How Bo Diddley influenced Ace Frehley’s biggest solo hit
It was the kind of promotional stunt that could only come from the likes of Kiss: on the same day in 1978, all four members released solo albums. The albums in question all came with the Kiss name on their front covers and each member’s makeup, but they were clearly separate efforts. Across all four releases, the number of songs featuring more than one band member is precisely zero.
Part promotional stunt and part contract fulfilment, the solo albums varied in quality and content. Peter Criss showed off his love of R&B and ballads, while Gene Simmons took on everything from salacious hard rock to the Disney classic ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’. Meanwhile, Paul Stanley’s album mostly sounded like a standard Kiss album without his bandmates. But it was guitarist Ace Frehley who came out with the most surprisingly great record.
From the drug-fuelled antics of ‘Snow Blind’ to the surf rock copycat piece ‘Wiped-Out’, Frehley is clearly having the most fun out of the four band members on his solo effort. Ace Frehley would become the most successful of all the band’s solo efforts, largely thanks to its hit single, a cover of Russ Ballard’s ‘New York Groove’. Originally a hit for British glam rockers Hello in 1975, Frehley took hold of the song and made it his own.
Although it later became his signature track, Frehley was hesitant to record a cover for the album. “A lot of people think I wrote ‘New York Groove’. It’s not a myth that I’ve perpetuated, but that’s the way it is,” Frehley told Louder Sound in 2016. “I wish I would’ve wrote the song, though. I would’ve made a lot more cash out of it.”
Frehley didn’t actually wind up making that many changes to Hello’s original version. Although Frehley’s version is slightly faster and features his singular guitar work, the arrangement remains faithful to the version that Ballard brought to Hello a few years prior. That includes the infectious beat and kicks of both tracks.
“I wanted to do a Bo Diddley beat because I thought that sort of sound hadn’t been heard for a long time, so I got some maracas and a harmonica, and I started off with this ‘cha-ch-ch-cha-chcha-cha’ rhythm,” Frehley told Classic Rock. “I got the members of Hello to stand on some trestle tables with their platform boots on, and they all stomped along. I had the chorus – ‘I’m back, back in the New York groove’ – and I wrote the rest of the words in the studio.”
Check out Frehley’s version of ‘New York Groove’ down below.
