No Regrets

by Ostrosky, John, Frehley, Ace, Layden, Joe

  I liked the show. And I understood how visual effects could supplement the music and make the concert experience more memorable. As different as we were personally, as divergent as our backgrounds might have been, we shared a collective vision and ambition. We just had different ways of dealing with things. You have to understand, I was a happy-go-lucky guy, and I was just going with the flow; I thought maybe it would work out… maybe not.

  As the days went by, “maybe not” seemed the more likely scenario. Then the guys showed up to watch me play in a club. And finally, in mid-January, about two weeks after my initial audition, I received a phone call from Paul. He wanted to know if I could come down to the loft and hang out with the guys again. I said, “Sure, why not?” When I arrived, Peter’s wife, Lydia, was there, as was Gene’s girlfriend. I suppose they wanted another set of eyes—female eyes—to determine whether the new guy looked like a good fit. We talked for a little while, jammed a bit, and then they offered me the job. By this time I’d learned that the band actually had no recording contract, which probably should have made me skeptical. But it really didn’t. Bands and musicians inflated their résumés all the time; I knew from personal experience that record deals were every bit as fragile as the records themselves.

  The important thing was that I liked the material and I had a good feeling about it. I liked the attitude of everyone in the band. Whether I would get along with them personally was hard to say, and didn’t really factor into the equation. All I cared about was that they were ambitious. They wanted to make it professionally. I’d been playing with other people, been in other bands, and it always seemed like everyone had too much noise in their lives. They held day jobs and did gigs on the weekends. They had wives and kids. They had car payments and rent. Some even had mortgages. Not me. I had my guitar and nothing else. Music was my life, and it was nice to get together with three other guys who seemed just as single-minded.

  We started rehearsing almost immediately at the Twenty-Third Street loft—kind of a pain in the ass for me, since I still didn’t have a car or enough money for daily cab fare. Obviously I wasn’t going to ask my mother to drive me to rehearsal every day, so I had to find alternative means of transportation. Sometimes I took the subway to Manhattan; more often, though, I turned to friends for help, most notably a cat named Eddie Solan. Eddie would drive to the Bronx from his house in Yonkers, and then we’d go downtown together in his Volkswagen Bug. Eddie wasn’t a musician but he deserves a lot of credit for what KISS accomplished in the early days. Not only was he a loyal friend and good sound mixer, he was also a master carpenter and electronics wizard who built the PA system for our first shows. By day Eddie worked at an electronics supply store; by night he was an unofficial member of KISS—the band’s very first roadie (and so much more). Eddie was really into mixing and sound, and I don’t think his efforts and contributions during the early days of the band have ever been sufficiently acknowledged.

  We rehearsed four, five, six days a week—probably overkill, considering we had less than a dozen songs. We’d play them repeatedly, for hours on end, beating the dead horse until there was no flesh left on its bones. This wasn’t easy for me. While I loved playing guitar, my approach to the craft was less workmanlike than some of the other guys in the band. I took the artist’s approach: When inspiration strikes, I’ll be ready. Peter was kind of the same way. Paul and Gene? Uh-uh. They were workaholics, committed to practicing until their fingers bled, and then turning their attention straight to the business end of things. Admirable, I admit, but it wasn’t the way I lived my life, and in the beginning I found it curious.

  Not to mention exhausting.

  But I got used to it pretty quickly. We spent a lot of time in close quarters in those first few months, rehearsing, planning our shows, talking about image and the direction we wanted the band to take. Considering all the problems and personality conflicts we’d have down the road, it’s worth noting how well we all got along in the beginning. I wouldn’t say we were best friends, because that just wouldn’t be true. We were very different people. As a result, our relationships were at first (and then much later) more businesslike than anything else. Everything was very diplomatic, with each band member putting in his two cents’ worth on all subjects, regardless of how important or trivial. Paul and Gene did most of the songwriting in the beginning, but once I got the hang of it, I started writing as well. And so did Peter, although to a lesser extent.

  We all became friends, but once we started working together on the road, Paul and Gene quickly became aware of the fact that Peter and I were a little different from them. We liked to party. Hard. Everybody “partied,” but in different ways, and to varying degrees. Gene, for example, doesn’t drink (and Paul hardly drinks at all). But Gene, especially, was a total whore. Peter and I were the more traditional (and hard-core) partyers in the group, favoring alcohol and drugs, with women merely part of the mix. Like me, Peter had been a member of a gang when he was younger, and his personality had been partially shaped by that experience. We gravitated toward each other as the band went forward.

  But I don’t want to imply that the four of us didn’t get along. We did, especially in the formative months and years. You can’t spend that much time together, working toward a common goal, without fashioning some type of bond. Just as you can’t help but get on each other’s nerves after a while. By any reasonable standard, we were destitute. A few of us had part-time jobs—Paul and I drove cabs, Gene worked at a magazine—but there was never much money. It didn’t seem to matter. We all believed that soon enough we’d be supporting ourselves solely as musicians. We had good songs, solid musicianship, and confidence that there was a market for theatrical rock. We wanted to take it further than any of the acts that inspired and influenced us, like the Who, Hendrix, the Move, Alice Cooper, and the New York Dolls.

  The Dolls were a gender-bending, pre-punk group fronted by David Johansen and Johnny Thunders. They wore high heels and makeup and generally favored androgynous clothing. They influenced a lot of other musicians on the New York scene, and they had an effect on KISS, both musically and stylistically.

  So did Alice, probably even to a greater degree, because Alice’s sound was more polished and commercial, and his show revolved around theatrics. Alice Cooper in the 1970s brought blood and guts to the stage, combining rock and performance art in a way that had never been attempted. He wasn’t just a singer; he was a character in his own band, and that character did crazy, repulsive things in the name of art. Alice, like the Dolls, wore androgynous fashion, only with a sadomasochistic flavor. He utilized guillotines and snakes and buckets of blood in his shows. And people loved it.

  Well, not all of the people, obviously. Conservative groups (and more than a few parents) thought Alice was doing the devil’s work, corrupting kids and peddling sex and violence. They hated him, a response that predictably helped fuel sales of record albums and concert tickets.

  Alice knew exactly what he was doing. He made melodic but hard commercial rock, and he sold it with a grisly flourish (as well as a wink and a nod, I might add, though not everyone noticed), promising to make every night Halloween. It was nothing short of brilliant. He’s now one of the most recognizable icons in rock ’n’ roll. (Little did I know Alice and I would become good friends later on down the road.)

  We knew from the beginning that we wanted to follow his lead. We wanted to wear makeup and have outlandish costumes, and play hard rock. Beyond that, we weren’t so sure. We also weren’t sure about what we wanted to call ourselves. Choosing the right name was important—it had to be a good fit, convey the right image and attitude. And we all had to be comfortable with it. Looking back now I realize that one of the things that made KISS unique was the fact that we were such a democratic organization. That may seem hard to believe now, with only Gene and Paul left from the original lineup, and Gene having so carefully cultivated an image of calm control. But we were four equal partners almost from the moment the
lineup was complete.

  Names were tossed around for several weeks, with most being discarded in a matter of minutes. At one point, probably out of exasperation, someone suggested that we call the band, simply and graphically, FUCK! That one, too, suffered a quick demise. We wanted to be radical; we wanted to really push the envelope in a way no other band had done. FUCK! would have done the trick. It also would have made it impossible to get a record deal, or radio airplay, or any of the other things we wanted to achieve. So that wasn’t going to work. FUCK! was a dead end, in the same way that Muff Divers would have been a dead end. You want to be taken seriously as a band? Well, then, your name can’t be a punch line. And it can’t be so profane that no one will want to say it out loud (unless they’re really pissed off).

  Eventually we began talking about other bands we had been in, mainly as a source of inspiration. One name can cause a spark, and suddenly you’re tossing out ideas, until finally you settle on something that just feels right. I’d been through the process multiple times with other bands. It was simple brainstorming, and it usually worked. Peter had once been in a band called Lips, and at some point the conversation went in that general direction, until finally Paul suggested “KISS.” The collective response was, “You know, that’s not bad.”

  It was that simple, that organic.

  It was the same way with the now famous (or infamous) KISS logo. As soon as we settled on the name, I went home and started messing around with various stylistic renderings of the band name. While it’s true that I wasn’t much of a student when it came to traditional courses, I did have artistic ability. In fact, I used to double up in art at DeWitt Clinton. I got really close to the head of the art department, Doc Goldberg. He encouraged my interest in sketching and design; he’d even write passes for me when I came in late. Doc was used to dealing with students who had trouble fitting in. Most of the kids in his department were uncomfortable in a public school setting, but that didn’t mean they lacked talent. They were just… different. I was one of the best artists at DeWitt Clinton. I even designed a very cool psychedelic cover for the biannual school magazine, the Magpie. My idea was to sketch the words “Youth Revolts” on the cover, but the faculty advisor on the project felt that was too inflammatory.

  “How about ‘Youth Dissents’?” she suggested. “That might be better.”

  I’m not sure I even understood the meaning of the word dissent, but I did as I was told and the cover still looked very cool.

  After moving on to Roosevelt High, I was prompted by my art teacher to enter one of my paintings in an art competition involving all the high school students in the five boroughs of New York City. That’s more than one hundred thousand kids! I was good enough to have won an Art Achievement Award naming me one of the top one hundred high school artists in the city and my painting was displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. Not bad for a street punk from the Bronx.

  Like Paul, I probably should have gone to the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan. I definitely would have had a better academic career, that’s for sure. But I didn’t want it bad enough. I loved art, but I loved music even more, and constantly dreamt about where it could take me. Like I said, I lacked focus and discipline.

  Being excited about my new band, I roughed out a sketch of the original KISS logo in no time at all. It wasn’t a whole lot different than the logo as it appears today. My original concept featured the twin S’s in jagged detail, like lightning bolts, and a small dot in the shape of a diamond over the letter I. I then transferred the logo to a button using a felt-tip pen and presented it to the group. I later dropped the diamond over the I and that was that. Designing one of the most recognizable rock logos in history wasn’t really that difficult. Everyone loved it. Paul was a trained artist, so when things got really serious he polished my design, making everything nice and neat. (Thanks, Paul!)

  And that’s how “Kiss” became “KISS.”

  Incidentally, there was never any secret meaning to the logo or the name. I’ve been accused of trying to mimic the SS of the Nazi storm troopers. Fucking ludicrous. I wasn’t that subversive or nihilistic. I thought lightning bolts would look cool, and I had already decided that my character in the band would be called the Spaceman, and that my costume would be adorned with lightning bolts. So it all went together.

  As for the notion that KISS was some sort of satanic metal band, with the name an acronym for Knights in Satan’s Service? Complete and utter bullshit. All that satanic crap came out of left field; more precisely, it came out of the southern Bible Belt, where so many of our fans were reared. I remember on some of our early tours, there were religious fanatics outside the shows burning our records, saying we were devil worshippers. Give me a fuckin’ break! I was brought up a Lutheran, Peter was a Catholic, and Gene and Paul were Jews. None of us had ever been involved in any sort of satanic activity.

  Period.

  The truth is, not only were we not a satanic metal band, but we weren’t really a metal band at all. We were just a melodic hard rock band. Some of our songs were pop, some were heavy rock, bordering on metal, but I never thought of us as a metal band per se. As for the protesters, well, I didn’t pay that much attention to them, but I kind of believed in the old adage “Any publicity is good publicity.”

  Really, though, if KISS stood for anything, it was a far more common acronym: Keep It Simple, Stupid. (That saying would end up having a much more profound meaning to me later on in my life.)

  Just play the music, play it well, play it loud.

  And look good doing it.

  KISS COMES TO LIFE

  January 30, 1973

  By the time we hit the stage for our first performance, at a Queens nightclub called Popcorn, interest in KISS hadn’t exactly built to a thundering crescendo. There might have been more people in the band and crew than in the audience. You try to put experiences like that out of your mind, but it isn’t always easy. My memory suffers sometimes, thanks to all the drinking and drugging, but the brain has a funny way of cataloging events as it damn well pleases. You forget some of the good stuff, and you remember some of the pain. A lot of it, actually.

  Of course, even the stuff that hurts can be kind of funny. And to me, in those days, just about everything had its humorous side. So I could stand up there alongside Paul and Gene, the three of us jockeying for space on the stage, unsure how to move or where to position ourselves, and thus sometimes crashing into one another or wrapping our legs around each other until we looked like some multiheaded, hard rock serpent. And I could laugh at the absurdity of it all, even as I looked out over the “crowd” and spotted not a single unfamiliar face. A few of our family members and girlfriends, and that’s about it. A lesser band might have been humiliated to the point of quitting, but we weren’t deterred in the slightest.

  We had less than two weeks to prepare for that gig, and I suppose if anyone had captured it on video, and I saw it today, I’d be less than thrilled with our performance. I’m not even sure how we managed to put together a full set in such a short amount of time, but I know that we did. KISS played nothing but original songs that night—a dozen or more tunes that Paul and Gene had already written, and that I’d tried to absorb as quickly as possible. I faked a lot of it, using my natural musicianship to cover gaps, hoping no one would notice. Then again, since the place was practically empty, it wasn’t like there was a lot to lose.

  For all my disagreements with Gene over the years, I have to give him credit for being a tireless worker and self-promoter. I never had all that much interest in the financial side of the business; Gene was obsessed with it. From the first time I met him, he seemed like a guy who put as much value on the marketing and promotional end of KISS as he did on the music we produced. Don’t get me wrong. Gene was a decent songwriter and bass player, and I respected him on that level. But it was clear to me that he considered the music to be only one piece of the puzzle. I was like that, too, but to a much lesser degree. I
saw Alice Cooper wrap himself in boa constrictors and fake executions onstage, and I thought, Wow… cool.

  Gene saw the same thing and thought, How can we expand on that, and how do we put together a business model to ensure its success?

  I always had a lot of friends when I was growing up. For better or worse (and my parents would probably say worse), I spent a lot of time away from the house, hanging out with my buddies. I liked being one of the guys. I still do, in fact, although I’m much more careful about the people I let into my life these days. Even when KISS blew up, I tried to keep it real, mainly by hanging out with my old friends, doing the things I always enjoyed doing: fishing, shooting pool, drinking beer… and of course getting into a little trouble.

  “Guys, don’t call me Ace,” I’d say. “Call me Paul, okay? Ace is the guy in KISS.”

  That was the absolute truth. While some of my friends had called me Ace, the nickname remained just that: a nickname, to be used in certain situations and by a select group of people. I was always “Paul” to my family, and to most of my friends. When I joined KISS we decided that two Pauls was one too many.

  “No problem,” I said. “Just call me Ace.”

  So, to the guys in the band, I was never Paul Frehley. I was Ace. When I went home, though, I became Paul again. It was a reality check. The people who knew me only after I became famous used to put me on a pedestal, and let me tell you, that kind of treatment can really mess with your head. It made me very uncomfortable.