Eventually, when the photo editing was done, Tommy moved to Gene’s guesthouse, where a computer had been set up to produce the book. Jesse figured out how to market the book through an 800 number. He figured selling directly would work better than using a traditional publishing company. And his hunch was correct. Once we finished the book and had it printed in Korea, we hired a telemarketing company to take phone orders and ship the books, and it was a huge success.
The conventions would be a traveling KISS museum of sorts, where memorabilia collectors and fans would congregate to celebrate the band. Concert promoters had no interest in acts perceived as hair bands, but we figured that, as with the book, we could do it by ourselves—rent ballrooms at hotels and put on the events without a promoter. Again, we needed someone to handle the logistics, and again, we turned to Tommy, who had proved so knowledgeable and hardworking during the making of KISStory.
The conventions were really Gene’s baby, and I had very little to do with them. I did help Tommy get custom mannequins from a shop in Burbank and then apply the makeup on their faces. Our original plan was to use normal store mannequins, but they didn’t look right. I remember being struck by how different the faces looked after the face paint was applied to them—even though they were all identical mannequin heads. The makeup seemed to change the whole structure of the faces.
We also had the four wax heads from the Hollywood Wax Museum. When I looked at mine, I didn’t think it looked like me. So I got out some sculpting tools and altered the face.
Gene, Tommy, and I started going through boxes at our storage space. We went through crate after crate and catalogued what was in each one with the help of a photographer. It was fun to pull out the old outfits and have a look at them again. Day after day we went through the stuff and slowly decided what to display and how to display it. Tommy and I drove down to a place in Buena Park, near Disneyland, to a workshop where they built custom-made Plexiglas enclosures. We designed a set of collapsible display cases and ordered them.
All along, we paid close attention to the budget, since we were paying for everything out of pocket and doing it all on our own, with no advances. It was a real education.
While the book and conventions were still in the planning phase, we also began to discuss a new album. Bob Ezrin wasn’t available, but it didn’t matter, because Gene had a bee in his bonnet. Music was different now, he said, and we needed to be current. I think maybe he was attracted to the grunge sound because it was dark—it fit with the persona he wanted to project. When I brought in a few songs early in the process, he was very dismissive. “You don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “You don’t know what music is like anymore.”
I just couldn’t picture KISS writing gloom and doom stories. “What are we going to write about?” I asked him. “That our housekeepers didn’t show up today? Our limo was late?”
It was ridiculous for me to write gloomy songs—and just as ridiculous for Gene to do it, too. It ain’t that dark in Beverly Hills.
I was also skeptical about what all the grunge bands would do on their second albums. There were a lot of great first albums, but what would they do once they were platinum acts instead of kids living in roach-infested garages? I mean, if they were so miserable, once they had money, they could all go see shrinks.
But Gene felt strongly about the project, so I agreed to the plan. He didn’t want to do it any other way. I could be proven wrong. Hey, maybe the album would come out and everybody would say it was a work of genius. I seriously doubted it. After all, it was us impersonating other bands, which made no sense. KISS celebrated life—we sang about how great life was and about self-empowerment. Now we had to mope and sing about how miserable everything was? That wasn’t us doing what we do well.
I started tuning my guitar down, but I struggled with writing songs I had no real connection to. Meanwhile, Gene reveled in the idea of trying to out-Metallica Metallica. There was already a great Metallica, and we sure as hell weren’t going to beat them. We were at our best a great KISS, and that fact seemed lost as we tried to hop on a train that we could never pull. We’d be lucky to be the caboose.
Fortunately, I eventually found a subject I felt connected to: I wrote “I Will Be There” for my new son, Evan. Pam had gotten pregnant again in late 1993, and in June of 1994 we went to the labor and delivery unit at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Pam was about a week past due, so we went there with an appointment for her to be induced. She wasn’t actually in labor, so I had plenty of time to set up my tripod and camera. I’ll never forget the last sonogram before Evan was born. The 3D technology was still pretty new, and when the doctor did a close-up of his head, Evan turned and faced the device as if on cue. Oh, my God, that’s my face!
I’d always thought that having kids someday would be a terrific thing. But until I cut the umbilical cord, I didn’t realize the depth of it, the holiness of it, the sacredness of it. Up until that day, life never made much sense to me. You showed up on earth, spent a little time here, and died. It seemed pointless. But as soon as I held Evan in the delivery room and we made eye contact, I suddenly got it: We don’t really die. We were here on earth to leave the world a better place through our children. And through our children, we lived on. It was stunning to make eye contact with this little person who had just entered the world and to realize that I would continue. This was the cycle that had been going on since the beginning of time. I would live on through him.
As we were driving home from the hospital with this new little being in our car, I was absolutely terrified. I probably caused accidents because of how slow I was driving. When babies are born, their necks can’t support their heads, and if their heads lean too far one way or the other, they can suffer from lack of blood flow to the brain. I drove five miles an hour, constantly looking in the rearview mirror to make sure his head was upright in the car seat.
I had always considered myself the center of my universe; when Evan came along, I suddenly moved aside without even thinking about it. He became the center of my universe. And maybe he was a second chance for me to experience a childhood the way it was supposed to be.
His birth calmed me and answered a big question: Why are we here? We’re here to raise children and leave something better behind. The profundity of the moment took me back to Hawaii years before, when I had thought I was drowning. Back then, all I could think about was that it made no sense that the world would go on after I died. Looking into my son’s eyes, I went from being the center of the universe to being glad to move aside and cede it to him. It’s yours, son.
I am here because of those who came before. And I will go on because of those who come after.
All of a sudden, I slept better.
50.
The KISS conventions came to fruition in 1995, starting in Australia. Ticket presales were strong, so we weren’t anxiously waiting to see whether anyone showed up. The conventions worked because of the mythology of KISS—that was the drawing power. The concept was unique and people responded.
And responded in some unique ways. Some people, for instance, got married at the conventions. That might seem odd to some, but I saw it as a huge compliment. I never took it lightly that somebody chose to get married in KISS makeup at one of these events. The fact that the band meant that much to people was terrific. To have that kind of impact and be that much a part of the fabric of somebody’s life was a special feeling. I loved the looseness and informality of the format of the conventions, too, with the Q&A sessions we did and our acoustic performances. We were playing to the most hardcore fans and not being scrutinized for perfection—the acoustic shows became sonic snapshots.
When we held a convention in Burbank, just outside of L.A., Eric Singer suggested that we invite Peter Criss to come. It was a gesture of goodwill—to show Peter that he was part of the family. When he showed up, he was thrilled—grinning ear to ear, punching the air. Peter was older than us, and in the years since he had left the band, the age gap see
med to have increased—perhaps because of his lack of solo success or a dissatisfaction with life in general. I gave him a KISS motorcycle jacket to wear. The only one we had on hand was about four sizes too big, but he was pleased to be flying the colors.
He joined us onstage and sang “Hard Luck Woman.” He couldn’t remember all the words—we hadn’t rehearsed—but it was a warm moment. He looked like a kid who had just gotten the keys to the candy store, and I was glad to see him after all the years.
We had about twenty-five stops across the United States, with the final convention held at Roseland in Manhattan. Alex and Roger Coletti at MTV, both big KISS fans, had gotten wind of our acoustic shows at the conventions and sought us out in New York to ask about doing an MTV Unplugged session. In the process of playing all the conventions, we had honed our ability to play the songs acoustically and sing them well. Electric guitars are very forgiving, whereas acoustic instruments have a crispness and clarity that gives you less leeway. The strings are also a heavier gauge, and bending them is challenging at first. We also sang without any effects, though the spaces often created natural ambience and echo. By the end of the long convention tour, the band sounded great. We felt confident about doing Unplugged.
MTV wanted the extra hook of a reunion with the original guys. Peter and Ace were both being represented by an old road manager of ours named George Sewitt. He came in with lots of ridiculous terms and stipulations. We had to throw all of that out before we could get Peter and Ace into a studio in New York to try rehearsing together. George’s terms and demands kept changing, no matter what Peter and Ace had agreed to, but Gene did a great job of riding shotgun and keeping them under control.
Everybody had their guard up when Ace and Peter sauntered into the studio. Eric Singer and Bruce were both there, but clearly Peter and Ace were feeling the most uncomfortable. Everybody in the current band was approaching the situation from a place of strength. We never thought for a second about not having Eric and Bruce there. Peter and Ace were coming into our house, and Eric and Bruce were residents—they had earned their places.
I had seen Peter and Ace only rarely since the early 1980s. I had heard secondhand stories about how much Peter’s playing had deteriorated—how his various bands weren’t very good. But there was an exciting and surreal sense of nostalgia in the room when they entered.
Tommy Thayer had once revealed a perception of the original lineup that he probably shared with a lot of outsiders. “I always thought Ace and Peter were the rock and roll guys,” he had said, “and you and Gene were the business guys.” I had laughed then, and I laughed inside now as they walked into the room. It was true that Ace liked to portray himself as some sort of American Keith Richards, but I knew Tommy was in for a rude awakening. Gene and I had never stopped playing our instruments since the inception of the band. I’d become a much more proficient guitar player after fifteen years of working at it constantly. Ace hadn’t played nearly as much, and Peter hardly at all. When they had played, nobody was there to tell them when it wasn’t good enough.
Peter seemed to have completely lost it. He had become your slightly nutty uncle. He came in with some silly miniature tribal drums that he held in one hand and boinked with a stick. He wanted to hit them while he sang “Beth.” We nixed that idea.
We worked on about four songs with them. The rest of the show would be just me, Gene, Eric, and Bruce.
The studio where we did the MTV Unplugged taping was beautifully staged and lit. An audience of die-hard KISS fans packed the place, having heard the rumors of an original-lineup reunion. The floor was covered with a huge drop cloth printed with the Rock and Roll Over album cover. We had wax figures of us in makeup—swag from the conventions—set up behind us.
Ace kept gabbing on and on into the microphone, which was distracting and clearly about trying to reclaim more of the spotlight. That got fixed when the show and album were mixed.
When the show was aired in August 1995, it proved to be the second most viewed MTV Unplugged in the history of the show. Almost as soon as it aired, speculation about a full-on reunion started to brew. To me, there seemed to be sufficient good feelings to explore the possibility. In fact, I saw it as a logical next step. Also, given the well-documented car accidents and other brushes with death that Ace and Peter seemed to constantly have, the window for a reunion might shut sooner rather than later, as far as I was concerned. One of these guys was sure to kick the bucket, and if there ever would be a time to get back together, it was now.
I also thought a reunion might provide closure. When the band broke apart, we were all young and stupid. Maybe we could get back together having learned from life, and everyone would see the band for the gift it was. Maybe we could see it through to the end and ride off into the sunset together, a band, a team, one for all and all for one, until we called it quits on our own terms.
I started trying to get Gene on board.
He was skeptical, to say the least, and didn’t think it would be the financial juggernaut I was sure it would be. We had just done the conventions and sold tickets for a hundred dollars to a pared-down crowd of a few hundred fans in each city. The idea was to get a smaller number of people at a higher ticket price. We weren’t trying to sell out arenas. And since we didn’t need fifteen buses to move the show from place to place, the overheads were lower than a concert tour. In theory, the conventions could have been quite lucrative. As novel and fun as they were, however, they weren’t very profitable.
Given the way concert guarantees and tour merchandising had evolved—this was the era when concert ticket prices suddenly shot up—it was hard to imagine anything like the conventions competing with the windfall of a reunion tour in makeup. It seemed like a no-brainer to me.
Still, Gene was a hard sell. Even as I crunched numbers on the phone for him, his skepticism was unwavering.
I was 100 percent convinced the timing was right. When we went back to L.A., I called Gene and again went over hypothetical numbers based on a possible attendance of ten thousand people, ticket prices, and merchandising statistics for current tours. One example I used was the Eagles. They had reunited in 1994 and continued touring throughout 1995, playing to millions of people and hitting the Billboard charts with a live album. I had personally witnessed the long lines of people waiting to buy T-shirts and merchandise at one of their shows. It was an unprecedented financial success for a band who had also broken up around the time the original KISS lineup started to splinter. Those guys certainly didn’t reunite out of a newfound love for one another. And, hey, if they could get along . . .
You know how you wet your finger and hold it up to judge the wind? I felt it was now or never—the wind was right. No matter how successful we were in the present, without makeup, I knew there was nothing that could compete with what we had been. The myth. The legend. Once upon a time.
Gene finally agreed to talk with a few talent agencies about the possibility of booking a reunion tour. When we showed up for the meetings, we encountered a perceptible shift in the reception we got. In recent years we had become accustomed to beer nuts and sodas at meetings. Suddenly we were ushered into conference rooms packed with bigwigs. Elaborately catered buffets were laid out in front of us. “Please, gentlemen, help yourselves.”
Hot food?
Hmmm, maybe we really were onto something big. Gene now smelled the coffee. He was in.
Part V
The highway to heartache
51.
Based on what booking agencies told us, it was clear that a reunion tour was going to be way bigger than we could handle on our own. We needed a new manager. We immediately thought of Doc McGhee. When Bon Jovi went to Europe with us in 1984, Doc was managing them. He took them to superstardom. He had also taken Motley Crue to the top. And we had encountered him even earlier, when he managed Pat Travers, who opened some shows for us during the original makeup era. If anyone would get it, Doc would.
We had our first meeting with D
oc at a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. He immediately started riffing—we would do the “Seven Wonders of the World Tour” and kick it off by playing in front of the sphinx and the pyramids in Egypt. He thought big. Ridiculously big, just like we had. Just like Bill Aucoin had.
Clearly, Doc was the right guy. It was a relief to find somebody who not only got it, but was capable of adding to it, of raising the ante. We didn’t take meetings with anyone else.
As the planning started, it became obvious this wasn’t going to be one year out of our lives, but rather a chunk of our lives—years. Doc was talking about everyone putting all their time and effort into a reunion. Even though Gene was mouthing his enthusiasm, I warned Doc, “I’ve seen this movie—I know how it ends.” Doc assured me that he could keep everyone engaged, but I knew the inevitable truth. I liked shooting for the moon, but it was also imperative for Doc to understand and accept reality.
The adrenaline was flowing, and we were all shooting sparks as we came up with endless ideas. One thing Gene kept bugging Doc about was getting KISS on the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines. Apparently, Bruce Springsteen had been on both simultaneously at the time of Born in the U.S.A., and Doc now had marching orders to make it happen for us.
“Gene,” said Doc, “the only way you’re getting on the cover of those magazines is if you shoot the president with your makeup on.”
Doc is one of us.
As a reunion became more and more concrete, we had to break the news to Eric Singer and Bruce Kulick. We scheduled a meeting at Gene’s house. I don’t think those guys thought a reunion was feasible because they had witnessed the state of Peter and Ace’s playing during the MTV Unplugged rehearsal and taping. I realized later that they expected the meeting to be a game-planning session for the release of Carnival of Souls. When we broke the news, they both seemed blindsided.
Face the Music: A Life Exposed Page 30
