting atop his drum riser a full 60ft in the air; and Paul Stanley twirling all over the place in 8 inch platform heels.
The band was keen to point out that these theatrical performances only exaggerated aspects of their own personalities: Simmons was The Demon, Peter Criss a far from cuddly Cat, Stanley was the Starchild, while Frehley played the Spaceman. And naff as it sounds, it was a masterstroke, for it made the band instantly recognizable. From album covers to T-shirts, lunchboxes, Kiss dolls, a Marvel Kiss comic (printed in ink containing the band members blood) and even a Kiss pinball. Kiss was everywhere. An Oasis pinball would be perceived as a cheap gimmick but for some reason the Kiss version seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Oh, and the music too touched millions; albums such as Destroyer , Dressed To Kill and Rock and Roll Over featured slabs of simple three-chord fun rock n roll with some of the most sexist lyrics ever heard. A staggering number of well-known bands cite Kiss as an influence, and a legion of guitarists look to Messrs. Stanley and Frehley as the reason they first stood in front of the mirror strumming a tennis racquet.
Come the early eighties, it was all over. First Criss and then Frehley were ejected from the band's Simmons/Stanley core in a haze of drugs and booze. By 1983, and the release of the Lick It Up album, the make-up had been scrubbed off - with it went the band's inimitable mystique. Kiss had become another big American band. Crazy, Crazy Nights, arguably its best-known ditty, is magnificent but it isn't a path on the anthemic Rock And Roll All Nite, a stalwart of the live set that s never troubled the UK charts.
The last time the band toured here in full warpaint was on 1980's ironically-titled Unmasked Tour, with Ace just about in there and the now sadly-departed Eric Carr on drums. The band gave Britain a rare taste of the full-on Kiss experience; this humble scribe will remember for a long time to come a night at Stafford Bingley Hall.
In 1996, with the errant Criss and Frehley now back in the fold and a triumphant Donington Monster Of Rock heading performance under their studded belts, Kiss is back. Holed up in a London hotel at the end of a whirlwind three-date tour of England, Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley are sipping Diet Cokes, fighting jet-lag and joking away as if the split of the last 17 years never happened.
"We're having a great time," confirms Paul. "We love what we're doing and we do it with great pride and enthusiasm. The only reason to get back together and do this again would be if we knew no one coming to the shows would have any regrets. The idea was for us to make sure that, in every way, shape and form, we picked up where we left off, as though we turned the clock back. Merely to go on stage and play old songs, we'll leave that to other people."
But, I venture, isn't that exactly what you're doing? Ace is simply honest. "We don't need the money, we're doing it because we're really enjoying it. We're having a good time and getting along better than we ever have, and as long as we're having fun we'll continue to do it. Beyond recreating what we did in the past, I think that know we've surpassed it. We've started where we left off and, from what I can ascertain, at the end of the night we've definitely made some new converts."
Kiss was imply globe-spanning during its mid-seventies heyday, and it's threatening to ascend those giddy heights once again. "The demand for tickets is mind-boggling," says Paul, unable to keep a smile from touching those famous (unpainted) lips. "In American cities, it isn t unheard of to be doing 40,000, 60,000, 100,000 people, and most of those sold out in under 45 minutes. We knew this tour would be big but right now the word big is small; now we're talking massive ."
During the eighties, the band tended not to play many of the classic older songs on-stage, going instead for plugging the latest album, a tactic that in itself was hardly unsuccessful, but wasn't what hard-core fans would call the real Kiss. The band has released three live albums during its career, but Alive! (1976) and Alive I (1977) are the best way to introduce yourself to what the band was and is now about. The latter's packaging featured pictures of the Kiss stage show in all its glory, and it's that period the band has chosen to recreate.
Can you top this?
"The gatefold of Alive II pretty much says Can you top this?," continues Paul. "We used that tour (on the back of the Love Gun album) as the quintessential tour in terms of the stage show. Any band with money can put on a show five times as big as ours, but it will never be a Kiss show. It may look like a Kiss show, but Kiss will never be on that stage."
As is widely known, it was during a recording for MTV's Unplugged program in 1995 that saw the four original members on a stage in anger for the first time and they realized that that old magic was still there, Ace explains.
"I wouldn�t consider any of us to be virtuoso musicians. I mean, we're good, but for some reason, when the four of us get together and we're on form, there s a chemistry. We can't put our finger on that, and when we did the Unplugged session, we realized that this tour was possible - we could sense there was still that feeling between the four of us."
Rehearsals were set up. Surely it was easy to get back into it, a sort of falling off a log scenario? Ace is quick to put me straight. "To be honest, initially I took it lightly, and then Paul and Gene kinda got on my case and said "We really want to do this, we don t wanna come off half-assed , so I really had to sit down and listen to the solos I had written 15 to 20 years ago, and basically recreate them every night. I think that's what the fans want to hear, so that's what I give them."
Stanley isn't slow in waving his Frehley flag: "Ace's solos are as memorable as the melodies of the songs, and for us to go out and change the melodies would be as absurd as Ace changing the solos. Anybody can get up and play a solo, any twit can do that, but playing the solos Ace wrote is what people want to hear. There's nothing worse than for people to come and hear a song that they've been waiting all night - or 17 years - to hear, and not recognize it. As long as people are paying good money to see you, you'd better give them what they deserve.
Bed of roses
Although Stanley hasn't really been off the road since Kiss began, it wasn t exactly a bed of roses for him either.
"At one point we were rehearsing seven nights a week and there would be times that we would look at each other and go, This sucks! . There were days when I didn't even show up. But it takes commitment and a sense of both group and individual pride to make this fly. If the idea was to go into a rehearsal room for three weeks and then hit the road, I'd be home. Getting back together was easy; getting back to top form was the hard part. For me, this band is like a rough diamond and it takes a lot work to cut and polish it."
Getting the music right took time, but the mechanics of its production were an instant hit, thanks to the leaps in technology over the years. Paul elaborates: "What we tried to do was take the best of the show. But in terms of what goes on behind the scenes, technology has moved on, so how things are done has changed, although the end result is the same. You may lift up on a platform [at the climax of the main set, Stanley, Simmons and Frehley are raised above the audience s heads on enormous hydraulic rostrums] and once it was done by mice running around in a wheel! Now we use electricity. You know, it ultimately comes down to a good guitar and a good amp; all the other stuff is just window dressing. You can't put icing on a cake that doesn't exist."
For all the extravagance, both six-stringers are simplistic in the extreme when it comes to their gear. Having been around for a while, Frehley and Stanley had their live set-up sorted out years ago. Although today's retro-show features a huge wall of Marshall cabs as backline - a stack of around ten heads, as well as numerous cabs dotted around the lighting truss - all are dummies. Both men use one Marshall 100W head into a couple of customized 1960BV 4 x 12 cabs.
"Jimmy Page, Peter Green, Clapton," froths Stanley. "Those guys just took a Les Paul, or some other great guitar, and plugged it into their Marshall - that's what we remember as the epitome of the classic rock sound. It didn't go through a cabinet that looks like something off the USS Enterprise. Listen to Paul Kossoff: the urgency of the sound that came out of his guitar was based on the lack of diluting technology interfering with the guitar and the amp."
These boys are anything but tech-heads. "I was in the studio one time, and this producer came in and said to me Paul, you have to try this amp out, it give you a Marshall-type sound. I said, I've got the best way of getting a Marshall-type sound: it s called a Marshall. They're the classic amp. Look back at all your heroes - whether it's Cream, Zeppelin, The Who - and you're talking about British tube stacks."
"Neither of us believes in those large racks filled with 20,000 different special lights," sniggers Ace.
"It's all bull. I saw one of those things and I went over to the guy and asked him if it made cappuccino," Paul turns to his cohort with a laugh.
"It probably did. Heh heh heh!" Ace is off into paroxysms again. "Once in a while, Hendrix would use an Arbiter Fuzz-Face, and I would use a digital delay and power booster. Mind you, they wouldn't be on the floor, they'd be run by my tech; you know, with those boots on I'd end up tripping over them. Heh heh heh!" The double-act works well both on-stage and off.
A word of advice
On to the subject of guitars. The pair has stuck with the same models for virtually its entire career in the made-up Kiss. During his time with the bare-faced version of the band, Paul dallied with various BC Riches, but the guitar he is most identified with is the Ibanez PS10. A word of advice, though; don't do what I did and call it an Iceman - you'll earn yourself a severe dressing down from Mr. Stanley.
"For some reason, the Iceman and PS10 have become interchangeable in terms of what the guitar is, and there's no validity in that," he says firmly. "A Rolls-Royce is an automobile, so is an Opel, but that s where the similarity between them ends. Ibanez make a guitar called an Iceman, which I have no reason to champion; it's a budget-line guitar. The shape of that and the PS10 is the only thing the two have in common. The PS10 was a guitar designed from the ground up by me, whereas the Iceman is just something that looks similar."
Oops. Open mouth, insert foot, feel suitably admonished. Turning to Ace, his favourite squeeze is a much simpler beast to identify; the three pickup Gibson Les Paul Custom.
"Yeah, I'm a Les Paul guy. I don't know if you remember, but Washburn came out with an Ace Frehley model shaped like a lightning bolt and, although I was very flattered, when I got in on stage, I played one song, sounded terrible, and said Gimme my Les Paul back! None of us are phonies; we use the best equipment possible that we're comfortable with, and for me, Les Pauls are the best guitars ever made. There is going to be an Ace Frehley Les Paul coming out shortly, which I'm thrilled about. It's got a great inlay on the headstock and lightning bolts instead of blocks on the fingerboard. So it'll be a three pickup cherry sunburst Custom, and the reason I'm not using it right now is that I've sent it back to the Custom Shop three times because it wasn't correct; there's no way I'm gonna let the guitar go out until I'm completely satisfied with it."
Get Paul on the subject of guitars and he lights up. "You can make guitars out of graphite, out of fiberglass and so on, but it's all space-age nonsense. Guitars are supposed to be made out of wood; they resonate the best, have characteristics that make each individual. Each guitar is exciting as you discover its personality. That's the luxury of having a wood guitar."
During Frehley's solo spot, usually during Shock Me, one of the few songs written by himself for Kiss, his Les Paul begins to smoke and splutter before bursting into flames and flying off 60ft to the roof of the stage. So, Ace, how do you get your guitar to catch fire?
"My guitar smokes?" he deadpans. "I must have had a problem Heh heh heh! Basically, we were on tour in Canada with Savoy Brown many, many years ago and I had an idea. We had lots of fireworks and I said Let me put a smokebomb inside the cavity where the controls are . I lit it with a cigarette lighter, figuring that the smoke would go through the canal and seep through the pickup holes. It did and, hey, it looked cool, but after four or five shows I ended up gumming up all the electrics and everything had to be replaced. Eventually, when the group got larger and we had enough money to design our own guitars and effects, I had somebody build a guitar that did the job properly. I don't wanna go into the specifics of it, but "
Oh, go on! Paul interjects: "Magic is best when you don't know how it's done," he says, with a knowing nod.
"I basically just hit a couple of switches and things blow up. Heh heh heh!" says Ace, closing the subject.
There is a brand new compilation album out now, called Greatest Kiss, featuring some of the band's best-known numbers including God Gave Rock N Roll To You, a song not associated with the original line-up. But it looks like it's going to be a long wait before any brand new Kiss material is available; there's no album in the pipeline as yet, as Stanley confirms: The pipeline is long and right now there's no light at the other end. At this point, although we're 100 shows in, we've only just entered this, so we just don't know."
"Gene said that, in his opinion, the best Kiss album hasn't been made yet," states Frehley. "That's not to say that we are gonna do an album sometime in the future, but in the event that we do stay together, then that is a possibility, but it's still way down the list."
It's been a long, hard road for Kiss and, although Stanley looks as tall, lean and proud as always, the ravages of the road are clear on Frehley's face and body. For him especially, you can tell he's glad to be back on a stage and even happier to be off the sauce.
"What's beautiful for me is that I can remember what I did the night before. It's very much better now I'm clean, and I think that shows in my performance and guitar playing," Stanley agrees: "There's something very odd about having someone who's intelligent coming over to you in the morning and says What did I do last night? It's nice to have everybody not having the crutch of being high, stoned or drunk."
Life on the road, both in and around the band these days, seems to be a good experience, and after so many years the band knows how to enjoy itself. Any printable stories, gentlemen?
"Aah, I hate that kind of stuff," says Stanley, "You can make them up or they can be true, but life on the road is funny and we spend a lot of time laughing. It's as seedy as you want it to be and it's as funny as you want it to be. It's like a buffet; there's everything from the spicy to the sweet. Boy, am I eloquent!" he end as the two collapse into giggles again. Ace is only a little more forthcoming: "Basically, you name it, we've done it! Anything you can imagine and then some things you can't. Heh heh heh!"
Life is good. After the tour of England, it's off to Europe for three weeks, home for Christmas, back out to the Pacific Rim, Australia, New Zealand and then back to the States, for another of what Frehley calls "The World Domination Tour.
Entertainment is the name of the game and Kiss fits that particular bill perfectly. I was there in 1980 and I was there in 1996 and, as far as I can remember of the former show, there's no difference at all between the two - all that hard work has paid off.
Paul drains his glass: "We didn't come back to do a musical lecture circuit. We came back to regain the heavyweight championship and every night we go in to score knockouts". If Mike Tyson was in a band, he wouldn't stand an earthly chance.