Of the songs I wrote for the first solo album, “Fractured Mirror” turned out to be one of my most unique and enduring favorites. So much that since then I’ve recorded three more instrumentals in the Fractured Series, ending with “Fractured Quantum.” What’s next? I don’t know. The most popular song off that record would probably be “New York Groove,” a song I didn’t even write and frankly didn’t think that much of the first time I heard it. The credit goes to Eddie’s assistant, who suggested the song. Originally recorded by a band called the Hello People, “New York Groove” was written by Russ Ballard. Russ had a band called Argent in the seventies and I was lucky enough to see them perform in concert as a teen. Eddie pushed hard to include “New York Groove” on the record. I’ve always been the kind of guy who will give anything a shot, especially if I respect the person I’m working with, so I agreed.
The signature sound of “New York Groove” is that acka-acka crunch at the beginning. It almost sounds as if it’s being created on a guitar using a wah-wah pedal. But it’s not. It actually was produced by using a device similar to the “talk box” used by Joe Walsh and Jeff Beck, and, most famously, Peter Frampton on Frampton Comes Alive! It works like this: A speaker or driver is enclosed in a metal box, into which a tube is inserted. Then a guitar is plugged into an amp, but the speaker output is routed through the box and the signal is routed back from the box into the amp again. The other end of the tube goes into the musician’s mouth, allowing him to sing or talk in a manner that sounds as though the words are being produced by the guitar in a weirdly robotic way.
Done well, and sparingly, it’s an awesome fucking effect.
I couldn’t master the technique well enough to play the part on my own, so I had my friend Bobby help out. Try to picture this: Bobby sitting there next to me, opening and closing his mouth around the tube while I played guitar.
“ACKA-acka-acka…”
It was pretty funny. But it worked. As did another of Eddie’s ideas. He suggested we add loud, rhythmic clapping to the song, figuring it would sound better when the song was performed live. To get that effect we brought in a big, hollow wooden box, and then three or four of us stomped on it together, as hard as we could. And Eddie recorded the whole thing.
It seemed kind of silly at the time, but actually it was brilliant and innovative. They don’t do shit like that anymore. Somebody now would just go out and get a stomp box. Or, more likely, they’d grab a digital sample. In those days everything you heard was real. We created all the effects. Today you just press a button or click a mouse. It takes a lot of the fun out of the process, really. I’m all for technology, but I do think it has a tendency to stunt the imagination.
After recording the basic tracks in Connecticut, we moved down to Radio City Music Hall. There used to be a recording studio on the top floor. It was wonderful, and I’ll tell you why: because the Rockettes used to come up and visit all the time. They would rehearse, take a break, look in, see what was going on. Then they’d go one or two flights up and be sunning themselves on the roof. It was a wonderful, accommodating situation, to say the least.
Ace Frehley was released on September 18, 1978. As a matter of fact, all four KISS solo albums were released on that day, a marketing stunt orchestrated by Neil Bogart in an attempt to maximize publicity and sales. I’m still not sure it was the greatest idea in the world; maybe it would have made more sense to roll the records out slowly, over a period of several months, to give each its time in the spotlight. Instead Casablanca pressed half a million copies of each record and flooded the marketplace on a single day.
The results were mixed, to say the least. Critically speaking, Ace Frehley was the most successful of the four records. I expected that. My goal was to make a really solid, guitar-based rock album, and I did. The shock, to just about everyone, was that Ace Frehley also was the most successful of the solo albums from a commercial standpoint, outselling the other three albums and producing a Top 20 single in “New York Groove.”
I was stunned and moved by the response, and especially by the enduring popularity of “New York Groove.” It’s a great song for a guy from the Bronx, which is what I still am after all these years. It was a total departure from both KISS and my personal style and taste, but it was absolutely the right song at the right time. On every level it works, and I give all the credit to Eddie Kramer. He made it happen, and he’s just as responsible as I am for “New York Groove” becoming a hit.
I’m proud of that whole album. It confirmed what I’d always felt: that my musical instincts were strong. For all the success I’d had with KISS, the experience had somehow managed to erode my confidence and self-esteem. The solo project gave me a chance—it gave all of us a chance—to stretch out a bit, to challenge myself artistically. I don’t mind admitting that I felt a strong competitive streak during the making of Ace Frehley. I guess there’s something wrong if you don’t feel that. I wanted to make the best record I could make, and I think we did that. I remember hearing all these stories at the time about what the other guys were doing, how they were putting their records together, and what their strategies were. When I heard that Gene was going to have a bunch of guest stars on his record, I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking.
Helen Reddy? Really, Gene? What the fuck!?
Even in KISS, Gene would sometimes make choices that were so wrong. I know that probably sounds like petty jealousy or envy, given that KISS remains a rock juggernaut even after all these years, but it’s really not. There were a few times when I tried to steer the band away from making what I perceived to be terrible decisions. Peter and I were the ones with street sense, with bullshit detectors, if you will. Paul and Gene had no street sense whatsoever. Especially Gene. He had led a very sheltered, straight life. But his take on certain things was incredibly cynical and jaded. Sometimes he’d come up with ideas and I’d say, “What are you, fucking nuts? You can’t do that.”
It was always about making money, advancing and expanding the brand. It was never about art. Never about music.
Never.
I was dumbfounded sometimes by the stuff that would come out of Gene’s mouth. He didn’t know the difference between what was cool and what wasn’t cool. I mean, come on. How could you not know that Helen Reddy (nothing personal, mind you), in 1978, was a very bad idea? Her presence alone is enough to make any KISS fan say, “Fuck you, Gene. I’m not buying that piece of shit.”
The people you choose to work with on a solo album says a lot about you, but I don’t think Gene realized it. Or maybe he just didn’t care. Half the time I didn’t know what was going through Gene’s mind.
But I could always see dollar signs reflected in his eyes.
FAST CARS, CELEBS, AND BETTY WHITE
KISS was bringing in millions of dollars in those days, and Jeanette and I did a pretty good job of burning through a lot of it. We got rid of our three-bedroom apartment in Tarrytown, New York, and bought a town house in nearby Irvington, where I built a recording studio in the attic and had a couple of trained Dobermans roaming the yard for protection against unwelcome guests. We moved out after a year because some fans and the press found out I was living there. Cameras would sometimes flash when I walked out the front door. One day I went right back inside and told Jeanette, “We’re getting the fuck out of this place.”
Next stop was a big spread in Connecticut, in the middle of the woods.
I had just finished recording my first solo album and the Connecticut countryside seemed like just what the doctor ordered: a welcome escape from fans and photographers. We decided to purchase a five-acre estate in Wilton. Things were escalating on all fronts, and it seemed like a good decision at the time. Eddie Kramer’s wife, Julie, actually helped us find the secluded place and we made the move in no time.
While living there, Jeanette and I were happily married and a genuinely fun couple to be around—except when we were fighting! We threw lots of big parties and barbecues, and on most weekends we
entertained friends and family (they often wound up staying the entire weekend in our home). In July 1980 Jeanette gave birth to our lovely daughter, Monique, which necessitated hiring a nanny. We had already been through several maids by then, so we ended up with two welcome additions to the Frehley household. I’ll never forget our housekeeper, Ellie. She was by far the best and funniest of the bunch. I can still hear her talking to Jeanette: “I’m so sorry. I hope I’m not in trouble. I vacuumed up Mr. F’s happy powder in the basement!” There was always silly shit going on up there, with no shortage of alcohol and drugs.
Wilton was our main home for more than seven years (although we also had an apartment in midtown Manhattan). I paid only about $350,000 for the house and property, but I put another million into it: beautiful landscaping, stone walls with wrought iron gates and a cobblestone bridge with a waterfall. A small lake on the property I stocked with fresh trout, which made a delicious lunch from time to time. A long driveway led to a circular fountain and rock garden at the main entrance. Marble bathrooms and gold and crystal chandeliers made the place seem that much more luxurious. In the main entrance there was a giant twenty-foot fireplace made out of stone and quartz. In the basement we had the front end of a vintage purple Jaguar above the brick fireplace and a barroom with a giant projection television, pool table, and professionally equipped wet bar.
The driveway in the front entrance was home to a white Cadillac El Dorado, a stainless steel DeLorean, a black Porsche 928, and a brown metallic K-5 Chevy Blazer. They were all fighting for elbow room around the fountain.
The very best thing about the Wilton estate was the recording studio I built right next to the house. It was unique and could be accessed either from the outside through a wall of glass, brick, and an eighteen-foot-tall solid oak door, or through the basement of the house. The basement entrance had a giant plastic bubble skylight above the staircase that led to the control room. Inside, the studio was futuristic and plush, with a lot of glass and poured concrete and wood baffles. The control room was shaped in an octagon and was equipped with one of the first automated consoles available. Eddie Kramer helped me pick out most of the equipment and it was all pretty much state-of-the-art at the time. I worked with several different producers there, and recorded some original material, as well as some great jam sessions yet to be released. I’d like to let everyone hear some of those tapes sometime in the near future.
When KISS wasn’t on the road or recording an album, I liked to retreat to Wilton and just hang out with my friends. The place was so big that I didn’t even have to see other people who were there if I didn’t want to. I could just stay in one corner of the house and isolate. My “friends” were a lot of the same people I’d known for years, people I could trust, or at least thought I could trust. I cherished them, actually, because they knew the real Paul Frehley. Not Ace, not the Spaceman. Just Paul.
Whenever I went out on the road, people treated me differently, because I was a rock star, but most of my friends understood that I wanted to be treated just like any other person. I really needed a vacation from the Spaceman character for a while, because at times I felt like I was losing my identity. My privacy was important to me, and my friends understood that. I liked acting like an idiot without worrying about it ending up on the radio or in a magazine. I treated them well, too. I turned them on, paid for the cocaine, the pills, and got the best beer, champagne, and booze. I gave them money when they needed it, since most of them couldn’t afford my lifestyle. I enjoyed doing that for my friends. A therapist, I suppose, could have a field day analyzing those relationships and questioning their health and the motivations of the various people involved. I never went that deep with it. These were my buddies and I liked hanging out with them. I liked getting loaded and having stupid, usually harmless fun.
I wasn’t alone in my self-indulgence. Peter bought a Mercedes and a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. Gene and Paul bought really nice places in Manhattan. We were all living life in the fast lane, but I was about to break the sound barrier without even giving it a second thought. With each successive tour, life on the road became more bizarre and surreal. When I wasn’t touring sometimes I found comfort and refuge in the New York club scene. In the mid-seventies New York’s nightlife had reached a pinnacle of decadence. People were busy being fabulous, looking and dressing great, and saying things like “Why not do this?” or “Try a little of that.” A lot of money was being thrown around; New York in the mid- to late seventies mirrored somewhat the lives of many stars, writers, and artists of the 1920s and ’30s.
I was hitting a lot of clubs—places like Trax, the Cat Club, Max’s Kansas City, Area (complete with its shark tank!), Café Central (where my bartender at times was Bruce Willis), CBGB, and of course Studio 54.
Steve Rubell had built the ultimate pleasure palace, and I became a regular guest there. If you were a VIP and liked to party, you made it a point to hang out at Studio 54 when visiting New York. If I ever ran out of drugs there, I could always visit Steve in his office and find a mountain of cocaine on his desk. He was always a friend and a gentleman to me, and was very generous with whatever he had.
I hung out with most of the celebrities and rock stars who walked through the portals of Studio 54; I drank and did drugs with them. Danced with Lindsay Wagner, hung out with Keith Richards, Alice Cooper, Mick Jagger, and John Belushi, to mention just a few. I saw the giant bags of money and people doing drugs and having sex in the bathrooms and up in the balcony. For the right price you could have just about anything you wanted, from drugs to flesh. At that point in time Studio 54 sometimes felt like the center of the universe. Regardless of how decadent the behavior, nobody even batted an eye, because they were all just too fuckin’ busy having fun. But even in the middle of the euphoria and glamour there was a strange feeling in the back of my mind that it would all be short-lived—like a beautiful and grand soiree that slowly burned itself out.
I had one girlfriend in those days who bore a striking resemblance to a Hollywood actress. Sometimes just for laughs, I’d call her up and say, “We’re going out. I’ll pick you up in an hour. We’re hitting 54. You know what to do.”
“You want me to fix my hair?”
“Uh-huh.”
By the time she got into the limo, this gal really looked the part, and when we’d pull up in front of Studio 54 and the doors would fly open, the paparazzi would go nuts.
“Hey! There’s Ace Frehley with Natalie Wood!”
It was a riot fooling the fans and photographers who hung out all night outside the club just to get a quick glimpse of someone famous.
Wherever I went, people were doing lines of blow in full view of everyone else; it was just the way the seventies was. It didn’t seem unnatural to me, since just about everyone was doing it. I really can’t think of anyone I associated with on a regular basis who wasn’t at least a casual user. Well, okay, with a couple of notable exceptions: Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. They were both antidrug.
Peter and I often drank and did drugs together, and as the band progressed it seemed to become more and more of a problem in their eyes. Peter’s reliance on painkillers was particularly a big a concern to them, and his car accident in Los Angeles didn’t help matters much. I was oblivious to a lot of the chaos, and really wasn’t concerned with what most people thought. I was living the quintessential rock star life filled with sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll and didn’t want to stop. I remember thinking that I probably wouldn’t live past my early thirties.
Peter and I had some epic nights of partying involving multiple women and enough cocaine to stop the strongest of hearts. The fact that we’re both on this earth today, alive and kicking, seems like a small miracle to me.
Peter was my KISS buddy, the only person in the band I ever considered to be truly a “friend” and someone I could trust. Interestingly enough, he’s also the only person in the band with whom I ever engaged in an actual fistfight. It happened on an early tour, in Ca
nada. I don’t even remember what it was about—I was mad about something and Peter was pissed off about something else. We just butted heads in the dressing room and one thing led to another and fists began to fly. Our road crew broke it up before anyone got hurt. We apologized to each other over a beer and the incident actually brought us closer together.
We’d always come up with crazy ways to entertain each other on the road, some dangerous, some merely ridiculous. For a while Peter would do this character called “Dr. Rosenbloom.” He’d dress up like this crazy doctor and put on a fake mustache and slick his hair back and do impersonations. His impression of Sinatra was terrific! When we didn’t have guests it was usually just me and our two bodyguards enjoying the show. We’d sit around in Peter’s room and get loaded and share lines, laughing our fucking asses off until the sun came up.
On many occasions I also hung out with the guys in the road crew. Roadies and truckers would always be up for a good poker game, and I was always willing to host the game in my suite and cater the festivities. No one in the band ever played poker, so I didn’t have much of a choice. I usually ended up winning the majority of those games, but when I lost I tried to be as gracious a loser as I was a winner.
When we toured with other bands, invariably the band members would either end up in my room or Peter’s room. The word got out that we had the best stuff and were throwing the best parties after the show. Party animals usually gravitate toward each other, and that was usually the case on a KISS tour.
No Regrets Page 19
