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Through The Camera EyeFrom: NRK Posted: September 18, 2008 Legendary rock photographer Fin Costello reveals the truth about KISS Alive: One of your most famous pictures of all time, is the one that ended up being the album cover for KISS’ breakthrough-album, KISS ALIVE, from 1975. Unlike anything from their three first album covers, it captures the show, the music and their attitude perfectly. How did you end up working for KISS? COSTELLO: I went to live in USA in 1973 with Deep Purple, who I was an art director and photographer for, and a graphic designer I knew was working on an album cover for KISS, called Dressed To Kill. He was very unhappy with it, because the picture was funny but not right. He told me to come and see them play, because they were playing at the Beacon Theatre in New York. That day I had been working with the Brecker Brothers, which is a jazz thing. So I went up there, with my camera and everything. And it was like Dante’s Inferno. As I walked in, I realized I had never seen nothing like it in my life. And this was just the first song. By this time, they were completely broke. They had no money. I stayed in New York that night, processed the film in an overnight lab, and rang their manager Bill Aucoin in the morning. I told him who I was, mentioned some of my work, like Deep Purple’s Made In Japan, and said that I’d like to him show the pictures I took at the show the night before. He said: "Sure". So I went up there, and their office was about half the size of this studio. Really? ‘Cause this is a very small studio. COSTELLO: Yeah, but that was the KISS Empire. Joyce Biawitz (co-manager) and Bill Aucoin had desks standing against each other. Well, I showed them the photos, and I was smart enough to bring with me a projector from the graphic design place. I asked Aucoin where the projection room was, and he just laughed. Lovely man, by the way. He just laughed and said project them against the wall". I got about 4 pictures projected, and then he said: Don’t show me any more. Then he rang Gene (Simmons) and said: Come on down here, I want you to meet this guy. So the four of them came down to Aucoin’s office. Ace (Frehley) arrived late and didn’t know what he was there for. But Paul (Stanley) and Gene were very sharp, Gene in particularly. The minute he saw how I’d captured the show, he said: Right, we’re doing a live album. It’s a last chance-thing. If it works, we’re in business. If it doesn’t work, we’re dead. Then we went to Detroit and we shot the live album in rehearsal. It’s not a live photograph. And it wasn’t shot in Cobo Hall in Detroit, even though some of the album was recorded there? COSTELLO: That’s right. It wasn’t Cobo Hall. It was shot in the Michigan Palace, which is a car park now, sadly. That was where Iggy, MC5 and all those guys got it together. It was a fabulous place, a very nice Victorian music hall. Gene got really annoyed in the end. Everybody got very tired, so it became the same pose over and over again. We couldn’t think of a new pose. What we were doing was something Gene called The Status Quo-pose. They love Status Quo and that simple, straight-ahead poppy rock. And they did this classic pose, which they had incorporated into their show. So I said: Do the Status Quo-pose again. And Gene said: For fuck’s sake, enough of this Status Quo-thing. We’re KISS, not Status Quo". We were that tired, we started getting irritable. The next day we went to Cobo Hall. And they were amazed that so many people showed up. The place was almost full. What they didn’t realize, was that the word had already gone out. They were taking a huge risk by playing there. Agents weren’t booking them into big halls. I don’t know if they had to pay for the hall themselves, and were risking getting deep into debt. Before I went in and did the photo for ALIVE, Bill Aucoin said: We got no money, we can’t pay you – but we can cover your expenses. But that was no good for me, as I had just moved there, I had two kids and had just bought a house. I needed to work, I needed to get paid. So he said: We’ll give you a deal. I won’t get into details, but it was depending on the success of the album. If the album did well, I did well. It was the only deal of my career that’s been like that. Judging from the phenomenal sales of the album, it’s safe to assume that the deal turned out pretty good? COSTELLO: Oh yes, absolutely. Looking back, it was a fabulous deal. But what was interesting, was that they took a chance on me. Because I had just arrived in America, and had never worked on a big project like that. Were the members of KISS familiar with your work? COSTELLO: Gene and Peter (Criss) were. The cover is actually influenced by Uriah Heep Live, a cover with a gatefold and a four page booklet of photographs. That was what they wanted – lot of pictures of the live show. The interesting thing is, if you look at the back cover on ALIVE, on the seats right besides the two guys holding the banner, there are two young teenage guys with long hair. They’re on the right side of the picture as you look at it. One is Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the other one is his brother. I just found out a few years ago. The feedback I get on that album is phenomenal. Not only because of the cover, but because it’s an iconic album. It turned American music around. I worked for an American pop band a seven or eight years ago. I can’t remember their name, they had just one big hit. Anyway, the press lady told me to live in a different hotel than the band, but I said: That’s not how it works. I need to meet the band. And the tour manager came down, and told me: We’ll do the photos at the gig. I told him we needed to figure out what to do first. He said: The band doesn’t do it like that. Before he went back up, he asked me what my name was. Within two minutes, the entire band was down in the lobby, shaking my hand and everything. I could have asked them to stand on their heads in the bay, and they would have done it. All because of KISS ALIVE. Are you happy with the picture in photographic terms? COSTELLO: Yes. I have always been. Technically, it’s all wrong. It’s out of focus, it’s grainy, rough and ready. There’s all sorts of things wrong with that picture. But in atmosphere terms, it’s absolutely perfect. It’s the same thing with Deep Purple’s "Burn". Everything about that says it’s a bad idea, but it works! There’s been rumours that the back cover photograph on KISS ALIVE was actually taken at another band’s concert, and that the text and images on the banner held up by the two guys was airbrushed. Any truth to that? COSTELLO: No. This is a very strange story, that involves Rush and Rainbow, it doesn’t involve KISS at all. And it’s been attributed to Sean Delaney (long term KISS-associate), which is again strange, because I had stopped working with him long time ago by that point. By the way, some KISS-fans are really odd. I once met a fan who was really abusive to me because he didn’t believe my story. He said Sean Delaney said it, it must be true. I said: I don’t care who said it. I was there, I did it. This is the truth. |
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