Tom Morello on “the world’s first power ballad”
It might seem astounding to the cynical contemporary listener, but there was a time when Kiss were at the cutting edge of rock music. Emerging with their face paint, alter egos, metal grooves, and explosive live shows, the band’s fusion of catchy hard rock and a mysterious aesthetic was massively impactful, with them becoming a true phenomenon in the late 1970s.
Their otherworldly characters, anthemic songs, and astute marketing were ahead of their time, appealing to both kids and adults alike. Kiss were massively successful, and although they weren’t for everybody, thanks to records such as their eponymous 1974 debut, 1976’s Destroyer and the following year’s Love Gun, the prolific quartet established a tremendously diehard following and cemented themselves as pioneers of shock rock and the ensuing glam metal.
While Kiss are certainly not esteemed by many young fans today, unless their parents were fans of the band during their pomp, with their make-up, alter-egos, and music appearing immensely tacky and dated, with the notoriously arrogant and outspoken personality of Gene Simmons not helping their cause, they do have fans in some unlikely alternative rock heroes who have been widely influential in a corner of music that’s antithetical to everything the New York group represent.
Although the most consequential of these alt-rock titans deferential to Kiss is former Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl, who has reflected on the tremendous impact of Destroyer on him in the past, another diehard member of the Kiss army is Rage Against the Machine axeman Tom Morello.
On the surface, this might seem shocking, given that Rage Against the Machine’s politics could not be further from Simmons’, and the fact that their furious, social justice-charged music is firmly rooted in real life, another element in stark juxtaposition to Kiss’ often fictional compositions. However, as his crunching, blues-infuswed riffs heavily imply, Morello himself comes from a metal background as a player, with some of the 1970s and 1980s’ biggest artists influencing his approach. These include Ozzy Osbourne, Led Zeppelin, Rush, Iron Maiden, and, of course, Kiss.
Morello is such a big fan of Kiss that he was chosen to induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. Before doing so, he gave an extensive and informed speech about what made them so important during their peak and offered great insight into how they helped him form his own distinctive sound.
At one point, after celebrating the individual brilliance of each original founding member of ‘The Fearsome Foursome’, frontman Paul Stanley, bassist Simmons, and guitarist Ace Frehley, he moved on to the final piece of the puzzle, ‘The Cat’, drummer and songwriting legend Peter Criss. In celebrating Criss’s dynamic, genre-melding style, he also claimed that he wrote “the world’s first power ballad”.
Morello said: “And ‘The Cat’, Peter Criss. Jungle rhythms, jazz fills, and the writer and singer of the band’s biggest hit, the world’s first power ballad, ‘Beth’.”
It’s a strange point, but Morello might be right. Kiss were pioneering in several ways, but one that people often forget is that they were masters of the power ballad before the form became ubiquitous in the ensuing years. Although ‘Beth’ might not actually have been the first, which Criss wrote with Stan Penridge when in his old band Chelsea, to mock a member’s overbearing wife, Becky, originally called ‘Beck’, it saw Kiss depart from their other songs mostly concerned with sex. Destroyer producer Bob Ezrin helped him finalise it, and it took the band into a new realm, giving the quartet their biggest US hit, showing they weren’t a one-trick pony. That was the start of them becoming a true phenomenon.
