News Archive February 2010

The First KISS
From: SonicBommers.com
by Binky Phillips
Posted: February 2, 2010

Way back during the last years of the '60s and start of the '70s, I went to the famous High School of Music & Art in Harlem, USA. It was way the heck uptown in the middle of CCNY's campus. On my third day there, the no-kidding-around Black Panthers, looking fabulous in their black leather "car coat" jackets, berets and Ray-Bans, took over the entire CCNY campus and held it hostage for two weeks.

We M&A pee wee middle-class Jewish, Italian, Polish, Irish, baby-Che Guevara wannabes were thrilled and would throw them our little white-bread power-fists every morning and afternoon as we came and went. For awhile, they power-fisted us back from behind the barricades they'd throw together of desks, chairs, garbage cans, etc. behind the gates of the campus and we'd yell slogans of encouragement. But, by the end of the first week, the Black Panthers, hungry, dirty, fed up, on the verge of being arrested, were in no mood for our play-acting.

This event was immediately followed by a teachers' strike that was perceived by progressives to be an outright act of racism. My dad, a long-time staunch union man, came into Music & Art and taught English for a week, he was so disgusted. "The only picket line I ever crossed, Binky. I want you to know that." Interesting times for a "gifted underachiever" sophomore.

Anyway, a few months later in the early Spring of 1969, I met Stan Eisen, with a Prince Valiant hairdo and a grade ahead of me. We became fast friends when we discovered that we were two of only three guys in Music & Art who owned a Gibson guitar. Murray Dabby, the third Gibson owner, was a ridiculously better guitarist than either me or Stan, and he's now a shrink in Atlanta! Also the smartest of us three as well, obviously! After we graduated, Stan and I stayed in touch.

A year or so after high school, in the Spring of 1972, Stan introduced me to this imposing giant of a guy with a huge halo of hair outside a Jeff Beck show at the Academy of Music on East 14th St., later, the Palladium, and now, NYU dorms.

"Binky, this is Gene Simmons, the bassist in my band, Wicked Lester. Gene, this is the guy I was telling you about who owns the Hiwatt amp." Gene flinched!

Hiwatts were the Who's amp of choice back then and completely and totally unavailable in the USA. I'd lucked into literally the ONLY ONE IN AMERICA when I bought it off of Blodwyn Pig, a British Blues band featuring the original and fabulous guitarist of Jethro Tull, Mick Abrahams. From that moment on, Gene, an extremely cocky guy even then, always treated me with respect simply because of that amp, and later, as we became actual friends, because he liked my guitar playing too. I wound up his guitarist-of-choice for several of his demos when KISS became gods. And I'm very proud to report that Gene's directive to Ace, years later, when Mr. Frehley was about to record the solo for "Doctor Love" was, "Do a Binky solo!" and Ace knew exactly what Gene meant and cut one of his wildest and best solos ever.

Back to 1972, several months after I met Gene, I got a call from Stan telling me that I needed to start calling him Paul, please, ("Oh, okay, Stan") and that I should come down to a rehearsal of his and Gene's new still-unnamed band. They'd just found a lead guitarist a month earlier and he wanted me to check the whole thing out. Stan, I mean, errr, Paul respected my opinion and seemed to be seeking my lead-guitarist stamp of approval.

So, one Saturday afternoon, I made it over to 10 East 23rd St., a narrow, grimy 6-floor building across from Madison Park, (long gone for a towering apartment building opposite the Flatiron Building), where Paul and Gene's band had a very dingy and very dirty loft/room, crudely soundproofed with blankets and quilts and egg cartons.

When I arrived that day, the new lead guitarist was already over an hour late. The mood in the room was bleak. Still, their pal Binky had shown up, so, after introducing me to Peter Kriss, the drummer, Paul, Gene and Peter ran through three songs for my pleasure without the now very late new lead guitar guy. I listened to the trio play "Deuce," "Firehouse" and "Strutter," all three now classics from the debut KISS album. It was interesting and surprising. As a band, they weren't all that good, technically, better than the rock deities of the scene at the time, The New York Dolls, but really, all three players were plain old average. But, that opening riff of "Deuce" was just undeniable and both the other songs were, well, damn, they were pretty good.

With a member missing, they were in no mood to continue, and took a break. While we sat around in the gloom, I complimented them on the tunes and arrangements. But, by now, all three of them were just fuming about how late this been-in-the-band-three-weeks new guy was and... Hey, we suddenly heard the elevator door open, we heard some cursing and banging and in came this disheveled and strangely lumpy-faced guy who looked like he'd been awake 3 minutes and seemed to be tilting about 20 degrees to the left as he walked.

And this odd guy, introduced to me as Ace, was wearing one red Converse and one orange Converse sneaker. In 1972, five years before Punk, this was weird! He barely said hello to me or anyone else in the room, pulled out a beat-up Les Paul Jr. (back then a guitar considered to be junk; of course, they now go for almost $10,000), plugged into his amp, turned to the other three, and crankily and somewhat groggily demanded "What're we doin'?" as if he'd been waiting on them for over an hour. Gene, very very not happy at all, growled "Let's run through the first three," and so, I got to hear the same songs with lead guitar.

It was kinda remarkable how much better they sounded. As a lead guitarist, not to sound cocky, I could run circles around Ace, but his sparse, strangled, blues-inspired notes just kicked ass.

As soon as the three songs were finished, Paul quickly took off his guitar and led me out of the 15x15 dark, dank sweatbox of a room and told me while we stood in this dingy corridor that he was hoping I didn't mind, but he and Gene were gonna have to have a talk with this new guitarist.

"90 minutes late is totally unacceptable and we can't properly rip into him about this with you here, Binky." I said, "Uh, yes, Stan, I mean, Paul, I understand, that would be true. Good luck, man... The songs are great and if you can straighten the guy out, I do like your new lead guitarist."

They soon decided to call themselves KISS and did their first-ever gig out on Long Island on my 20th birthday, January 30, 1973. About six months later, my band, the Planets, was invited by Paul and Gene to open for them (they had decided to call themselves KISS) and another New York band called the Brats at the Hotel Diplomat's ballroom, an absolute dump on West 43rd St. just off of Times Square (another long-torn-down Rock'n'Roll monument). This would've been July, 1973. That night, a guy named Bill Aucoin came to the show. If you know your KISStory, very soon after, Bill became their manager, got them their record deal with Neil Bogart's Casablanca label, Alice Cooper retired, KISS filled the void, and became wildly, insanely, famous. Yes, I shared a stage with KISS, the night it all began!