Ace Frehley on the singer who was “like a God” to Kiss
When Kiss arrived on the New York club scene in the early 1970s, they were unlike any other rock group. Glam rock and shock rock had both seen a major rise in popularity, but nobody was taking things to the extremes that Kiss were going for. Pyrotechnics, fire breathing, levitating drums, smoke bomb guitars and Kabuki makeup were part of the Kiss experience from the very beginning, and their combination together made the hard rock band a completely unique entity.
But surely all of that theatricality had to come from somewhere, right? As it turns out, most of Kiss’ influences were relatively mild compared to them. All four members had a strong love for British Invasion bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, with guitarist Ace Frehley taking more than a few notes from the riff-heavy approach that Keith Richards took to the guitar.
When it came to visuals, there was only one act that could possibly push Kiss in the right direction: Alice Cooper. When the members of Kiss saw the legendary shock rocker, it was the period when “Alice Cooper” was still a band of five. The same year that Kiss officially formed, Alice Cooper were touring behind their 1973 breakthrough LP Billion Dollar Babies. Frehley and Paul Stanley managed to score tickets that would help shape their own musical direction.
“Kiss was influenced by the whole English Invasion and also by Alice Cooper,” Frehley told Ultimate Guitar in 2018. “I remember one night me and Paul went to see Alice Cooper on the ‘Billion Dollar Babies Tour’ and we had really shitty tickets because we couldn’t afford the expensive ones. We ended up sneaking down and walking down the aisles to get closer to the stage.”
“Alice was like a god to us. We’ve been good friends. I got drunk with Alice before he got sober. I’m one of the few people that can say that because he’s been sober now 25 or 30 years,” Frehley remembers. “We were fascinated by Alice but he didn’t wear much makeup and just around the eyes. When we had a band meeting after that and between seeing them and The Who, we realized we wanted to have a theatrical rock group.”
“Wearing makeup but take it a step further and way further than anybody had done it,” Frehley added. “So pretty much after we made that decision, we started performing at a club in Amityville, Long Island, called The Daisy and that’s where we fine-tuned our makeup.”
Check out ‘Shock Me’ down below.
