KISS’s rock and roll spaceman redefined American showmanship.
Picture yourself in Madison Square Garden in February 1977. You’re anxiously waiting alongside 20,000 people for a show to begin. Suddenly, the lights drop, and a sonorous voice bellows throughout the arena. “You wanted the best and you got ’em! The hottest band in the land: KISS!”
The stage is consumed by fire and smoke as four figures emerge in a cacophony of pounding drums and shrieking guitars. At first, you can’t decide which of the kabuki-coated, nylon-clad comic book creatures to focus on. Should it be Gene Simmons, the bassist, spewing fire and pounding his armor-plated chest like a medieval King Kong? Or maybe the drummer, Peter Criss, a primal cat with a jazz sensibility and a sensual rasp of a voice? The front man, Paul Stanley, seems an equally sensible option as he howls into his microphone and leaps about the stage with Olympic prowess. But when your eyes turn to the lead guitarist, you realize you won’t be looking away.
Wearing platform boots, a rhinestone-decorated leotard, and a glittering silver chest piece, Ace Frehley is in total command of the stage. His fingers dance along the fretboard of his Gibson Les Paul as scorching solos and inescapably catchy riffs electrify the crowd. Smoke billows from the body of the guitar, engulfing him in an ethereal whirlwind. He fires rockets from the head of the instrument into the ceiling, where they explode with deafening force. As he performs, he falls to his knees, seemingly overpowered by the sheer intensity of his own untrammeled musicianship. When you leave the show, your senses raw and mind shaken, the future is clear: You will become a rock star.
This is all speculation on my part. I can only imagine how it must have felt to witness KISS at their peak, since I wasn’t born until the ’90s when the original four band members reunited after breaking apart more than a decade before. But the numerous rock and pop acts who have cited Frehley and the band as a primary inspiration — from Rage Against the Machine, to the Foo Fighters, to Pearl Jam, to Lady Gaga, to all of the overly made-up glam metal bands of the late ’80s — would suggest that my vision is accurate. Having experienced KISS and Frehley as a solo performer in concert many times in recent years, I am certain of it.
Ace Frehley propelled rock and roll to a new dimension of ostentatious excess. An entirely self-taught musician, he mastered his craft through pure dedication. In 1972, he became a member of KISS when he answered an advertisement in the Village Voice: “Lead guitarist wanted with flash and ability.” No two qualities better defined his work. With his bold theatrics and effortlessly inventive guitar licks, he exhibited a kind of otherworldly showmanship. Appropriately enough, he believed that he wasn’t from this planet.
When KISS decided to take on characters, Frehley instinctively became the “Spaceman” or “Space Ace.” He said he was from an alien world called “Jendell.” Embodying this persona helped explain some of his most endearing personal quirks. His laugh, for instance, sounded like the mating call of an extraterrestrial bird. Sometimes, he couldn’t comprehend basic human communication. During the filming of Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978) — Hanna-Barbera’s infamous attempt to combine KISS, Star Wars, and A Hard Day’s Night into a TV-movie masterwork — Frehley initially refused to speak to the screenwriters. When pressed, he’d only emit a peculiar sound: “Ack!”
In reality, Frehley wasn’t from beyond the stars; he was a natural eccentric whose idiosyncrasies were amplified by substances. As KISS grew from a band of working-class New Yorkers to globe-trotting multimillionaires, Frehley found himself increasingly in thrall to alcohol, cocaine, and pills. These recreational pursuits hampered his playing and led to long periods of inactivity throughout his career. In 2006, Frehley finally conquered his addictions and remained sober until his death — a greater achievement, perhaps, than any of the awards he earned throughout his life.
Frehley was reluctant to take on an outsized role in KISS, though his frenetic musicianship was essential to the band’s sound. On the band’s first five albums, he contributed the occasional rock-and-roll tale of girl trouble or hardship in the big city, but it wasn’t until Love Gun (1977) that his songwriting began to grow more prolific. That album featured “Shock Me,” his first lead vocal performance, which he recorded while lying on the studio floor out of nervousness. The next year, the members of KISS each released a solo album on the same day. Frehley’s became a runaway hit and generated his most successful solo single: the bouncy, disco-inflected “New York Groove.” Today, the album remains one of the most varied and powerfully focused hard rock statements of its era — a sonic smorgasbord of tones and textures ranging from the delicate “Fractured Mirror” to the punishing “Snow Blind.”
In the years and decades that followed, Frehley recorded scores of songs and released nine solo albums. Though all of his records contained a few experiments, their core sound never strayed from rock and roll’s robust foundations. Anthemic choruses, life-affirming lyrics, and sharp melodies were the unfailing ingredients of Frehley’s enduring success. His riotous sense of humor also remained constant. In recent interviews, Frehley could still be as unpredictably hilarious as he was on The Tomorrow Show in 1979, when he sent the usually composed Tom Snyder into repeated fits of laughter. I had a similar experience during my own conversation with Frehley last year, in which he seemed far more eager to discuss UFO conspiracies and the existence of aliens beneath Antarctica than his latest studio album.
Like KISS itself, Frehley stood for the American Dream. His songs were direct, unpretentious odes to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (And outer space — perhaps our next great frontier.) It’s a tragedy that he couldn’t live to see his uniquely American accomplishments honored at the Kennedy Center in December. But the essence of his music was universal, and it will remain so for generations to come, in this universe or any other it may reach.