KISS’ Tommy Thayer was recently interviewed by 4Sound at the Sweden Rock Festival, where he disputed KISS’ original guitarist, Ace Frehley’s claim that the band couldn’t sell out New York City’s Madison Square Garden during the first leg of the band’s End Of The Road farewell tour.
Frehley reportedly stated on Oklahoma’s KATT Rock 100.5, that it was “a sad commentary” that KISS “didn’t sell out Madison Square Garden” when it played at the iconic venue in late March. “When I was in the band, we used to do three nights [at Madison Square Garden].
Thayer countered by saying [via blabbermouth.net], “This tour, the End Of The Road world tour that we’re doing, we just did 45 shows in North America [to] over half a million fans,” Tommy said. “Most of all of ’em were sold out, including Madison Square Garden [which] was actually sold out. But it’s been a great tour.”
According to Billboard, KISS’s March 27th concert at Madison Square Garden grossed $1.947 million and sold 13,359 tickets. The same venue still holds the record for the band’s highest-grossing engagement ever, when they earned $3.3 million over four shows from July 2th5-28th, 1996 during the Alive/Worldwide tour (this was the band’s first tour since 1979’s Dynasty tour with Frehley and drummer Peter Criss).
17 Responses
KI$$ has “curtained off” a large part of the arenas they have been playing during this “End..” tour. As a result, it has been much easier to sell out (or near sell out) arenas, including MSG. Ace is conceptually right on this one….but I don’t think there would have been much of a jump in attendance had both Ace and Peter been involved in this tour….sadly, I think KI$$ is well past it’s expiration date and even “diehard” fans dedicated to the original lineup, like me, know it.
Well, if they hadn’t curtained off the rear of the stage, you’d have people complaining that Gene/Paul are ripping off their audience by selling seats behind the stage.
As for the tour attendance, I agree with you. To some degree, they’ve over-saturated themselves with their audience by touring the same cities almost every year (or every other year).
All that said, it seems totally ridiculous for Ace or anyone else to say that KISS is dying on the road with mediocre-to-crappy ticket sales, when they’ve grossed $58.7 million on just the first leg of the tour (what exactly is Ace grossing on his “tours”?). If that’s failure, then I want to fail too!
I was at the MSG show back in March. Aside from the seats behind the stage which were not for sale, it sure looked like they were sold out. I personally saw not one empty seat. Of course, I could be wrong since Ace surveils each KISS show with such an eagle eye that he perhaps found the empty seats that I did not…
Seriously, the guy left the band twice by his own volition. No one asked him to leave. In fact, even Ace claims that Paul begged him to stay back in ’82, and he says he left on his own after the 2000 tour. So now they chose to tour without him. It may not be a popular decision for the die-hard fans, but it’s Gene/Paul’s decision to make. If the die-hards don’t want to go to their shows, that’s their choice. The fact that Ace feels SO entitled to come in and out of the band as he pleases – or he’s going to b*tch and bad-mouth the band and have his wife post crazy allegations on Facebook about how Paul/Gene tried to have him assassinated – seems to only confirm all the worst things we’ve all heard about Ace from Paul/Gene.
Tommy Thayer likes the fish and chips over at the coastal seafood place…and he drinks a cool draft beer while talking to a sophisticated blonde woman in her 40s. Kiss is his side gig guys….come on.
Kool-Aid sucks! You couldn’t pay me to drink it!
It’s too late for a decent Kiss bio most likely because all the great actors are too old now to play ’em….And I mean a great Kiss bio…think Straight Outta Compton’s acting, music, and authenticity applied to a Kiss bio…that would be awesome; that wasn’t some mere cartoon with caricatures as the band…that was a real movie. So, all things equal and presupposing the actors are all the right ages my Kiss cast is:
Gene – Michael Douglas…for sure
Paul – Johnny Depp
Peter – Sean Penn
Ace – Keanu Reeves
Bill Aucoin- stay with me, Larry Hagman…
Eric Carr – Ralph Macchio
Vinnie Vincent – Robert Romanos (he was Mike Damone)
Bob Kulick – Howard Hessman
Bruce – Paul Michael Glaser
Eric Singer – Mac Davis
Tommy Thayer–Lorenzo Lamas
Good idea that is – go ahead and sell it t Gene and Paul :-))
If Rich Little was younger, he could portray Eric Singer and/or Tommy Thayer….Rich Little is good at impersonations, just like both Eric and Tommy
Paul Micheal Glaser? He was cool when he sporting blue Adidas sneakers and busting up the bad guys, not to mention that hopped up Torino which was my favorite thing about that show. Sorry if this goes off track of what was supposed to be about Kiss. Liked the 2nd season theme by Tom Scott too.