Face the Music: A Life Exposed

by Stanley, Paul

  Finally, after Gene, Eric Carr, and I convened in L.A. to start work on the next album, Creatures of the Night, Gene and I discussed parting ways with Bill. It was sad and scary to contemplate letting go of someone who had been so instrumental in our careers. It would be a monumental change. Not something to take lightly. We had worked with him for almost a decade.

  Despite what was going wrong, all the good stuff during the formative years wouldn’t have happened without Bill. He was instrumental in our development, and he was the glue that kept everybody together. He knew how to press the buttons in each member to keep all of us happy. Each of us felt like his favorite.

  But we realized we had reached a point where rebuilding KISS was going to mean getting rid of everything we had known. We were already rid of two members, and we had experienced such waste and coddling that it had taken away our autonomy and independence—which is in essence what it’s designed to do. Bill’s system had catered to our needs but cut us off from reality. It was life in a bubble, and it was killing us.

  I even suggested we take our makeup off, to make a complete break with the past. In the end, Gene didn’t want to take off the makeup, but we did decide that Bill had to go.

  We called him from L.A. “Bill, we’re going to fly to New York to meet you.”

  I always believed you owed it to yourself and the other person to look that person in the eye at the end of a relationship, whether it was a business relationship or a romantic relationship.

  When we arrived at his office, Bill said, “I know why you’re here.”

  “It’s time,” we said.

  He smiled wistfully. We shook hands, hugged, and walked out on a big chapter of our lives.

  39.

  As we prepared to make our next album, Creatures of the Night, not a lot of A-list producers were knocking at our door. In fact, people weren’t even returning our phone calls.

  Finally, in the summer of 1982, I scheduled a lunch in L.A., where we planned to record the album, with a guy named Michael James Jackson. We met at a restaurant called the Melting Pot, on the corner of La Cienega Boulevard and Melrose. Michael, it turned out, had no real experience with rock and roll bands, though he had just worked with Jesse Colin Young, the founder of the band the Youngbloods, who had some hits in the 1960s. When we started chatting, Michael said, “What you guys need to do is write some hit songs.”

  Gee, why didn’t I think of that? Fucking brilliant.

  But I liked him despite being momentarily thrown by that “insight.” He was very introspective and intellectual, and we began to hit it off. Also, even though I wasn’t sure what he had to offer musically, we needed someone. I knew that Gene and I weren’t at a point where we could be productive together because neither of us wanted to compromise our respective musical ideas. We needed an intermediary in the studio, somebody to be the swing vote.

  Gene and I never wrote songs together anymore. Michael brought up the idea of bringing in outside songwriters to work on the record with us. I suggested Bryan Adams, who had written a minor hit called “Let Me Take You Dancing” together with Jim Vallance. Even though his voice was sped up and sounded like a girl’s on that track, I thought there was something there. When we flew him to L.A., though, Bryan ended up writing with Gene, and they came up with “War Machine.”

  With Ace gone, we put the word out that we were looking for a new guitar slinger. Among others, we auditioned Steve Farris of Mr. Mister, Robben Ford, who was a great blues player, and Steve Hunter. Richie Sambora, who was in a newly formed band called Bon Jovi, flew in from New Jersey to audition. He wasn’t yet the consummate player he would become, and he didn’t get the gig. It’s funny, but years later I heard him say he hadn’t really wanted the job because he wanted to be in something more blues-based. First of all, it’s hard to imagine that he flew to California to audition for KISS just because he liked airplane food; also, Bon Jovi’s done a lot of great things, but they don’t sit next to Howlin’ Wolf in my record collection.

  Another person I spoke to was a really sweet young kid named Saul Hudson. He told me his mom had been a seamstress for David Bowie and that his friends called him “Slash.” He was very well spoken and engaging, but he seemed really young. Finally I asked him how old he was. “I’ll be seventeen next month,” he said.

  I had turned thirty earlier that year, and Gene was twice this kid’s age. “You know,” I said, “you sound like a great guy, but I think you’re too young for this.” I wished him well and always remembered him because he was so nice and unaffected.

  In the end, a lot of different people played solos on Creatures of the Night. It was a way to try people out and to see who might fit the feel of a given track. Eddie Van Halen came to the studio one day knowing we were looking for a guitar player. He listened to some of the stuff we had, including a solo on the title track by Steve Farris. “Wow, why don’t you get that guy?” asked Eddie. He was blown away. The fact was, we had rehearsed with Farris, but the fit hadn’t been right.

  Eddie was really unhappy at the time and called me at home a few times. He was pretty out of it, and he wanted to talk about the KISS solo albums. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “Why did you go off and do solo albums?” It was clear that this had something to do with his own band, which was in turmoil at the time, but he didn’t say exactly what was happening. He seemed to be looking to me for answers, but I was never sure what the question was.

  I wrote the songs “Creatures of the Night” and “Danger” with a guy named Adam Mitchell who had been in a Canadian band called the Paupers. Adam had also written with a guitar player named Vincent Cusano, and even though Adam didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about Vinnie as a person, he said he was a very talented singer-songwriter and that his guitar playing might fit KISS. It was a scene that would play out often—people always talked about Vinnie’s talent and ability, but they never had good things to say about him as a person. Hmmm.

  The first time Vinnie came to the studio, he started doing a solo and got down on his knees. I thought it was one of the goofiest things I’d ever seen. You just didn’t do that at an audition. He seemed wrong somehow—he was odd looking and shifty—but we were between a rock and a hard place, and Vinnie ended up playing on a lot of tracks for the album.

  For us, Creatures was done with the shock and realization of how completely lost we had gotten. The album was a declaration of intent to get back on track. Eric was relieved, as this was what he had expected all along. He was definitely happier all through the recording process.

  One afternoon a carload of little kids and what I presumed was one of their dads showed up at the studio, and Gene ushered them into the room where we recorded. They gathered around a microphone. They were there to sing background vocals on a song.

  What the hell?

  Gene, it turned out, had made a deal with a Hollywood producer—if the guy could send his kids and their friends to sing background vocals on a KISS song, Gene would get some brownie points for some acting work out of the guy.

  Are you fucking kidding me?

  I was furious. And not just because Gene hadn’t asked in advance for my okay. He was whoring us out and compromising our album for his own benefit. It offended me that he tried to get acting roles in that way. I had been studying acting long before he had the idea to get into movies—in fact, he had told me he had no interest in acting. To me, the path was obvious—you studied acting and then auditioned for parts. That was the “right” way to go about it. Gene didn’t see it that way. He just went out and brown-nosed his way in.

  If you walk behind an elephant, you end up cleaning up the shit.

  I spent my free time in L.A. with Donna Dixon. Part of the reason I invested so much in Donna was because she still managed to keep me at arm’s length—no matter the closeness we had developed. That ignited my old compulsion to see the relationship as a challenge to overcome. Even though we were together, there was still something lacking—and I kept tr
ying to get whatever that was. I was awed by her beauty and placed her on a pedestal, which quickly must become one of the most boring and unsexy places for a woman to be. My dad, though, would no doubt have approved.

  1982—life in the tabloids. You can keep it.

  Once we finished recording Creatures, I spent much of the rest of the year going back and forth between L.A. and New York to see Donna. She came to New York a lot, too, and lived out of my apartment. After her TV show Bosom Buddies got canceled, she auditioned for a movie called Doctor Detroit. She told me after the audition that she thought Dan Ackroyd, the star of the film, was a genius. I thought that assessment was a stretch.

  Donna was looking for a new financial advisor, so I introduced her to Howard Marks. Howard had a potbelly and always wore his pants below his stomach, using suspenders to hold up his trousers. Not uncharacteristically, the day we went to see him, he’d probably had a few stiff drinks beforehand. He was eating his lunch at his desk when we arrived. He gave Donna a big talk about saving for the future and how important financial planning was and, after this long dissertation, he stood up and started to walk over to a side table in the corner of his office with the remains of his lunch and his dirty napkins on a lunch tray. As he got up—it was as if it was happening in slow motion—I could see his suspenders dangling down. He must have taken them off his shoulders while sitting at his desk. As he started to cross the room, his pants began to shimmy downward until they dropped to the floor.

  Howard looked down, threw his tray in the air, reached for his pants, and screeched, “Oh, my God!”

  “Is this normal?” Donna asked me.

  She landed the role in Doctor Detroit, and I visited her on the set in Chicago—and gave her a diamond ring. I didn’t call it an engagement ring. The relationship was stagnating somewhat; something was lacking for both of us. But I didn’t want to lose her, and I didn’t want to be left.

  Sometimes, Donna would drop out of sight, and I wouldn’t hear from her for a few days. She was living out of my place when she was in New York, and just before Christmas I found a new fur coat in the closet. She said she’d taken it from the wardrobe department of something she was working on. It wasn’t too long before she blindsided me by suddenly talking about having never been on her own and needing space. I told her that I didn’t want to be just another guy dating her and didn’t want to share her. Although there were more unanswered questions now and more distance between us, we dropped the subject and didn’t bring it up again for a while.

  Then I saw among her things a little T-shirt with “Martha’s Vineyard” on the front of it. Martha’s Vineyard? When had she gone to Martha’s Vineyard? She would explain her disappearances away—kind of. I didn’t ask too many questions, either, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the truth. And anyway, when someone was inconsiderate or dishonest, it reinforced what I thought of myself.

  This is what I deserve.

  If only I can get her to like me . . .

  40.

  KISS shot a video for “I Love It Loud” with Ace. Then he went with us to Europe for some lip-synced promotional appearances at the time of the release of Creatures of the Night. He was very fragile, and in Europe he said to me, “I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I can’t do this anymore.”

  When we flew back to the States, that was it. Ace was gone for good.

  Ace, Peter, Bill Aucoin—all gone. People were dropping like flies all around us. Neil Bogart had died of cancer while we were making Creatures; even though he wasn’t involved with the record company anymore, his death severed another tie to our past. Richard Monier, a recent tour manager and one of my closest friends, was the first person I knew to die of AIDS—that same year. And Wally Meyrowitz, one of our booking agents in New York—another buddy and confidant—died from a combination of booze and barbiturates.

  Where did everybody go?

  Gene seemed fixated on Hollywood and spent as little time as possible on things related to the band. In his inimitable dismissive self-serving style, Gene liked to say, “Well, Paul only wants to be a rock star. I want so much more in life.”

  I didn’t understand why everybody was jumping ship. We were still KISS. And I still looked at the band as my life raft.

  WHERE DID EVERYBODY GO?

  We had a tour scheduled to start on December 27, 1982, and we didn’t have a permanent replacement for Ace yet. I’d felt from the get-go that Vinnie wouldn’t work in the band. And in the interim, some nasty rumors had spread about him stealing equipment from the rehearsal studio. But nobody else was on the horizon. When the decision was made to bring him in, I said to Gene, “I just want to go on record saying that this is a bad move.”

  With the Creatures tour coming on the heels of several financial disasters, we’d had to tighten our belts, so Vinnie didn’t get a Porsche.

  Vinnie wanted to change his name to Mick Fury when he got the gig. Why did everybody come up with cartoon names? I just looked at him like, Are you serious? We settled on Vinnie Vincent. After playing around with ideas for his makeup, I designed the Egyptian ankh image.

  As far as his knowledge of and understanding of the guitar, Vinnie was terrific. I’d written with him and heard him play and sing, and knew his talent. The problem was that he had no sense of what to play or when, and he had no ability to self-edit. His playing was like puking—it just came splattering out. He wanted to show how fast he could play, how many notes he could play—he didn’t think things out. This became more problematic when the tour started.

  Onstage, Vinnie was hell-bent on using every solo as an opportunity to showcase himself. But it doesn’t work like that. It’s all about context. Vinnie never seemed to grasp that. He was intensely jealous of guys like Randy Rhoads and Jake E. Lee because he thought he was as good as them. He wanted his “just due,” and his solo spot in the middle of the show became ungodly long. We used to call it the high point of the show—because everybody in the audience left to go get high.

  Not that many people saw his wannabe guitar heroics—the Creatures tour did horrendously in most markets. Before we went onstage, we’d hear “You wanted the best, you got the best, the hottest band in the land . . .” and we’d walk out to find nobody was there. Sometimes there would be only a thousand people in an arena that could hold eighteen thousand.

  We had packed the same venues a few years before, but now, if I threw my guitar pick too far, it sailed over people’s heads and landed on the floor. We’d pull into arenas that looked as if somebody had forgotten to turn off the parking lot lights after an event was long over. And then we’d get inside and hear the echo from the main hall and know for sure it was empty.

  We left blood, as they say in the business. It was a death march for us and for the concert promoters.

  At first, the instinct was to blame other people. Oh, it’s the promoter’s fault. But if people want to see you, it doesn’t take an incentive to get them to a show. And if they don’t want to see you, the promoter can’t make them buy a ticket at knifepoint. We had to face the fact that people didn’t come because they didn’t want to.

  Obviously, we had to pay penance for Unmasked and The Elder. We got back on track with Creatures, but fans were not that forgiving. It was going to take years to win back our fans and make new fans. We had betrayed them. We had betrayed ourselves, too, and we weren’t going to be easily forgiven.

  It’s shocking in hindsight what we had done. And we spent years making up for it. The people who turned off to us weren’t going to come back just because we said we were sorry. We had to prove it, and that took a lot of time. Creatures alone was not enough.

  But nothing can prepare you for the shock of vast empty spaces. It was unfathomable that from one tour to the next, the audience just disappeared. The bottom had fallen out.

  I loved the position that I had—I loved the stature of the band and how I was perceived. And losing that was horrible. Horrible.

  I dealt with the depressi
on by sleeping. It was my way of checking out. I was so depressed that I couldn’t keep my eyes open anywhere. It got so bad that I fell asleep in the dressing room before shows. Sometimes, I dozed off before I did my makeup; sometimes I dozed off in my makeup. The crew had a hard time waking me up.

  I still looked to Donna for a sense of calm and security. I could spend hours talking to her on the phone every day. She was gearing up for the release of Doctor Detroit. She told me once again that she needed space. I told her I still wasn’t prepared to be one of several people she was dating, and that if she really wanted to break up, she had to face me in person. I bought her an airline ticket to our next tour stop. She flew in. And it was over.

  My depression deepened.

  I don’t know whether the tour situation or the overall band crisis affected Gene—he wasn’t fully vested in the band at that point. After all, he had brought in a carload of kiddies to sing on the album and was clearly looking elsewhere. He’s never been one to verbalize his feelings, so it wasn’t something we talked about, even though we were both certainly aware of what was happening.

  Eric, for his part, didn’t understand the financial side—he wasn’t aware of how the disastrous turnouts related to our budgeting. He just loved being in the band and loved playing the material from the new album.

  A few months after my all-or-nothing ultimatum to Donna, I decided it was just too hard—nothing and no one had filled the void. Anything I got from her was better than nothing. I took a deep breath and called her. She seemed stunned. I told her how I felt, and we started speaking frequently on the phone again. Talk of missing each other wasn’t uncommon. We even got together when KISS played a show in L.A.