Katherine Turman of The Village Voice took a ride with original KISS guitarist, Ace Frehely, around his old Bronx neighborhood. Excerpts from the piece appear below.
Oh KISS’ current guitar player, Tommy Thayer, who also happens to wears Ace’s Spaceman makeup when performing:
“I could sense he always wanted to be me. He used to be in a KISS cover band [L.A.’s Cold Gin],” Frehley says. “He didn’t do anything; he was hired by Paul and Gene to put on my makeup and costume and play my guitar solos — a business deal.
Look, if he wouldn’t have done it, they would have hired somebody else. I walked out on the band; I quit. What they really should have done is, if they wanted to dress up a guy to play lead guitar, they should have come up with different makeup like they did with [other Ace replacements] Eric Carr and Vinnie Vincent. That’s what the fans are upset about.”
Guitarist/singer and former Runaway Lita Ford concurs, though she observes, “I always thought that anyone could hide behind Kiss’s makeup. The band could grow old and no one could see through the makeup: a brilliant idea. Tommy Thayer is one hell of a nice guy but he is not Ace Frehley and shouldn’t be in Ace’s shoes. There is only one Ace!”
Well, technically, now there are two, and Thayer is currently pimping a guitar (created with Epiphone) called the Space Man. “I mean, how big are the balls on this guy?” snorts Frehley. “But I don’t really want to talk about Tommy Thayer,” he adds, half-apologetically. “Let’s talk about me.”
Discussing his former bandmate, Gene Simmons:
“The press made out that we hated each other, which wasn’t true. I called Gene just a few months ago when I was mixing my record. I was driving up to L.A., and after five minutes of talking, he started bringing up stuff that happened in the ’70s, when we used to drive around in station wagons. We were on the phone for almost half an hour,” he recalls. “He wouldn’t let me off the phone. There’s all this rivalry that the press tries to draw out of us, to have a dialogue going on.”
Talking about who possibly invented the two-handed tapping technique when playing guitar:
Frehely doesn’t know if he or Eddie Van Halen did it first. He does remember, though, that “Gene discovered Van Halen. He wanted to produce their first album, and we told him ‘No.’ Gene was always going off half-cocked, trying to do more things … like he still does today.” He added, “If Kiss would stop fooling around with football teams and restaurants, they might put out a better record next time.” Despite a few barbs, it’s clear Frehley, still retains a fondness for Simmons — if akin to the true brotherly love-hate you might find in the Kinks or Oasis.
Read the entire at The Village Voice.
Ace Frehley’s latest album Space Invader was released on August 19th and debuted at number nine on the Billboard Top 200 chart.
source: blogs.villagevoice.com
93 Responses
Nobody can buy the kind of cool Ace has, and Gene and Paul know it. Ace was the coolest member of Kiss. He influenced more musicians than Gene and Paul by far. No matter what anyone says about Ace, he was a drunk, he’s a pain to work with, blah blah blah, the bottom line is the man wrote Parasite. My point is he has more magic in one bent guitar string than anyone else who played or plays guitar in Kiss and everyone here knows it. I once heard a story from the reunion tour from one of their roadies. Ace was arguing with Gene and Paul backstage. At one point Ace pointed toward the arena and exclaimed “Those seats are filled because of ME!”, which shut up Gene and Paul immediately. Whether the story is true or not, the fact remains that that IS the reason.
Its a shame Ace can’t write good songs like parasite anymore, all the talent he had is long gone, same goes for Paul and Gene. It’s sad to see my music heroes fall so far down.
True. It is a fact that the tours have been a tad smaller every time around, even thouhg they might have had an average attendance of 10 to 15k this time look at the stages of these sheds and compare them to the stage size on former, especially reunion tours, they could not even enter via the spider rig and Gene couldn’t fly up to the rig after spitting blood in many venues this time. Video footage as proof is all over the net to be found. And remember, these are the venues they can fill co!!-headlining, so everyone telling me I am only bashing the current lineup for whatever reason (I’d still like Kiss to come to my town) just do not want to accept the facts and rather believe what they are led to believe. I guarantee, the moment that Ace would come back, they could embark on a worldwide arena tour again even if the space suit would have to be a bit larger to carry the weight he has put on recently (btw remember Gene being rather “big” on the Psycho Circus Tour, did that stop them or people from buying tickets?!). It is good to have them around still touring and putting out music but one also has to face the facts.
The truth is kiss cant make it without makeup nowadays the first time I saw kiss was I believe was 76 for the alive tour and they blew my mind but I think it was my brothets 70 camaro Z28 WITH 488s and a rockcrusher trans that blew my mind bit
I can see how the guitar endorsement Tommy is doing would bother Ace. I remember seeing an ad in Guitar World years ago with Tommy promoting his signature amp for Hughes & Kettner and the amp itself had the outline of Ace’s makeup on it with Tommy’s name underneath it. I remember seeing that and actually getting mad. There was Tommy, in full costume and makeup, standing in front of the amp holding the Les Paul and giving the “thumbs up”. I understand bands have to have endorsements but having the makeup outlined on the amp and calling his guitar line “The Space Man” is going too far. But Tommy is just doing the job he was hired for, that’s not a secret. I do like hearing that Ace and Gene are talking. It seems like the original four will never get back together, there’s just too much bad blood. Peter stated onTMS how those guys didn’t even reach out to him when he was battling cancer. On a human level, they should have let whatever BS that they felt towards him go or at least have suspended it long enough to check in with the guy to see how he was doing and lend him support and tell him they were pulling for him. My only hope is that the animosity between them is finally put to rest one day. Kiss is a business more than a band and Ace and Peter know that. Ace and Peter will always be my favorite original band members with Ace being my favorite of all if them. He’s in a much better place now. He’s healthy, he’s sober, he’s playing better than ever and he just released a killer new album. Looking back, if he had patented and had copyrighted the makeup, none of what’s going on with Kiss now would be happening. But who thinks to do something like that except someone like Paul and Gene?
I am not a big fan of corn nuts. I think they smell.
Don’t tell Monty Colvin that! He loves those things!
So now Ace invented tapping???? Please. Even Eddie Van Halen cops to seeing Harvey Mandel of Canned Heat doing it in the late ’60’s, early ’70’s, and also cites Jimmy Page (from ’71) as a source of inspiration. Ace’s playing borrows heavily from Page as well, and in all the times I’ve seen Ace live (10, maybe?) I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do the pure tapping that EVH does, but rather tap the string with the pick, so… C’mon Ace. It’s getting a little pathetic now. Did you invent the internet too?
Thank you. I thought that statement was ridiculous also.
Steve Hackett of Genesis was doing tapping around the late 60′-early 70’s to. I’ve seen video footage of him playing a solo and using the edge of his pick to do a wide spread tapping/hammer on run on the fretboard similar to what Eddie Van Halen went on to do.
One must admit that Ace started incorporating the tapping into his solo at the end of ‘Shock Me’ about the same time Gene had met Van Halen, i.e. the Love Gun tour (Alive II). Ace certainly was probably as impressed by Eddie’s chops as everyone else a year later or so.