Howard Cohen | Miami Herald
Before Kiss, no rock group had ever put quite as much emphasis on the outrageous while onstage.
It was up to Kenneth Anderson to make those wild antics happen.
Anderson, who died of cancer at 75 on Dec. 15 at his Hallandale Beach home, was vice president of Aucoin Management in New York and helped design Kiss’ stage productions from 1976 to 1982.
This was the era when the hard rock foursome’s theatrical shows were evolving at a crazy, scary pace. A fire-breathing bassist. A levitating drum set. Flashing lightning bolts. Confetti rockets.
Kiss’ most elaborate stage design, to that time, for its ‘Love Gun’ Tour in 1977 was partly the creation of Kenneth Anderson who, as head of stage production, took the band’s outlandish ideas and made them work.
“Don’t try to describe a Kiss concert if you’ve never seen it,” South Florida troubadour Jimmy Buffett once quipped in his 1978 tune, Mañana.He was clearly referencing Anderson’s stage designs. These came from ideas that were coming fast and furious from band leaders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley.
“I remember coming home one night and Gene [Simmons] told dad he has this new idea and dad would have to figure it out,” said daughter Julie Pisano of Palm Beach Gardens. “Gene wants to fly over the audience. {Anderson’s] job was to make the show a reality.”
The rock group dreamed up over-the-top stage designs, pyrotechnics and elevated ramps, used on its tours for the Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over, Love Gun and Dynasty albums.
Anderson had to make it all happen.
Pisano, 50, then an impressionable teenager, laughs when she remembers her father’s adventures on stage with Kiss that stretched from South Florida’s defunct Hollywood Sportatorium to Japan’s Budokan Hall in 1977.
The New York rockers wore towering platform boots so getting them to walk on the stage, let alone fly above it, was quite the task.
The Decibel Geek podcast returns this week with the second half of an in-depth discussion with former KISS keyboardist Gary Corbett; Episode 120 – Gary Corbett Part 2