At the peak of Kiss‘ popularity in the United States circa 1978, if you were told that in just a few years’ time the band would lose most of its fanbase and were in danger of disappearing into the abyss, it would have been extremely hard to comprehend.
But after Peter Criss and Ace Frehley both exited the band in the early ’80s, and after several albums that failed to impress on the charts, and a lack of touring Stateside, desperate measures had to be taken to keep the USS Kiss afloat.
It turned out that they had a maneuver up their sleeve that managed to rekindle their commercial success: finally doing away with their facial make-up and costumes in time for 1983’s “Lick It Up” album. As a result, the band, which continued to be led by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, continued to perform “unmasked” until 1996.
During an interview for The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan, Simmons looked back upon this troubling era of Kiss. And how it was a certain Kiss member’s idea to do away with the gimmick that made the band so successful in the first place.
“So, Peter left,” Simmons recalled (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar). “We got a new drummer, Eric Carr, who was just fantastic, and tried to come back from [Kiss’ 1980 album] ‘Unmasked’ and, you know, the disco stuff.”