A step in that process was to make a studio album that even our harshest critics could not dismiss. Destroyer was supposed to be that album, and it damn near succeeded. For me, though, I knew I hadn’t come close to doing my best work. I had a wealth of musical ideas yet to be discovered, and with the right producer, maybe they’d be brought out.
Bob Ezrin was brilliant, no question about it, but his style did not suit my personality. I’ve never been great at creating under pressure, so when Bob would tell me to do something in a particular way, and give me a small window of time in which to do it, I didn’t always deliver. You have to realize—I always strive for spontaneity. To this day, my best solos are not planned. I hit the record button and I just wail. If I’m in a good frame of mind, and there are good vibes in the room, I can do some amazing guitar work. On the other side of the coin, if there’s tension, or I’m not coming up with stuff as quickly as people would like me to, I shut down. That happened to me on a couple of songs during the recording of Destroyer, which is one of the reasons I wasn’t present for some of the sessions. I got the feeling I wasn’t contributing enough, and Bob was always threatening to bring in a studio guy. Sometimes I have it, sometimes I don’t. And when I was hungover or stressed, I didn’t have it.
It’s long been a suggested that studio guitar players were brought in to help out on Destroyer, filing in for me on the days when I simply wasn’t there. Well, the truth is that it happened a few times. I can’t deny it. Most of the guitar work on Destroyer is mine, but not all of it. I was hitting the clubs a lot at night in those days, living the life of a rock star. Sometimes that lifestyle wasn’t particularly conducive to making a record. I was starting to get out of control, but I probably would have been a lot more cognizant, and I would have showed up more and been on time, if I had gotten more encouragement from Gene, Paul, and Bob. But it wasn’t my record. In fact, of all the KISS records to that point, Destroyer felt the least like my record. It belonged more to Paul and Gene, and to Bob.
Interesting, really, since Destroyer’s signature song belonged to Peter Criss.
“Beth” was such an odd song for KISS at the time, and the circumstances behind its writing and recording, and subsequent ascent up the singles charts, only add to its legend. All were completely improbable. Like me, Peter was always a bit hesitant about presenting material to the band, primarily because he figured he’d be shot down anyway. In the case of “Beth” his reluctance was understandable. First of all, it was a ballad, and KISS did not do ballads. Second, it was a bittersweet love song, filled with tenderness and regret. KISS didn’t do tenderness, either. KISS did sex. KISS did volume. On the surface, at least, everything about the song seemed… wrong.
But Peter had guts. He’d originally coauthored the tune with another bandmate a few years earlier, prior to KISS. The song had originally been titled “Beck,” which was short for Rebecca (the wife of a different bandmate). The first time Peter played the song for the guys in KISS, the reaction was mixed. Paul didn’t like it. I was ambivalent, but Peter and I were such close friends that I usually felt compelled to support his suggestions. Gene actually thought it was interesting—enough of a departure that it might help serve Destroyer’s mission, which was to move the band in a slightly different direction. Bob Ezrin agreed, but only if he could put his stamp on the song (just as he would put his mark on the whole album). Bob was not the kind of producer who believed in letting musicians sit around the studio and create. He was an active participant in all phases of production. In the case of Peter’s ballad, that meant rewriting and reworking.
Whatever you might think of Bob, he deserves significant credit for “Beth.” It was his idea to change the title (to something that sounded less androgynous); it was his idea to sweeten the sound of the song with orchestration—strings and piano. Bob was a classically trained musician, and he was blessed with a unique ear. Both of these things impressed the hell out of everyone in the band, since we didn’t even know how to read music; we were all self-taught and therefore in the same wobbly boat. To a degree, Bob intimidated all of us in the studio; we felt inferior to him. When you’re around a guy like that, especially if he has a bit of a swagger, you tend to think he knows his shit. And while we would have second thoughts down the road, it’s hard to criticize much of what Bob did on Destroyer. “Beth” was a good song that he transformed into something extraordinary.
The story behind the record’s success is part of KISS lore, how it originally was tossed onto the backside of the first single, “Detroit Rock City.” As sometimes happens, though, a few radio stations began playing the flip side of the record, and people started calling in, saying how much they liked it, and how they couldn’t believe “Beth” was a KISS song. Eventually the single was reissued, with “Beth” on the A side, and it became our biggest hit single. The song has grown on me over the years. It’s obviously not indicative of the sound of KISS, but that’s one of the reasons I like it. “Beth” was a crossover song, and the whole point of a crossover song (artistic ambition aside) is to expand your audience—to bring people into record stores who might otherwise never consider picking up a KISS album. It was a bridge—in much the same way that “I Was Made for Loving You” would make KISS accessible to fans of disco a few years later. The difference, of course, is that the years have been kind to “Beth.” The song holds up very well.
“I Was Made for Loving You”?
Not so much, in my humble opinion.
Yeah, it became a hit single and I could appreciate the polish behind it, but I never liked the song and frankly hated playing it live—hammering that chucka-chucka-chucka chord for five minutes straight was not only monotonous, but often gave me a cramp in my wrist. “Beth” was different. I didn’t see it as a compromise. I saw it as a good song that deserved to be a hit. I was happy for Peter. And it was good for the live show, too—gave it some variety and changed the pace. Instead of nothing but one machine-gun song after another, it provided a nice break for both the audience and the band members. In the same way that my guitar solos would give everyone a breather, “Beth” served as an interlude. Peter would move to center stage and sit on a drum stool, while the crowd would softly sing along, and girls would quietly snuggle up next to their boyfriends, the rest of us would head backstage and fix our makeup, grab a cold one, snort a few lines of blow (okay, I was the only one doing the blow, but you get the point), and generally recharge the batteries. Then we’d hit the stage again and finish up with a kick-ass grand finale. I have nothing bad to say about “Beth.” It was a solid ballad, and a perfect complement to the hard-driving rock that made up 95 percent of our live show.
I had little to do with the writing or production of Destroyer, but if I take a step back and try to judge it objectively, I’d have to say it’s one of KISS’s best studio efforts. Some of our hard-core fans didn’t agree, although their resentment probably has less to do with the quality of the material than the simple fact that we had tried to do something different. That’s another risk when you go from being a cult band to a worldwide phenomenon: the folks who supported you back in the day suddenly get proprietary. Fans who had been flocking to our shows since our demo days resented the legions of newcomers who hadn’t heard of KISS, or at least hadn’t cared about KISS, until “Beth” began receiving heavy airplay. And they resented us for expanding the brand in a way that seemed untrue to our roots.
But there was so much more to Destroyer than “Beth.” Parts of it are legitimately great, while other parts—some of the sonic weirdness and studio effects—don’t work quite as well as they were intended. As a guitar player this is hard for me to admit, but the solo on “Detroit Rock City” is one of the single best moments in any KISS song. And I had nothing to do with creating it. I always loved that song, and I would be the first to credit Bob Ezrin for writing the guitar solo. He came up with the melody, and I learned how to play it, and Paul figured out the harmony. It’s a classic guitar solo, as good as anything
you’ll find on a KISS record. I wish I’d thought of it, but I didn’t. It was all Bob’s.
Destroyer also contained “Shout It Out Loud,” another anthem that became a KISS concert staple. Overall it’s a really strong, diverse album that gave us more credibility in the music community and a little more respect from our peers, which was the whole point of hiring Bob as producer. If you listen to that record now, it’s clear that we were trying to make a statement: We’re not just a teeny-bopper band; we’re not just a gimmick. It was the right album at the right time, and it helped elevate our status in the industry, selling more than three million copies and cementing our reputation as one of the top bands in the world.
Hard to find much fault with any of that.
But I did.
I had a love-hate relationship with KISS. The bigger we got, the more money that rolled in, the more records we sold… the more I found myself questioning my commitment to the band. Paradoxical, sure, since I did like the money and I was pretty good at spending it. But with the success of Alive! and Destroyer, KISS became more than just a band; we were a corporate entity, the merchandising arm of which generated more revenue than I ever dreamed possible ($100 million a year at its peak in the late seventies). And a distressing amount of it came from the sales of products directed at the younger members of our audience.
There were KISS lunch boxes, KISS action figures, KISS makeup kits, KISS dolls. You name it, we sold it.
I remember feeling that we were getting too commercialized for our own good, and that some of the toys probably turned off the serious rockers who might have been our fans. At the same time that we were trying to branch out with an album like Destroyer, we were aggressively peddling merchandise to ten-year-old kids. That bothered me. I thought it was ironic that KISS went from being a supposedly dangerous heavy metal band that promoted satanism to a family-friendly band whose followers included legions of children.
We’d be in the dressing room before shows, and instead of talking about the chicks we were going to bang afterward, we’d be talking about limiting profanity onstage because of the large number of kids in the audience. The pendulum started swinging in the opposite direction. I thought it was absurd that anyone honestly believed we were a satanic band, but I also thought it was ridiculous that little kids were coming to our shows. I’d find myself replaying concerts in my head, cringing because I realized the audience included a lot of younger fans, and I’d dropped an F-bomb or strutted in a sexually suggestive manner. It became a very difficult balancing act.
It was so odd that we even had to think about it, but that’s the way we were marketed. We became almost a parody of what we started out to be. I had friends in the business who said, “Man, you guys had this incredible idea, but you went too far with it. You’ve become so commercialized that you’re almost a joke.”
Each of us reacted to these sorts of comments in his own way. Gene was the best at letting them roll off his back. If people accused KISS of being a sellout, Gene would laugh and say, “That’s right, we sell out every night.” In public, at least, he attributed every ounce of criticism, every negative review, to jealousy. Maybe he really felt that way. I don’t know. Gene has never been shy about hiding his lust for fame and adulation and money. KISS brought him all of those things. Brought them to all of us.
But they never meant that much to me.
I think we all kind of felt locked into our characters, like we couldn’t break loose. The Spaceman was my deal with the devil. When you’re generating hundreds of millions of dollars, your work tends to have an impact on other people. Walking away is complicated and messy. The thing is, for me it was never about the money. It was always about the music. I really believed in theatrical rock; from the moment I saw Pete Townshend smash that first guitar, I knew it was the right way to go. But Townshend never put on makeup. Even Alice Cooper stopped well short of what we were doing in KISS. We pushed the envelope so much that in the beginning it seemed crazy.
Then it was accepted.
And finally it was expected.
At that point we were fucked, creatively speaking. It’s like a Broadway show: you have to give the crowd exactly what they paid for, note for note, or everyone goes home disappointed. I’m not being hyperbolic, either. By the time we hit our peak in the late 1970s, a KISS concert really wasn’t much different from a Broadway show, in the sense that every move was carefully choreographed, every word of banter scripted. Our concerts were so technologically complex—with pyrotechnics, levitations, platforms—that you couldn’t deviate from the plan. I didn’t like that restraint. The thing I liked best about performing live was the freedom and spontaneity. In previous bands (and even in the very early days of KISS), we always messed with the set list, switched songs around, changed places on the stage. Once we had reached a certain level of technical sophistication and popularity, we couldn’t do that anymore. It was the same thing every night: lighting cues, sound cues, special effects cues. I started feeling uncreative and unfulfilled. I started feeling like I was a caricature. More than once, when KISS was at the height of its popularity, I found myself sitting in my dressing room, staring into a mirror, and shaking my head at the sight of the Spaceman.
“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
More often, though, these revelations—these moments of clarity—occurred in the morning, when I’d be trying to shake off a hangover while getting ready for a personal appearance at a record store or television station. I wasn’t having fun anymore.
KISS was no longer a dream job. It was merely a job.
GOING SOLO
May 1978
So we’re on this giant roller coaster at Magic Mountain, just me and my friend Don Wasley, the vice president of marketing for Casablanca Records, and his daughter. I’ve been a coaster fanatic my whole life, from the time I was a kid in New York, riding the old wooden coaster at Coney Island. I love the speed, the excitement, the carefully controlled sense of chaos and impending doom. Roller coasters are safe and fun, but they feel just a little bit dangerous. I seek them out on the road in the same way that some people look for museums or art galleries or great restaurants.
The brand-new Colossus at Magic Mountain, a towering double-tracker with two stomach-churning drops in excess of one hundred vertical feet, is on the must-ride list for any coaster nut, and I certainly qualify. So we’re standing in line, chatting casually as the crowd snakes its way along, all of us willing to wait nearly an hour for the chance to spend two or three minutes on the Colossus. By the time we finally get to the point where you enter the roller coaster, the Southern California sky has turned gray and a light sprinkle has begun to fall.
“Oh, man,” I say to Don.
“Yeah, bad luck.”
Protocol usually dictates that rides are shut down almost immediately in the event of bad weather, but the Colossus is new and easily the star attraction at Magic Mountain. A bunch of college kids are operating the ride and everyone in line is bitching about having wasted an hour without getting their roller-coaster rocks off.
“Come on, one more trip!” someone shouts.
“Yeah, it’s not that bad.”
The college kids relent and open the gate, and pretty soon we’re chugging up the first hill, the clackety-clack of the tracks filing the air. My heart begins to race, as it always does on the first ascent. But then, just as we reach the peak, something happens.
The weather worsens.
Suddenly the rain starts coming down more heavily and we’re roaring down the first drop, the rain splashing against our faces. People are screaming, but I’m not sure they understand what’s going on. As we hit the first turn I can tell we’re going faster than normal. Usually you can feel the brakes on a coaster, but here there is a palpable sense of acceleration at a point when we should be slowing down.
Oh shit…
Especially on these great old woodies, you can often feel the brakes at work and even hear the squeaking sound. Now, ho
wever, there is next to nothing, just the sound of people screaming and then a faint disturbing noise of metal on metal… the sound of brakes failing. You don’t need a PhD in physics to understand what’s happening: the rain has seeped into the brake system and rendered it virtually useless! I realize now, as we approach one of the last turns of the ride, that we’re reaching a very dangerous speed, a speed that feels like the coaster might even jump off the track! Finally, as the coaster straightens out into the last stretch of the ride, I let out a sigh of relief, thinking we’ve just barely escaped a major catastrophe! Unfortunately, the feeling is short-lived, because as soon as we enter the straightaway where we’re supposed to slow down and exit, it becomes apparent that we aren’t exiting anything, and my worst fears are suddenly realized: We won’t be getting off this coaster from hell—and hell is where we all might end up if things don’t change quickly! Don and his daughter are laughing out loud; they seem completely unaware of how serious the situation really is. But it’s apparent to me that we’re in big trouble.
Everyone else gets the point soon enough, as the coaster roars right through the exit station! There’s fear now on the faces of the riders, but it’s also on the faces of the college kids operating the ride—coupled with a helpless look of bewilderment. The brakes have been rendered almost inoperable from the rain, and a hopeless feeling suddenly consumes everyone. We again begin climbing the hundred-foot peak listening to the clanking of the giant chain drive pulling us upward, closer and closer to the summit. Our situation seems grave. What horror awaits us after the first drop?
I think, Maybe it’s time to start praying…?
And I’m not alone. Now people are really getting scared. Everyone is aware of our predicament, especially since the skies have really opened. A driving rain beats against the coaster. This no longer seems like a benign thrill. I ask myself, Is this a dream? It can’t really be happening! Have I entered the Twilight Zone?!
No Regrets Page 16
