“The only way for Gene and Paul to win was to be as zany and nutty as I was.” Ace Frehley goes behind the scenes of rock's greatest TV interview — when Tom Snyder interviewed Kiss in 1979
“Kiss had a weird chemistry back then,” the Space Ace says. “Which is one of the reasons that group worked”
At one time, Ace Frehley was a manifestation, if not an outright snapshot, of rock and roll excess. That came in the form of balls-to-the-wall, Les Paul–into-a-Marshall badassery and a party-hearty lifestyle.
Things are different now, of course. Frehley is coming up on 18 years of sobriety. But in his early years with Kiss, the electric guitar player was anything but a teetotaler. “People ask me questions about stuff I did 40 or 50 years ago,” he tells Guitar Player. “They expect me to have total recall.”
Given his drug and alcohol intake, that's hardly possible. “I make stuff up sometimes because I don’t remember,” he admits. “I had no idea these songs would have this type of longevity, or that I’d go on to be a part of one of the biggest groups in the world.”
Spaced-out as Frehley was in the 1970 and early ’80s, he insists it was all business when he sauntered into the studio. “For me, it was about going into the studio and getting the work done — and then I’d go party," he cackles. "I’d go hit Studio 54. That’s where the action was."
“Even when I performed with Kiss, I’d have a couple of drinks, maybe a couple of lines of blow, but the heavy partying happened after the show. I had pride. I wanted to be able to play the solos the way the kids heard them on the record. I didn’t want to disappoint people. I saved the partying for after the show.”
If the part about pre-show drinks and blow sounds contradictory, that’s because it is. And it's easy to see Frehley made no bones about indulging his habits even when the band were making an important TV appearance. For evidence, let's look back to Kiss’s ’79 appearance on The Tomorrow Show, with host Tom Snyder.
Snyder was, at the time, one of the most-watched talk show hosts in late-night TV. He was known for bringing on important and controversial guests, and had hosted everyone from John Lennon and Yoko Ono to philosopher Ayn Rand.
Kiss's appearance on The Tomorrow Show was timed for Halloween, for obvious reasons. Snyder was providing the four members — Ace, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss — a chance to discuss their rise and worldwide success. But while Simmons and Stanley were keen to follow the script, it was clear almost from the beginning that Ace was going off the rails, making wisecracks and telling jokes, often at the band's expense.
“I was nervous as hell,” he explains. “I think I drank half a pint of vodka, and then I did some blow to wake up.”
That sounds like a lot of drugs, but for Frehley it was business as usual. “Yeah… it was crazy,” he shrugs. “But I was crazy back then. Anything went when I was in my 20s. I mean… everybody was doing that shit.”
Watching Snyder’s interview with Kiss, one can’t help but laugh, as much for Ace as for Stanley's and Simmons' pained reactions. Even before the interview was over, it was obvious Ace had stolen the show. “When I was on, nobody was funnier than me,” Frehley insists.
“Paul and Gene would try to compete with me but always fail,” he says. “If you look at the old interviews, even when I was loaded and buzzed, once I got into the groove, you couldn’t top me. Gene would try and throw a line in there. I remember Gene tried to tell a joke to Tom Snyder, but he got completely ignored.”
With Frehley doing everything from drunkenly howling to playing with teddy bears and making a lewd joke about being a plumber, one can understand why Snyder fixated on him.
“The plumber thing came completely out of the blue,” he says. “I didn’t plan that; it’s just a line that I came up with. Why this shit flies into my head… I have no idea. It’s probably all the substances I was doing.”
He laughs, but he’s serious. Funny as Frehley’s antics were, it was apparent that Simmons and Stanley weren’t pleased with their lead guitarist's behavior. “Kiss had a weird chemistry back then,” Frehley says. “We had a weird dynamic, which is one of the reasons that group worked.”
Still, Frehley asserts that Kiss thrived on that sort of push/pull. “The four of us were different,” he explains. “Somehow, someway, we got together. That energy… sometimes we’d argue, but when we got together, most of the time, it worked.”
What’s more, Frehley offers a counterpoint to the long-running theory that Simmons and Stanley were furious over his behavior on Snyder's program. “I watched it about six months ago,” he says. “I noticed that toward the end of the video, Paul and Gene were put off by me going off on crazy tangents, but at the end they started joining in with my insanity.”
“It might have been because they couldn’t win,” he adds, with a laugh. “Tom was in love with me. He was so surprised that I was such a maniac and a funny guy. The only way for Gene and Paul to win was to be as zany and nutty as I was; it helped. But earlier in the interview, yeah… they were resistant. It looked awkward.”
Less than a year after Kiss’s appearance on The Tomorrow Show, Criss was out of the band. Two years later, Frehley quit, too. But Frehley doesn’t see the infamous Snyder appearance as a precursor to any of that.
“That’s not necessarily true,” he says. “I knew I was going to leave Kiss. I quit, though I was never fired. Peter was fired, but I never was. I quit Kiss because I realized I was more creative away from those guys. And with the show, I think that was just an example of how different our four personalities were.”
The end of Kiss’s golden era and its excess are in many ways defined by their appearance on Snyder's show. As for how Frehley looks back on that era?
“You take everybody’s personalities for what they were,” he says. “That’s who we were at the time.”
“That evolved over time,” he concludes. “You know, Paul isn’t the same as he was back then as he is now… or maybe he is. But I know I’ve changed a lot, though I’m still just as funny as I was back then — even if I don’t get loaded anymore. That’s for sure.”
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Andrew Daly is an iced-coffee-addicted, oddball Telecaster-playing, alfredo pasta-loving journalist from Long Island, NY, who, in addition to being a contributing writer for Guitar World, scribes for Rock Candy, Bass Player, Total Guitar, and Classic Rock History. Andrew has interviewed favorites like Ace Frehley, Johnny Marr, Vito Bratta, Bruce Kulick, Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Rich Robinson, and Paul Stanley, while his all-time favorite (rhythm player), Keith Richards, continues to elude him.