“I should have been dead.” Ace Frehley on the stunt that nearly killed him but instead inspired a Kiss classic

From a casino burning down to channeling "The James Bond Theme" at sound check — rock and rollers have taken inspiration from some of the strangest things.

But as Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gary Rossington once said, “The more wild experiences you have, the better songs you can write.” And for former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley, a brush with death provided the genesis for one of the glam rocker’s biggest hits.

Looking back at his event-filled Kiss days during a new MusicRadar interview, Frehley first pointed out how his platform boots — a quintessential part of his stage outfit — led to a series of mishaps that would leave him worse for wear.

“I used to fall a lot in those boots,” the guitarist relays. “A lot of times. Paul would cover for me by walking over to me like it was part of the show. He made it look like it was choreography or something.

“If nobody realized I’d fallen, I play on my knees and get back up. It was just part of the show!”

Playing into this, the band decided Frehley would drop to his knees for the solo at the end of "Black Diamond," from the group's self-titled 1974 debut. But doing was the precursor to a series of injuries he would incur while gigging with Kiss.

“I screwed my knees up doing that… the weight of the Les Paul really killed them,” he reflects. “During the Reunion Tour, I ended up chipping a bone in my knee, and the doctor said, ‘Listen, you gotta stop doing that or you’ll end up in a wheelchair.’”

As the old saying goes, the show must go on, and the group devised a compromise. “We ended up putting a pad under the carpet where I’d fall," Frehley explains. "I tried to hit it. If you look at old videos, you can see that I’d go down one knee at a time.”

But that injury was tame compared to others involving his electric guitar. The instrument was designed to emit smoke from the pickups cavity at a crucial point in the show. At one point it even had a rocket launcher.

“I burned my leg real bad once back in the ‘70s," Ace says: "A smoke bomb ignited too early inside the cavity of the guitar, and it melted the asbestos—which our f**king costumes were made from—to my thigh,” he says.

Before then he'd accidentally shot a rocket at bass player Gene Simmons when his prop guitar misfired. "It almost f**king hit him,” he laughs.

While those injuries were more painful than life-threatening, one incident nearly had far more fatal consequences. While playing a show in Lakeland, Florida in 1976, Frehley was electrocuted after a grounding issue unknowingly left a staircase rail that was part of the band’s stage setup, electrically charged.

“I should have been dead that night,” he tells MR. “The fact that I got electrocuted and didn’t fall forward was a godsend. There must have been angels pushing me back.

“I was standing on top of four Marshall cabinets on a staircase when I got shocked. I had a heavy Les Paul around my neck, and my body should have fallen forward. I would have broken by neck, but I fell back, and the road crew dragged me back off of the staircase.”

Whether he has angels or his luck to thank matters not; Frehley survived and saw out the gig, despite having “no feeling in my hands for five to 10 minutes”.

“I maybe had feeling in half of my fingers by the time it was done. It was crazy shit, man, but I did get 'Shock Me' out of it," he says, referring to his track from 1977's Love Gun. "So I guess it wasn’t all for nothing.”

The song helped the band score their first top-five album on the Billboard 200. Nearly being zapped to death by his own stage was a small price to pay.

It was also the first Kiss song to feature Frehley as the main vocalist.

“I hope the fans realise that I’m for real,” Ace continues,. “All the stuff I’ve done was not contrived or remotely premeditated. It was always spontaneous. With my guitar work, how I wrote songs, and how I play live: None of that spontaneity has changed.

“That makes things magical. You can do the same thing over and over again if you want, but eventually, it’s gonna get stale. But if you come out with something that’s magic, man, that’s the one. My career is a testament to that.”

When Love Gun dropped, few American rock bands could rival Kiss' popularity. Two years later, they sat down with Tom Snyder for a now-iconic interview, of which the guitarist has recently dished the dirt.

He's also admitted he should have better honed his guitar playing skills throughout his career, while he is said to “still get excited like a little kid, like a true rock fan,” at 72 years old.

Frehley released his aptly titled eighth solo album, 10,000 Volts last year, which is set to be quickly followed up by the third installment in his Origins series of records later this year.