By Ken Sharp
In 1978, Kiss were arguably one of the biggest bands on the planet. A slate of platinum albums — Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over, Love Gun, Alive II and Double Platinum — sold-out tours in the U.S. and Japan, and millions of dollars generated by the sales of Kiss merchandise (from board games to dolls) solidified their status as reigning rock gods. They were enlisted by cartoon titans Hanna-Barbera for their own movie, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, and it seemed the perfect vehicle to their fervent global following. Yet all was not rosy in Kiss world.
During the filming, interpersonal band tensions became toxic, precipitating rumors of an impending breakup. To appease warring factions and defuse the growing disharmony, Kiss manager Bill Aucoin opted for the band members to record their own solo album; a solo album clause was already in place within their Casablanca Records contract. On September 18, 1978, in an unprecedented move, four solo albums by Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss were released on the same day. The dark horse of Kiss, Frehley surprised industry wags and fans with a spectacular solo effort; the Russ Ballard-penned “New York Groove” became the only major hit from the album. Frehley’s eponymous long player is universally cited as a watermark in The Spaceman’s recording career.
Forty-six years after its release, join us for a conversation with Frehley, detailing the back story of a classic album in Kisstory.
GOLDMINE: When broached with the idea of each member of Kiss doing a solo album, what was your reaction?
ACE FREHLEY: I think the solo albums was a good idea. We needed a break from each other. We had been on the road or in the studio continuously. We needed to get away from each other.
GM: When you found out you were going to do a solo album, did you have a lot of songs in the can or songs you held back from Kiss?
AF: There were a couple of songs that I didn’t present the band with while working on Love Gun. Yeah, I remember holding back a couple of songs for that record, and I didn’t present them to the band. Every time we would do a Kiss record, everybody would do demos and present songs so Paul, Gene and Peter could hear them as well as the producer, and then we’d decide which were the 10 or 11 best songs for the record. I held back a couple of songs that I thought were really good, and I held them back for my solo record. I knew that was coming.
GM: Knowing you’d have more time to spend on songs for your solo album than a KISS album, which were routinely knocked out quickly, did that enter into your thinking?
AF: No, I don’t think the time factor entered into any of the decisions. We worked quickly. Paul and Gene were workaholics, and I was a little more laid back. But I wasn’t concerned with the time factor. I just wanted to have the best nine songs of the record.
GM: A song cut for the solo album, “All for Nothing,” exists in collector circles; why didn’t it make the cut?
AF: To be honest, it gets boring. I listened to it recently and I remember some of the lyrics; I wrote that with Larry Kelly, my lead singer from my band, the Magic People. Listening to it now, it’s not as good as the other songs on my 1978 solo record. (Sings the chorus) “All for Nothing.” The lyrics weren’t that good either, so that song just didn’t do it for me.
GM: What were the songs on the record that you brought to the table that you were especially excited about?
AF: Well, “Rip It Out” was one. I knew that was a really good one.
GM: Why did you choose to record the album at the Colgate mansion instead of a recording studio? What was its appeal?
AF: Rock and Roll Over was recorded at the Nanuet Star Theatre, which wasn’t a recording studio. I remember we recorded on the stage. Our producer, Eddie Kramer, built a makeshift control room in one of the rooms there. That’s what I loved about Eddie. He was willing to take chances. There was a cool vibe in that. I had seen Frank Sinatra there. It was a mob joint, and they ended up tearing it down. I remember going there with my father-in-law and my brother-in-law to see a couple of fights there. It was before the internet and pay-per-view.
GM: You saw Sinatra there?
AF: Yeah, I saw Sinatra and I met Sinatra there. My road manager Billy Miller, working for Kiss, worked for Sinatra for a period of time, so he knew Sinatra. I remember him bringing me and my wife, Jeanette, backstage. I just got a handshake and a “Hey, how you doing?” And I just said, “Hey, great show!” It was quick, but to meet Sinatra was a very spiritual f**king deal.
GM: Let’s talk about how Eddie Kramer captured the sonics inside the Colgate mansion.
AF: When you walked into the mansion, there’s a huge foyer, and then you could go up to the second floor using either the left staircase or the right staircase. So what Eddie did, besides close-miking the drums like you always do, he put microphones up on the second floor facing down to get the natural reverb. At that point in time they hadn’t invented really cool digital reverbs that we have today and all the toys you get with Pro Tools, and we were going for natural echoes, natural reverb sounds. As for amps, we used Marshalls of course; we may have used a Fender Bassman that had four tens in it, and a Fender Harvard amp, too. I remember the bathroom was all marble, so I set up a Marshall stack in there, and that’s where I got the bell sound at the end of “Fractured Mirror.” It fades out and then it kind of fades back, and you get this bell kind of sound. I recorded that in the bathroom with a Marshall and a double-neck guitar. And what I did was I played the figure but turned off the 12-string pickups and only used the pickups on the six-string, even though I wasn’t playing on that neck. But the Marshall was on 10, so it was picking up the resonance from the body, and that’s how I got that interesting bell sound because it’s harmonics and stuff coming off the guitar. I didn’t use the pickups on the 12-string, even though I was playing the figure on the 12-string. That’s something I invented. It was just an idea I came up with, and it worked great.
GM: So, Eddie Kramer was your first and only choice as co-producer for the solo album?
AF: Absolutely. What I loved about Eddie, besides the fact that he was a great producer and knew how to get great sounds, he was willing to try things where a lot of producers would just say, “That’s not going to work.” He was open to crazy ideas and interesting miking techniques. For example, when we recorded the acoustics in the library, which was all wood, it was one of the first rooms to have indirect lighting. It had this big molding, and the lighting was hidden behind the molding, and it lit the ceiling, and the light bounced off the ceiling. Today it’s done all the time. It’s called indirect lighting, and I actually have it in my control room. That mansion really had some unique stuff in it and rooms which inspired me. I don’t know if there were ghosts in there, but it was pretty cool. There was a carriage house that had stalls that they kept horses in, and we ended up using the stall and put Marshalls in it. It was all wood, so we’d close-mic it, and then we’d mic it further away and get that natural echo bounce.
GM: Did you know pretty early while the record was coming together that, “Hey, this is special, this is going to be strong”?
AF: Halfway through the record, I’d listen to rough mixes and I’d look at Anton [Fig] and I go, “This is going to be a great record,” and he agreed, and so did Eddie. We only had the Colgate mansion for a certain amount of days, and then we had to do overdubs in Plaza Sound, this recording studio that was in Radio City Music Hall, which was really neat. It was a great big room and a small control room with [an] API board. We recorded “New York Groove” there and a few others.
GM: You used an ARP synthesizer on the album.
AF: Yeah, I used that in that studio. I was always into anything that was new. I wanted to try it to expand my genre of sounds that I could create with a guitar, and that was one of the first really cool synthesizers. There’s an advantage to the space of the recording room because it was gigantic. And back then in those days, people didn’t realize that a control room should be big because most guitar players will put the Marshall head in the control room and have the speakers in the recording room. You want a large control room. So, number one, if you have executives that want to come in and listen to some rough mixes, there’s a nice couch in the back. But the control room in that studio was really small, but we made it work. It was just me, Anton, Eddie and Rob Freeman, our engineer. Rob was good, and he had some interesting ideas. I remember when we were recording with the ARP synthesizer, I’d watch him move something on the thing, and I said, “Hey, don’t move anything without checking with me first,” and I’d see him kind of try to sneak and change the setting a little thinking I didn’t see it. (laughs) We had fun doing the record. We knew it was going to be a special album, and the songs were turning out really well. There’s a lot of love in that record, a lot of love and a lot of determination on my part and everyone else involved.
GM: Besides guitar, you play bass on six of the nine songs. Will Lee plays bass on three tracks.
AF: I’ll never forget it. He walked in with a cute chick and he put brand-new strings on his bass really quickly. He was playing a Telecaster bass, if I remember correctly, and snorted a couple of lines and boom, he played some great bass on those songs. I like playing bass; bass is fun. Sometimes I’ll pick up a bass guitar and sit down and start fooling around, and I’ll write a riff that really sounds good on a regular guitar on a bass because you think differently when you’re playing a bass than you do with a guitar. I’ve written riff songs on a bass and then transferred it to the Les Paul. It just puts your head in a different place, and sometimes you come up with things playing on a bass guitar that you wouldn’t on an electric guitar.
GM: While working on the album, was there a sense of competition with Paul, Gene and Peter —a little bit of a “I’m gonna show ’em what I can do” mentality?
AF: I remember we were all sitting down at a big table, and there were management, business managers, attorneys and the four band members. We were discussing the solo album projects and who was doing what where. Towards the end of the meeting, I remember Paul and Gene made this comment to me, “Ace, if you need any help on your album, don’t hesitate to give us a call.” I kind of felt they said that in front of everybody to make it sound like they’re these nice guys that would be willing to extend their help to me. But it also came off to me like they were saying I might need help because maybe I’m not the greatest songwriter in the band. That kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. So yeah, there was that feeling of, I’m going to show you guys I don’t need your help. And the success of the album proved that, and it also proved to me that I was more creative away from them than with them.
GM: Having a hit single off of your solo album with “New York Groove,” did that plant a seed for you to leave the group, or did it give you more confidence in yourself as an artist, songwriter and record maker?
AF: Well, after the success of my solo album, the writing was on the wall for me. I realized I was more creative away from those guys because they’re control freaks, and they like things the way they like them. I don’t like recording the way they record because sometimes they would do 20-25 takes and I’d say, “We’re beating a dead horse here on this song.” That happened with Bob Ezrin working on the Destroyer album. When I’m recording, if I’m working with a drummer, it’s just me and the drummer. If I can’t get it in three, four, five takes at the most, I’ll just say, “Let’s try something else” because after five, six, seven takes, you start losing spontaneity and you start getting bored, actually. Doing 25 takes of a song is completely absurd. I don’t remember what song it was, but it was one of the songs on Destroyer, I said to Paul and Gene, “Listen, why don’t we just put this to sleep right now and try something else? We can come into the studio tomorrow and try it again.” And lo and behold, we came into the studio the next day and did it in two or three takes because we knew the song, we knew what the pitfalls were and the mistakes we made, and we knocked it off and it had spontaneity. Paul and Gene have a certain work ethic that I don’t have. For example, when Gene was living in Manhattan in his penthouse, he told me he’d go into his closet, he had a little amp and a recorder set up there, and he’d write a song every day. And I’d say, “Why do you force yourself to write a song every day?” He goes, “That’s just my work ethic.” I go, “I can’t work that way, Gene. I can only write a song when I feel inspired.” So for example, I’ll go three weeks without writing a song and then the following the weekend, something would inspire me and I’ll end up writing two or three songs in a weekend. Out of 365 songs that Gene wrote in one year while he was living there, there was probably only a half a dozen songs that we used.
