News Archive December 2009

Ace Frehley Interview
From: KISS Hell
by Joe Degraffenreid (photo by Michele Fusco)
Posted: December 11, 2009

METAL HELL: Did you expect ANOMALY to be received so well?

ACE FREHLEY: I'm thrilled with the response. I didn't realize it was going to be that overwhelmingly positive, but I rolled the dice, I produced it, I wrote the songs & luckily it's being received well.

MH: How did you develop "Genghis Khan?"

AF: I originally just wrote the verse & chorus part & it evolved over a couple of years to what it's grown into. It was the most complicated song on the record, as far as mixing; it was over 100 tracks in pro tools. The guitar intro was added later. The Wah-Wah guitar solo at the end was added later. They were all afterthoughts that made it longer & more interesting.

I've never done a song quite like "Genghis Khan", so I wanted to go into new areas musically & I think I achieved it.

MH: It reminds me of Jimmy Page.

AF: A lot of my songs are influenced by Page & Zeppelin; just listen to "Space Bear". Page and Hendrix are two of my biggest influences.

MH: With the tuning of the high E tuned to G, did that inspire how that song was written?

AF: It had something to do with the way it was written. Where the tuning came from I have no idea; one day I decided to tune my first string up to a G& I liked what it did to the chord structure. There's no rhyme or reason why I do anything. Sometimes I do things & it's almost as if somebody else is giving me instructions from somewhere else, & it's like being beamed into my head (laughs).

MH: You use a drop D tuning on "Outer Space". Was that the first song you've written with a drop-D?

AF: Yeah, I believe it is. I also used a 7 string on that song just on the choruses, an Ibanez 7 string, which made the choruses even thicker on top of the drop D. Basically what I did with this record was I experimented & went into some new musical genres that I've never been in before. I had the original formula that I came up with for the first solo album in '78 & I elaborated on that.

MH: Your solos have a compositional vibe although you improvise a lot. How do you balance composing solos with improvising?

AF: In the early days with KISS I used to try to write guitar solos & a lot of times I'd write something at home & bring it into the studio & nobody would like it, so that got frustrating, so for the most part, in the 70's & 80's, I started walking in with an idea or a theme & said hit the record button & let me play around with it. On this new album pretty much all of the solos are spontaneous, (with the) first, second, or third take & sometimes we'd piece them together, & take the front of one take & the tail end of another. Working with pro-tools it's easy to cut & paste & try different formulas.

MH: Will you be playing the ANOMALY solos live like they are on the CD?

AF: I pretty much try to do that without much deviation. I think that's what the fans want to hear. I remember when I was a kid & I used to go see a band, I always wanted the solos to sound similar to what was on the record. I think it's important, to me some of the best guitar solos are solos that you can hum & remember the melody. I was never a big fan of three thousand notes in a guitar solo.

MH: Was the original "Shock Me", solo improvised?

AF: I believe I recorded that solo in pieces, with Eddie Kramer. We worked on a certain part of the solo & then went on to the next couple of bars; I think I did that one in pieces.

MH: On "Love Gun," what inspired the climb up lick that starts the solo?

AF: It's kind of a scale; it's a variation of a scale going up, I don't know that many musical terms because I'm not a schooled musician, but if it sounds right you do it. It's probably elaborating on something Jimmy Page did, but even before Page, I grew up in the Bronx, in New York City, & a friend of mine had a hit record with a group called The Blues Magoos & the guitar solo pretty much started off the same way, on a song called "We Ain't Got Nothing Yet".

MH: I read you might be doing some older obscure songs on tour. How about "Dark Light"?

AF: It's funny you mention that song, because I just texted it to my other guitar player, Derrick Hawkins, & told him I wanted to work that one up (laughs).

MH: Was "Talk To Me" written with a capo?

AF: I didn't use a capo, I just used D-tuning, you tune the E string to a D & the A string to a G. It's the same tuning Keith Richards used on "Brown Sugar" & a couple of those other classic songs.

MH: Was "Pain In the Neck" based on a true story?

AF: Well, I've known a lot of women that were Pain In The Necks', & they don't always start out that way (laughs), somehow they end up there, so it wasn't written about one person. It was just about all the times that women have driven me crazy, & there's been many. That was a salute to all the girls who drove me nuts in my life. That song' started off with a guitar riff & evolved. The bridge came later, which is an off tempo nutty bridge, but I wanted to touch on musical textures that I've never done in the past. I wanted to show musical growth in my writing & performing.

MH: In 1977, you tapped with your pick, like on the ALIVE II solo. What did you think when Eddie Van Halen started tapping the next year?

AF: Eddie didn't originate tapping & neither did I. Everybody copies from everybody to a certain extent. Eddie just does it better than me.

MH: But you did it first.

AF: Yeah, I mean so what.

MH: You have an instructional DVD coming out.

AF: Yeah, I did that a couple of months ago', it was kind of thrown on me all of a sudden. I struggled with it a little because I don't know a lot of musical terms. A lot of the chords I played on this new album, I don't even know what they're called (laughs), so I had to have a coach tell me exactly what I was doing so I could tell the kids.

MH: Do you think guitarists should be able to improvise in order to write memorable solos?

AF: Not necessarily, but it helps. Sometimes you want to repeat a theme or a melody that's sung in the chorus or the verse, elaborate on it & improvise on it. Sometimes I approach solos totally different, depending upon the song. It may have nothing to do with the melody in the chorus or the verse. Each song is different & each song has to be approached differently but to be able to improvise around a musical theme gives you that much more flexibility in putting together a good guitar solo.

MH: Do you think the art of composing memorable solos has been lost?

AF: Maybe to a certain extent. I really don't listen much to the radio. For the last year I've been pretty much exclusively listening to vinyl. I pulled out the old record player & dusted it off & fired it up. To me it's more of a soothing sound.

MH: What are you listening to lately?

AF: Mostly old stuff, I still listen to my old Led Zeppelin records & Who records & Stones records, but I go a lot further back than that. I listen to old blues records, B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert' King. I'll listen to Elvis. I'll even listen to Frank Sinatra. It's always good to listen to a lot of different people, because I can listen to a Frank Sinatra song & get an idea for a guitar solo.

You should never limit what you listen to because you never know what you might get out of it. I've even gotten guitar solo ideas from listening to classical music.

MH: Do you think it's important to have a base in the blues to play rock properly?

AF: I don't think it's a necessity, I just think it's an asset. I'm a blues based guitar player, always have been & it's funny because I think the only song I've ever recorded on a record that's a blues rocker, is "Remember Me". I was working on a song for Anomaly that was going to be a slower standard blues track & I didn't finish it in time & I already over-cut 16 songs, out of the 12, so I had to edit out 4. So they will probably be on the next CD.

MH: It's fun to play blues with other guitar players.

AF: It's a treat.

MH: Do you still collect guitars & what are your favorites right now?

AF: I've got a lot of acoustics now. I've always had 20 Les Paul's or more. Over the last year & a half I bought about 5 old Fender's; Strats & Teles. When I'm recording I like to usually do a basic track with a Les Paul & then' double it with a Fender, it'll give you a thicker harmonic spread, & also doubling an electric guitar track with an acoustic & tucking it under sometimes will make a track pop out more, almost to the point where you really can't hear the acoustic but if you pop it out of the mix, you miss it, it's a real subtle acoustic double.

Talking about "Genghis Khan," I had probably a half a dozen acoustic tracks on that that I didn't even use, in the mix. But when you work with pro tools there's no limitation to how many tracks you can have so as long as you're up to weeding through them, because some days I'd wake up & try a different acoustic track on that, hoping it would add some sparkle or special texture to it, & then towards the end I got overwhelmed with over 100 tracks & I started having to mute a lot of them, but I'm real happy with the final mix.

MH: Now that ANOMALY is out, do you plan to continue making new music?

AF: I've already started writing new songs for the new record so I would imagine within a year & a half there should be something new out.

MH: Would you like to do any live recording?

AF: I'm sure on this upcoming tour we're going to be recording some of the shows & making them available down the road. But, more than that I'd really like to take a young band into the studio & share some of the knowledge I've gotten over the years from working with great producers like Eddie Kramer & Bob Ezrin & pass the knowledge on.

MH: Do you mean for a new band, or with your band?

AF: No, I'd like to produce, some new bands under my new label, Bronx Born Records. I get stuff all the time.

MH: Can't wait to hear some new stuff live.

AF: Which songs do you think we should do live?

MH: I'd like to hear "Pain In The Neck", "Fox On The Run" "Space Bear", "Save Your Love".

AF: We did "Space Bear" live at the Viper Room. I know we're going to do "Fox On The Run", I think we're doing "Insane". We start rehearsals in a few days so just trying to tweak the tracks we're going to go over, but we were fooling around with "Dark Light" & thinking of throwing "Talk To Me" back in the set.