Why Doug Aldrich failed his audition for Kiss
At the end of the day, rock and roll is always still a job. For as many talk about how it felt like one big party going from one gig to the next every time they performed, there comes a point where money is involved, and artists have to be on their A-game for whenever band dynamics go out the window. Although Kiss was practically a hot mess throughout most of their career, guitarist Doug Aldrich was one of the unlucky few to crash and burn during his audition.
When looking at the band’s repertoire, though, it’s not exactly hard to pick up on how to play Kiss songs. Even the band members have said that they are far from the greatest musicians in the world, so a majority of their best material usually involves them playing the kind of music that can be played with only a few basic shapes.
Whereas Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons could play up their showmanship whenever they sang, Ace Frehley was the wild Spaceman in the background half the time. Serving as the beating heart behind the band’s heavy side, Frehley was responsible for the moments when songs took off, usually making solos that people sing back to themselves long after the song was over.
After losing founding drummer Peter Criss, Frehley had figured that it was better to cut his losses while he was ahead. Not liking where the band was going with the album Music From “The Elder”, Frehley thought that the band had no chance of returning to their roots, leaving midway through the recording of Creatures of the Night.
While the rest of the band ultimately took the Steely Dan approach by having different guitarists play on nearly every song on the record, the search for a permanent member led to Aldrich getting the call. While the future Dio guitarist was barely out of his teens when he got the call, he admitted that he was never going to be prepared for the group’s demands.
When talking about the audition process, Aldrich remembered behaving too much like a little kid around his idols, telling VRP Rocks, “I went down and jammed with the guys in a recording studio, and I went and played with them live a couple of times. It was pretty surreal for an 18-year-old kid. I was 18 going on. I mean, my maturity level was probably 10. So I went down and played with them a couple of times, and I think we sounded cool, but I was just a kid – I couldn’t hang out with those guys”.
Even though Aldrich had real chops to play in the band, he knew that his fanboy demeanour wasn’t doing him any favours, leading to the band not calling him after those few gigs. Aldrich was far from the only guitarist to fail the audition since future Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash would fail his audition for being too young.
Then again, Aldrich was going to sit around feeling sorry for himself, working with bands like WASP and Bad Moon Rising before finally getting the call to play with heavy hitters like Whitesnake and Dio on their work in the 2000s and beyond. While the opportunity to join Kiss may have been too good an offer for any teenager to turn down, artists probably don’t want a musician who spends his spare time drooling over their idols.
