Matt Wardlaw | Ultimate Classic Rock
Ken Kelly
Kiss fans have anxiously been awaiting an update on the highly anticipated expanded reissue of the band’s landmark ‘Destroyer’ release, which was tentatively scheduled for release earlier this year, but failed to materialize.
According to Gene Simmons, we’ll be able to get our hands on the 35th anniversary edition ‘Destroyer’ reissue very soon. He says that it will be “coming out shortly, this summer.”
36 years after the release of ‘Destroyer,’ it’s easy to understand why Simmons considers the album “a very pivotal record for us.” It marked an important point in “Kisstory,” with the band learning a new process of making music. Producer Bob Ezrin wanted to take the band back to their roots and have them really focus on the formatics of being a band, telling them “we’re going to learn how to tune our guitars and talk about song structure.”
As Simmons told Ultimate Classic Rock, it was a different path than the one they had taken on their first three studio albums. “When we first started out, you know, we basically dove into the deep end of the pool and [said] ‘let’s see if we can swim?’ And then once you stay in the water long enough, you want to start to get some style and do the breaststroke and the backstroke and all of that stuff, because you become a better swimmer. It’s not just enough to not sink. So the sink or swim thing became ‘hey, let’s be really good swimmers.’”
It was a stormy time for the group. “There was a lot of turmoil in the band at that point. That was the first record where the future troubles with Ace (Frehley) and Peter (Criss) surfaced. Peter started screaming at Bob Ezrin, ‘Don’t tell me how to play drums!’ Ezrin (was) kind of going, ‘Well, first you have to learn how to play drums then you can say don’t tell me how to play drums. You’re playing it wrong, here’s what you gotta be doing right.’”
Simmons also remembers that there were times where Ace didn’t even make it to the studio. “Ace literally wouldn’t show up because he’d be in a drunken stupor at his home. It got so bad we used outside players to play solos. So when you hear ‘Destroyer’ today, not all of the lead guitars are Ace Frehley’s — some are Dick Wagner.”
The deluxe edition of ‘Destroyer’ will tell the entire story of the album, according to Simmons: “You’ll hear the DNA of what it’s all about, [with] a big booklet that shows the making of [the album] and what everybody was going through.”
In addition to the ‘Destroyer’ reissue, Kiss will also have new music this year, with their 20th studio album ‘Monster’tentatively scheduled for release sometime this fall.