Kiss star Paul Stanley’s favourite AC/DC album
Their thick make-up and bold, imposing costumes could give the impression of stage fright, a degree of anonymity to hide behind. However, Kiss proved themselves to be one of the most boisterous and uncompromising bands to push the 1970s heavy rock vanguard. Formed in 1973 by Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, the band lapped up all they could from the contemporary glam rock scene and created a beast of their own.
An early proponent of the so-called shock-rock genre, Kiss valued live presence above all else. To match their wild costumes, the foursome employed pyrotechnics, optical illusions and fake blood to bring the show alive and provoke the audience. Through their most influential spell in the mid-1970s, Kiss’ music was typified by uptempo beats and quaking guitar riffs, groundwork from which punk and metal genres would flourish.
“Being in Kiss in the very first year and touring around the United States, we felt like we were taking off,” bassist and co-lead vocalist Gene Simmons recalled in the End of the Road World Tour Program in 2019. “It was like somebody pushing you into the deep end of the pool whether you can swim or not. The early years of Kiss were far from glamorous. We rode in a station wagon hundreds of miles every day.”
“We would take turns driving and sleeping in the back,” he continued. “We ate burgers at roadside taverns. We stopped and peed on the side of long stretches of a highway when we couldn’t find a town anywhere near. We ate beans and franks because we couldn’t afford better food as we were on an $85-a-week salary! Becoming a rock star was better than anything and beyond anything I ever imagined.”
Kiss was deeply inspired by early 1970s glam artists like New York Dolls and the heavy rock stylings of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, but as they evolved, emerging contemporaries like AC/DC became a driving force of competition.
Speaking to Classic Rock in 2023, Paul Stanley discussed Kiss’ infatuation with AC/DC, revealing that he was initially sceptical of replacement vocalist Brian Johnson following the death of Bon Scott in 1980. “When Brian Johnson joined AC/DC, I was curious – like everyone was – about how that would impact the band and the chemistry they had with Bon Scott,” he said.
Stanley then revealed that Back In Black, the Australian band’s first album with Johnson, became an all-time favourite. “But what they created with Back In Black was just monumental,” he continued. “The way that album starts with ‘Hells Bells’, it hit me like the first time I heard Black Sabbath – like, ‘Holy shit!’ With Back In Black, the band’s sound was polished to some degree. They were building on what they’d done before, moving forward. That kind of bare-bones grit they had in the early days was replaced with this driving sonic overload. But it was so brilliant. I thought what was gained overrode what was lost.”
Listen to ‘Hell’s Bells’, the opening track from AC/DC’s Back In Black, below.
