Tim McPhate | KissFAQ
KissFAQ has launched Back In The Solo Album Groove: The KISS Albums. 35 Years Later…, an ambitious multi-week retrospective dedicated to arguably the biggest milestone in KISStory: the 1978 KISS solo albums. Today, the site has published an interview with Carol Ross-Durborow, who was head of the Press Office, the publicity subsidiary of Aucoin Management.
The following are excerpts from Ross-Durborow’s interview with KissFAQ’s Tim McPhate:
On the solo albums being a milestone in KISStory:
KF: That’s right in the time frame we’re primarily discussing, so it’s a perfect segue into the solo albums. When I think of the classic era of KISS, the solo albums stand out as perhaps the band’s biggest milestone, if not the biggest KISS project from a publicity standpoint. Would you agree?
CRD: Yes, I agree with you. Let me tell you something, deciding to do the solo albums was a long process. There were a lot of meetings with Casablanca. But Neil Bogart — in spite of what other people in the industry thought — he was so committed to this band. Neil was going to spend the money. He was told, “This is crazy. You shouldn’t be doing this. This is taking a big risk. It’s a lot of money involved.” But he was just so into it. And beside the fact, he enjoyed working with Bill Aucoin and thought that Bill was one of the great managers in the business, which we all agreed. But it was a real labor of love. And it was a long process. It was a turning point for wonderful, incredible projects. We thought, “Wow, this is going to be wonderful because this has not happened before.” I wanted to really make it very special. And so with what Casablanca was doing, and what we had planned to do for the media, it was great. I had suggested from the individual albums that we do special posters and have a gallery showing, which we did for the press. And then of course each member of the band signed their specific poster and we gave them away as collectibles. We made it very, very special. And it was only a limited edition. So that added to what Casablanca Records was doing promotion-wise. It was interesting because people were taking bets on which album and poster was going to get the most play. It became, “Is it going to be Gene? Is it going to be Paul?”
KF: And which posters are these specifically? Are these posters of the album covers?
CRD: Yes, but what we did is we took them and did lithographs of the posters and that’s what made them special and a limited edition as a collectible item. We sent them to special press people that had been very supportive of us, and to radio and to VIPs in the business. So it wasn’t going to be blanketed. Those lithographs were going to be a really special item, so anyone who got one, it wasn’t like a mass-produced thing.