Ethan Sacks | New York Daily News
Back before they could afford to party all day, they were already rock ’n’ rolling all night.
Forty years ago this month, Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, guitarists Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss dabbed on some black and white facepaint bought in a Manhattan hobby store and forever left their mark on music history.
“We were just four kids off the streets of New York that dreamed big,” Simmons, who was born Chaim Witz, told the Daily News this week.
There’s no historical plaque in front of the six-story, cast-iron building at 10 E. 23rd St., where Kiss first formed and practiced their three-chord riffs in a dingy fourth floor loft with yolk-encrusted egg crates nailed to the walls to muffle the noise.
COURTESY OF KISS
First promo in their makeup in 1973.
But maybe there should be one: Kiss has gone on to sell more than 100 million records and perform live in front of an estimated 22 million fans.
Stanley (born Stanley Eisen), who drove a cab to pay the bills in those days, says one of them hit on the eureka idea one day that an ominous look would get people to notice them long enough to hear their music in a New York scene already oversaturated with bands.
STRINGER/MEXICO/REUTERS
Simmons with his devoted female fans at MTV awards show in 2008.
The makeup was a work in progress.
“Paul drew a circle around his eye,” says Simmons. “He looked like the dog on ‘Our Gang.’ It was Ace who suggested to Paul to put two stars, one over each eyes, and Paul said, ‘I’m just going to do one. I’m too lazy.’ And that’s why to this day he only has one star.”
Kiss vamping in Central Park.
Stanley remembers it slightly differently.
“I always liked the asymmetry of it,” he says, laughing. “Maybe it’s because there’s at least two sides to me.”
RICHARD CORKERY/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss at The New York Chapter of the Recording Academy’s sixth annual New York Heroes Awards at the Roosevelt Hotel.
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They debuted their new look at a pair of gigs at an Amityville, Long Island, club called The Daisy on March 9 and 10, 1973 — and got panned by their first critic.
WARING ABBOTT
Kiss and their fans were sitting pretty in the 1970s.
“I remember playing The Daisy and locking ourselves in the owner’s office because one of the bouncers said he was going to kill us because of the way we looked,” says Stanley.
“The first night there really was a handful of people, but within a few times of playing there, they were literally breaking the windows to get into the place.”
PILAR OLIVARES
Kiss rock crowd at National Stadium in Lima, Peru in 2009.
Within a few days, the band found themselves in a studio, recording a demo with producer Eddie Kramer of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin fame.
“That five-song demo got us a record contract right away; that five-song demo got us a manager,” says Simmons.
RICHARD CORKERY/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Kiss scared the pants of parents, but were adored by their children.
“Within a year and a half of that record coming out, we were playing Anaheim Stadium.”
Criss, aka George Peter Criscuolla of Brooklyn, was drummed out of the band in 1980; Frehley left two years later. Both have briefly returned several times over the years, but their platform shoes currently are filled.
Stanley still can close his eyes and recall stepping on the Madison Square Garden stage for the first time — a Queens boy’s dream.
“When I played there the first time, I remembered not too much earlier than that, driving my cab and driving a couple to Madison Square Garden to see Elvis Presley (in 1972),” says Stanley, “and I thought to myself,
‘One of these days people are going to be coming here to see me.’ ”
esacks@nydailynews.com