THE ROCKPIT KISS ALBUM BY ALBUM RETROSPECTIVE

With the release of KISS’s great new album SONIC BOOM (click here for our review) we thought it an opportune time to go back and have a listen to their entire back catalogue (including solo albums and a couple of associated releases) one by one – all 60 of them!!! The things we do to bring you an entertaining read, eh!!!

 

Come with us now, dear reader, through Part One of the epic story of the HOTTEST BAND IN THE WORLD as we take you on a journey back to 1974…

 

1974 - KISS

KISS burst onto the New York gig scene from the ashes of Gene Simmons & Paul Stanley’s band Wicked Lester in 1973 with a completely unique gimmick – their faces were made up in a Japanese kabuki style, and they refused to be photographed without the makeup. They quickly attracted a strong live following, recorded a five track demo with Eddie Kramer and in February 1974 their debut self titled album was unleashed.

 

There aren’t too many bands whose debut album can boast such enduring classics as Strutter, Cold Gin, Deuce, 100,000 Years and Black Diamond – all of which are still regularly featured in their live shows over 35 years later. But let’s not forget the lesser known tracks Nothin’ to Lose and Firehouse, both of which were to feature on the Alive! double album and the former also pops up on MTV Unplugged in 1996.

 

Listening back to this album I am struck by the Beatlesey harmonies and melodies, the blistering guitar work from Ace when he was young and hungry, and just how strong a debut this really, especially when you consider how little a time they had been together.

 

1974 – HOTTER THAN HELL

Released only 8 months after their debut, Kiss’s second album isn’t as strong as that first shot, despite still containing classics such as the title track and Let Me Go Rock N Roll. Second tier tunes abound and remain almost-classics (Got to Choose, Parasite, Goin Blind, Watchin You), but overall the album doesn’t quite live up to the immense standards of their first.

 

The cover is Japanese themed and reflects the fascination that country had with the band, indeed it was their live shows keeping the band afloat at this stage of their career – album sales were slim.

 

It’s interesting to note the Beatles connection again - at this stage all bar Peter Criss were contributing heavily to the writing of each album, and all took the microphone for at least one song, though most of the lead vocals were from Simmons and Stanley, either individually or as co-lead singers. This variety of vocal talent and styles really helped give the music a lot of different texture, both on record and on stage, plus by now the different “characters” in the band – Demon, Starchild, Spaceman and Catman – had been well defined and they were milking that for all it was worth.

 

1975 – DRESSED TO KILL

As their stage show got more and more garish, with lavish costumes, pyrotechnics, fire breathing and blood spitting, the band opted for a complete contrast for the cover of album number three. The iconic photo of the band in full face makeup, but wearing suits and ties and hamming it up on a New York street corner is rendered in sepia tones to create a weird nostalgia about the band, but the music contained therein was all new and bursting to be heard.

 

Simmons and Stanley did almost all of the writing for Dressed To Kill (Frehley only contributed one song plus the beautiful guitar intro to Rock Bottom) and they came up with an album on a par with their debut.

 

She and Love Her All I Can were resurrected from the Wicked Lester days, Rock Bottom was an instant classic, C’mon And Love Me, Room Service, Ladies in Waiting and Two Timer are all lascivious and sordid in the finest KISS tradition, Anything For My Baby was their most Beatlesy tune yet, and in Rock And Roll All Night they succeeded in creating arguably the ultimate hard rock party anthem of all time. Whether the world was ready for them or not, KISS was ready for the world.

 

1975 – ALIVE!

Despite the quality of their first three albums (Kiss and Dressed To Kill especially), and live shows that redefined a rock concert with bombastic and exciting theatre, album sales were far from that. Old blues performers talk about “Lightning in a bottle” – trying to capture the essence of a moment in time – and with ALIVE! KISS did exactly that!

 

This double album breathes new life into the songs from their first three albums, and presents all the pomp and pyro fuelled splendour of a live KISS show right there on your stereo.

 

Songs which had sounded studio-great on the albums now sounded full of atmosphere and life, with an amazing depth and character to them. Rock And Roll All Night was especially vibrant live, and it was this live version of the song that was released as a single from this album that gave the band their first top 40 hit. The album itself was the first KISS album to go gold (by December). Sales of the album were astronomical (ALIVE! Eventually went on to go QUADRUPLE platinum) and in this album’s wake the first three albums started selling by the truckload as well.

 

KISS had arrived – they were now big business.

 

1976 – DESTROYER

Released in March ’76, Destroyer was KISS’s fourth studio album in 25 months and shows a truly huge progression from the early albums. With increased record sales they could finally afford a truly top notch producer (Bob Ezrin), their confidence was overflowing, and the KISS marketing machine had started to rake it hundreds of thousands of dollars to the band’s coffers. The flipside of this was, of course, that along with the success came the pressures of fame and money, plus the added self-imposed stress of constantly hiding their faces from the public and press.

 

This album featured amazing cover art by Ken Kelly which played up the different characters they had created for the band, in all their costumed glory, marching forwards in a wasteland, presumably of their own creation. The early days of KISS – the makeup years – were renowned for their iconic album covers and this is one of the best.

 

And the music – Destroyer was KISS’s best album yet – arguably their best ever. Ezrin brought a new studio approach to the band, and every song sounds warm and full of life, with orchestral flourishes and quirky little touches like the intro to Detroit Rock City and the school ground kids on God of Thunder.

 

Every song herein is a classic except perhaps song 6 – Sweet Pain, and that’s not all bad either. Can anyone imagine KISS live without them playing Detroit Rock City, God of Thunder, Shout It Out Loud or Beth? Then we have King of The Night Time World, the largely orchestral Great Expectations, Flaming Youth and Do You Love Me.

 

Albums just don’t come any better than this, and it was justifiably KISS’s biggest seller to date.

 

1976 - ROCK ‘n’ ROLL OVER

Rock n Roll Over features another amazing piece of cover art, this time by Michael Doret, who would next work with the band for the cover of 2009’s Sonic Boom, creating almost an updated version of this classic.

 

I Want You bursts out of the speakers with Stanley playing his Lover character to the hilt, classic Calling Dr Love, Ladies Room and Love Em and Leave Em are all solid KISS songs, Stanley’s Hard Luck Woman (sung by Peter Criss) is an acoustic hit ballad of epic proportions, and See You In Your Dreams Tonight is another Simmons come-on.

 

Overall the album has a couple too many second tier songs to be a true classic, but there’s no denying that they were absolutely huge by this stage of their career, and anything to do with the band was lapped up in a frenzy.

 

1977 - LOVE GUN

KISS were still pumping out great music at an alarming rate – Love Gun was their sixth studio album in under 3 ½ years, and already they had accumulated a back catalogue most bands would kill for.

 

Boasting another iconic cover by Destroyer artist Ken Kelly, Love Gun is almost as good as Destroyer, and yet again is full of sordid paens to the glories of sex, sex, rock n roll and more sex.

 

Once again KISS had produced an album where almost every track would stand the test of time – many as bonafide classics: I Stole Your love, Christine Sixteen, Shock me, Tomorrow And Tonight, Love Gun, Plaster Caster, Almost Human and even their cover of Then She Kissed Me are great hard rock tunes, full of life and full of rock.

 

1977 - ALIVE II

Following the lead of their Alive! album, KISS had released another three studio albums, arced their live show up a few notches (more pyro!), and recorded Alive II. Once again the sound is full and rich and lush and the album brings to life a concert by the fire-breathing Demon, the pyro-exploding Starchild, the Space Ace and his flash flying guitar, the Catman pounding drums and above all – the feel of KISS live in concert.

 

The main difference between the two ALIVE albums is side four of this release, featuring 5 brand new songs, all of which make a great impact – All American Man and Rockin’ In The USA are almost the Beatles doing Chuck Berry in a glossy hard rock style, Larger Than Life is Simmons at his boasting egotistical best, Rocket Ride is Frehley doing much the same, and Any Way You Want It is a bouncy Stanley-driven cover of an old Dave Clark Five number.

 

The other way this album is notable is that this is when Frehley and Criss started being excluded – either by their own decision or by someone else’s - from playing on KISS albums, at least some of the time. Whether this was a business or musical decision, whether they were indulging in their vices too much, or their were personal problems or pressures of fame to blame, the band had undergone a fractious split with Simmons and Stanley on one side (Rarely drinking, no drugs, lots of women & money, please), and Frehley & Criss on the other side (booze, cocaine, guns, women).

 

This split would continue to impact the band and their line-up on and off for the next thirty years, but for now KISS remained stable – at least in public. In the studio however, different players began being brought in to “help out” on various tracks – Bob Kulick playing guitars on Rockin in The USA and Larger Than Life.

 

If Alive! had turned KISS into big business, ALIVE II turned them into a phenomenon.

 

1978 – DOUBLE PLATINUM

Kiss now had six great studio albums and 2 double live albums to their name, continued to sell out tours around the world, had their own Marvel Comic books (they famously added a drop or two of their own blood to the red ink for the inaugural pressing – I can’t imagine anyone doing that nowadays in an AIDS aware world!), an ever-growing range of KISS merchandise, their identities to conceal from the world at large and the paparazzi in particular, more than a million people in their fan club The Kiss Army, and the immense pressure of global adoration, wealth and stardom and had even been voted #1 band in America in a Gallup Poll.

 

The next step was Double Platinum – 21 of their best songs, including a re-recorded version of Strutter (retitled Strutter ’78) across a double album, and it kicked arse from start to finish. Putting all these great songs in once place just showed that if KISS vanished in 1978 they would already have left behind an immense and influential legacy.

 

This is destined to be the KISS compilation against which all others would be measured.

 

1978 - THE SOLO ALBUMS

 

After all the success and adulation, KISS’s next release was the ultimate conceit – 4 solo albums released on the same day. Obviously thinking they would make as much money as four KISS albums released simultaneously, they shipped a million copies of each on the same day, though the actual sales showed that was somewhat optimistic, and the results were a mixed bag too.

PETER CRISS

None of the four came close to matching any of the previous KISS albums, and in truth, the less said about Peter Criss’s effort the better. Most of the album is limp excursions into R n B pastiche or soft rock-by numbers, with That’s The Kind Of Sugar Papa Likes and Hooked On Rock n Roll being among the more listenable efforts. I almost didn’t get to the album closer, but I waded through the dross and was rewarded with I Can’t Stand The Rain which is a truly affecting ballad and worth one star all on it’s own.

 

GENE SIMMONS

Gene Simmons’ album – raw and more than a little Beatlesey - included a few very good songs, such as Radioactive, Living In Sin, Man Of 1000 Faces (This was to be the album title until the marketing plans changed and it was decided that all four albums would be packaged under the KISS banner), See You In Your Dreams and even – bizarrely – his demonic-lullaby version of When you Wish Upon A Star (originally from the Disney movie Pinocchio!).

 

PAUL STANLEY

Paul Stanley’s album is glossier and more melodic than the others, and has its share of highlights as well. Tonight You Belong To Me and Move On open proceedings with a bang, and It’s Alright is a good paced rocker. The last song on the record, Goodbye is another particularly memorable ballad.

 

ACE FREHLEY

Ace Frehley had become a lot less involved with KISS, to the extent of having his guitar parts ghosted by Bob Kulick at times, but his solo album was unexpectedly the best of the bunch - despite many of the songs glorifying his penchant for drugs and booze. Rip it Out was as good as any of his songs on the official KISS albums, Speedin’ Back To My Baby was a great slice of pop rock and still sounds fresh today, and New York Groove predated KISS’s own forays into dance rock with a slightly disco leaning beat, resulting in another hit single.

In reality the solo albums project was the band’s first serious mis-step – and there were more to come as various members got overworked, overindulgent, or overly distracted with other ventures…

 

1978 also saw the release of the KISS movie Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park. With Frehley and Criss barely coherent when they WERE on set (at least one scene shows someone in Ace’s makeup who is blatantly obviously not Frehley himself), egos colliding and millions of dollars in marketing and business deals distracting Simmons and Stanley, it’s a miracle the movie even got made, but it certainly couldn’t be much worse than it is.

 

If you MUST watch it, I suggest a good stock of beer (or cold gin, perhaps) or some herbal assistance, as it really is an appalling train wreck of a film, best looked on as a comedy, even if for all the wrong reasons.

 

The most valuable thing listening back on the four solo albums allows us is to retrospectively analyse each of the talents and characters (as opposed to “Characters”) in the original band.

 

Of the four, Gene embraced the character he created the most – revelling in his image as a demonic womaniser and constantly boasting about his female and financial conquests. (This, as we all know, hasn’t changed to this day). Most of the songs on his solo album, and indeed on just about any KISS album, are dissertations upon the themes of success, confidence and above all sexual conquest (as distinct from the act of sex itself). I’m no psychologist but there’s definitely a strong narcissistic streak in Gene, though without his drive and chest beating arrogance I doubt KISS would still exist today.

 

Similarly to Gene, Paul enjoyed playing the romantic character of the Starchild, but his lyrics usually dealt more with seduction, romance and love than mere conquest – plus he had more of a knack of writing very immediate melodies. In a nutshell, Paul wrote the glossy radio friendly softer rock songs and ballads, where Gene’s contributions were more often than not harsher and rawer, musically and lyrically – though no less enjoyable, I hasten to add. Having said that, it’s still a surprise to know that Stanley wrote the quintessential Gene Simmons KISS song – God Of Thunder!

 

Of course, where Simmons and Stanley – and KISS - really shone was on the songs they co-wrote – Strutter, Rock And Roll All Night, Shout It Out Loud and more are true classics in every sense of the word, with Stanley’s radio rock sensibilities smoothing down the rough edges of Simmons’s Rock God approach. Stanley also has the better singing voice, of course, but there’s no denying many of Gene’s best songs are classics every bit as much as Paul’s are, and Gene’s melodies can often creep up on you after a few listens, never to leave.

 

Ace’s vocal and guitar delivery has always been the epitomy of precision made to look almost sloppy, but don’t be fooled – the man is a master of his instrument and his vocals on songs such as Rocket Ride, Shock Me and right through his solo album are perfect for the songs, elevating them to a new dimension. Making something that precise and studied sound and look almost throwaway is a rare talent indeed. Coupled with his penchant for booze and drugs, however, the sloppiness soon became all too real indeed.

 

Peter’s character always confused and confounded me: you had a Demon, a Starchild, a Spaceman and a… Cat!! In a nutshell Peter was a solid R n’ B drummer who got lucky, but let the pressures and extravagances of fame take him over. His drumming on the early KISS albums cannot be understated though, and he set new standards for the size and scope of his drumkit – I still remember my little brother telling me he had the biggest kit in rock!

 

The original KISS was a force to be reckoned with, with each member perfectly complementing the group as a whole, but as with even the best and biggest bands (the Stones, the Beatles, Motorhead, Black Sabbath, and the list goes on and on), success and power, living together 24/7 for years on end, money, drugs and women all create tensions and cracks in the machine. KISS in 1978 were teetering on the brink of self destruction, and things were about to change.

1979 – DYNASTY

After the side step of the solo albums, a big change was due – suddenly KISS went commercial, but to their credit, they did it on their own terms. Instead of knocking out half arsed copies of their older material, instead of producing the radio-friendly California-lite soft rock songs that were increasingly popular at the time, they went left field, glossed things up and introduced a slice of disco to the proceedings.

 

I Was Made For Loving You was a disco flavoured slice of classic pop rock which went top ten everywhere in the world where they had power to plug in a stereo or radio, and still endures on radio and live to this day.

 

2000 Man was an Ace led tune from the Rolling Stones songbook with the guitarist’s louche and laid back playing and vocals giving the song a sexy edge. Sure Know Something was another radio friendly classic with a dancey vibe, Charisma showed Gene as sleazy as he loved to be and Hard Times was another dose of Ace back on form – possibly energised by the success of his solo album.

 

Dynasty is KISS amongst their most commercial - whilst still retaining their signature hard rocking sound, they glossed things up a little and scored a huge hit as a result, as well as adding some new classics to the KISS canon. Dynasty proved KISS had BECOME the mainstream, and the Simmons/Stanley power base was consolidated: KISS were now Simmons and Stanley, and Frehley and Criss would no longer be considered equals.

 

1979 – THE BEST OF THE SOLO ALBUMS

Never released in The States, nor ever subsequently on CD, this album treated Europe, Australia and some South American countries to a run through of several of the best tracks from the four KISS solo albums. It certainly trims a LOT of the fat off the patchy solo albums, but it still falls short of being a classic KISS album.

The track list varies country by country, but generally the staples across the board include many of the best songs I mentioned above in the album by album run down.

 

1980 – UNMASKED

Despite a couple of hiccups, KISS ruled the world and could do no wrong. They were celebrity itself, and photographers lurked behind every corner, outside every restaurant and nightclub, and behind every back stage door hoping to snap a pic of the band sans makeup. The cover of Unmasked took the mickey out of the press and public’s rabid fascination with the band – but the music inside was a hybrid of the old rocking KISS, and the newly minted more commercial radio friendly sound of Dynasty.

 

Frehley threw three songs into the hat, Talk To Me, Two Sides Of The Coin and Torpedo Girl, the first and last especially being classic slices of the Space Ace. Is That You and Tomorrow were Stanley’s major contributions, while Simmons weighed in with, amongst others, She’s So European.

 

In hindsight though, Unmasked was made by a band being pulled in several different directions: Simmons was obsessed by women and money, Frehley loved living the rock star lifestyle and was especially buoyed by the critical success of his KISS solo album, and poor old Peter Criss left the band shortly after Unmasked was released (despite appearing on the cover and in the credits, Anton Fig played drums on the album not Criss).

 

Unmasked is still a good album, mind you, and very worthy of the KISS moniker on the cover – but KISS had had 6 years of super stardom, and the cracks were starting to show.

 

1981 – MUSIC FROM THE ELDER

Not KISS’s best album by a very long shot, Music From The Elder was supposed to be a concept album based around a fantasy movie called The Elder, which apparently never saw the light of day.

 

It was certainly not helped by a desperate change of image by the band – hair was chopped, costumes altered to be sleeker, more figure hugging, less demonic, more hairbands – the band looked disturbingly like they were aerobics instructors going to a KISS fancy dress party!

 

New drummer Eric Carr (“The Fox”) had joined the band for a tour of Europe and Australasia at the height of “Kissmania”, but this first album featuring him didn’t give him a chance to showcase his obvious talents.

 

Standout tracks were thin on the ground: Dark light is a great hard rocker in the best KISS tradition from Frehley, and Simmons' I is perhaps the band's most underrated yet uplifting song, while Escape from the Island was a blistering instrumental from Ace. Simmons’s A World Without Heroes was an adventurous yet slightly maudlin choice as lead single, and apart from the Oath, the rest of the the album is best left well alone.

 

The fans didn’t know what to make of the new image, or much of the music on this album. Was it a soundtrack or an album? If it was a soundtrack, where was the film? All in all a flawed project and the question had to be asked – was KISS too preoccupied with marketing that they had forgotten they were a rock band?

 

1982 – KISS KILLERS

The New Romantic movement was doing big business, as was Olivia Newton John all dressed up in leotards and headbands when KISS changed their image for The Elder, and soon after the disappointing response to that album, KISS KILLERS was released, featuring them sporting the same aerobics-friendly look.

 

As a compilation the track listing seems pretty haphazard, with 8 songs from all over their career. The songs seem to have been chosen at random, but there is no denying their continued potency – Cold Gin, Love Gun, Sure Know Something, Shout It Out Loud, Detroit Rock City, God Of Thunder, I Was made For Loving You and the live version of Rock n Roll All Night are certainly all killer tracks, but the album smacks of a cash in.

 

The four new songs are far more interesting, I’m A Legend Tonight and Down On Your Knees being balls out rockers, and Nowhere To Run and Partners In Crime are more pedestrian offerings. Interestingly, all four new songs come from Stanley’s pen, with Ace basically AWOL, new boy Carr yet to hit his stride, and Simmons uncharacteristically quiet at this time.

 

1982 – CREATURES OF THE NIGHT

KISS Killers was an odd stopgap for the band, but later that same year they burst back with Creatures Of The Night, a return to the classic KISS songwriting that many thought were behind them - and thankfully the band even looked like they rocked again!

 

First single I Love It Loud is Simmons at his demonic best, and was supported by a great video featuring kids seduced by the power of KISS’s music and banding together, eyes a-glow, as if being controlled by the band to rise up against their parents and all they stand for – vintage KISS musically and thematically, and a great opportunity to use the visual aspect of their image and makeup to make a great video.

 

Stanley’s I Still Love You and the title track are both excellent additions to the catalogue, and elsewhere Keep Me Comin’, Rock and Roll Hell, Danger and War Machine all fly the KISS flag proudly. I Still Love You is an epic torch-bearer of a ballad which would quickly become a live favourite, with Stanley singing as if his life depended on it.

 

Ace Frehley again appeared on the cover, in the I Love It Loud video and on the album credits, despite barely playing on the album, with most of the guitars handled by Vincent Cusano and Bob Kulick. Following the album’s release Ace announced he had quit the band to pursue a solo career, and was immediately replaced by the newly renamed Vinnie Vincent (nee Cusano) for the KISS 10th Anniversary Tour, who even more inexplicably than Criss’s Catman and Carr’s Fox, was ‘awarded’ the character of an Egyptian “Ankh Warrior”. “Character”? More of a symbol really!

 

Vincent was a volatile personality and tension abounded between him and the Simmons-Stanley power-base. He was fired and rehired more than once while out on tour, but he would stay involved with the band long enough to make one more album with them – more on that later…

THE MAKEUP YEARS

 

Between 1974 and 1982 KISS had gone from complete unknowns to the Hottest Band In The World, released 10 studio albums, 2 live albums, 3 compilations, 1 movie and even a solo album each, most achieving phenomenal success. They had redefined the role of marketing in the rock world, with hundreds of KISS related products sporting their faces and logo, sold millions of records, and still no-one knew what they actually looked like under the makeup.

 

That was about to change: following the relative failure of the KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park movie and Music From The Elder album, and the departure of half the original band, KISS needed to do something radical to prolong their fame – it was time for the makeup to come off…

 

Check back soon for Part Two of The Rockpit’s KISS retrospective!

 

Shane Pinnegar
September 2009