Chart entered : 30 June 1979
Chart peak : 50
Number of hits : 13
Little cracks were starting to appear in our resistance to American rock by now and this gave a band we'd mostly cold-shouldered a toehold in our charts.
The band had its beginnings in New York City in 1970 when Eugene Klein ( originally Chaim Witz ) , the son of Holocaust survivors and born in Israel in 1949 helped found a band called Rainbow in which he would be the bassist. One of his bandmates suggested adding rhythm guitarist Stanley Elsen ( born Manhattan 1952 ) to the line up. Stanley also had a Jewish background. Shortly after that the band discovered there was another group called Rainbow around and changed their name to Wicked Lester. Although they only managed to play two live gigs the band did record a demo tape and Epic signed them on the condition they changed lead guitarist. The band laboured through some difficult sessions with the new guy in 1972 only for Epic to refuse to release the album
Gene ( Simmonds as he now styled himself ) and "Paul" Stanley decided to start a new band . They saw an advert in Rolling Stone from a drummer looking for a new band and invited him along. Peter Criss ( originally George Criscuola ) was also from New York but from an Italian background. He was born in 1945 and was equally adept at jazz or rock. In 1970 he found himself in a band called Chelsea. They were signed to Decca and released one eponymous album . It's hard to classify , ranging from moody pomp rock in a Moody Blues or Doors vein to the country rock of The Band and was perhaps difficult to market. The band imploded during sessions for a never completed second album and Peter's faction called themselves Lips. They never really got off the ground hence Peter's ad.
In January 1973 they completed the line up with lead guitarist Paul "Ace" Frehley. He was born in New York in 1951 from Dutch immigrant stock. He had been in a folk / pyschedelic outfit called Molimo in the early seventies that hadn't got anywhere. Soon after they came up with the name Kiss. The hardheaded and famously abstemious ( apart from sex ) Gene and Paul already had the blueprint for the band - straight ahead hard rock and stage theatrics influenced by the glam rock acts. When Bill Aucoin offered to be their manager they said yes if he got them a deal within a fortnight. And so , highly incongruously, Kiss were signed up to premier disco label Casablanca.
Their eponymous debut LP came out in early 1974, an amiable collection of Stones-y boogie tunes of no great distinction although the closer "Black Diamonds" is pretty good. The album got to number 87 and second single "Kissin Time" reached number 83 in the US , a disappointing return after some intensive touring. They now had stage personas underlined by their facial make-up , the Star Child ( Paul ), the Demon ( Gene ) , the Spaceman ( Ace ) and the Cat ( Peter ).
The second album "Hotter Than Hell" followed in October the same year and sounded sludgy and uninspired with only "Goin Blind" a power ballad drumming up some odd pathos for an unlikely relationship between a 93 year old man and a 16 year old girl standing out from the pack. The sole single , the instantly forgettable "Let Me Go, Rock And Roll" didn't chart, and with Casablanca experiencing severe cashflow problems the album could only limp its way to number 100.
Still their reputation as a live act was growing with Gene's blood splitting and fire eating, Ace's exploding guitars and Peter's levitating drums attracting some of Alice Cooper's old audience. Despite this Casablanca's Neil Bogart pulled them off tour and demanded they record a third album, this time with him at the helm. The band managed to come up with the barely 30 minute long "Dressed To Kill" in March 1975. It's as superficial as you'd expect but Bogart's shiny production edged them a bit closer to glam rock ( particularly Slade ) and that seemed to do the trick commercially with both the album ( number 32 ) and empty but effective single "Rock And Roll All Nite " ( number 68 ) becoming their biggest hits to date.
With their sales still small for the amount of concert tickets they were shifting, the obvious next move was to release a live album. Casablanca probably couldn't afford any more studio time having pressed millions of copies of a Johnny Carson comedy LP that nobody wanted; perhaps he was only hilarious if you were out of your head on coke, By contrast sales of "Alive! " a 16 track double which came out in September 1975 exceeded all expectations and the company lived to fight another day. The album reached number 9 in the charts and the single, a live version of "Rock And Roll All Nite" got to number 12. "Alive!" even made a showing in our charts at number 49.
The band had clearly moved up a league and hired Alice Cooper 's producer Bob Ezrin for their next album "Destroyer", released in March 1976 . They also brought in some outside help with their songwriting such as Kim Fowley and Mark Anthony. "Destroyer" has a bigger sound than its predecessors more suitable for the arenas they were playing. With Ezrin on board the Alice Cooper influence is even more evident especially on "God of Thunder" which, with its yelling children in the background, sounds like a tribute to him. the album got to number 11 and spawned three US hit singles. "Shout It Out Loud" and "Flaming Youth" both utterly hollow hard rock anthems reached thirty-one and seventy-four respectively. Then the atypical "Beth" ,a touching Manilow-esque piano ballad addressed to a neglected partner co-written and sung by Peter, reached number 7, their highest ever chart position. Gene and Paul hated the song and none of the band actually play on it but it did give the album a significant sales boost. "Destroyer" reached number 22 in the UK.
With their Jewish work ethic the band had another album out by the end of 1976. "Rock And Roll Over" , produced by Eddie Kramer broke no new ground apart from Paul's folksy ballad "Hard Luck Woman" which he originally intended to offer to Rod Stewart but was kept and given to Peter to sing. It gave them another Top 20 hit in the US. Elsewhere the album was well produced, tight hard rock and the follow up single Gene's "Calling Dr Love" a meat and potatoes rocker did almost as well. the album peaked at 11 in the States but didn't chart here.
Kiss were rapidly becoming one of the biggest bands in America with a wide range of merchandise available including comic books , make up kits, dolls, trading cards and Halloween masks. The group ploughed on with "Love Gun" , released in June 1977, another shortish set at just under 33 minutes, and the inclusion of a throwaway cover of "And Then She Kissed Me" suggests inspiration was running a bit dry although the other tracks are at least up to standard. The singles were Gene's reprehensible "Christine Sixteen" - "she's been around but she's young and clean " - which unfortunately got to 25 in the US charts and Paul's title track , a slick piece of light metal which reached number 55. The album got to number 4 in the US though again it failed to chart here.
For those fans with deep pockets there was the self-explanatory Alive II double LP later that year which had five new studio tracks including the Ace-written single "Rocket Ride " , one of their heavier offerings with a killer riff which made number 39 in the US charts. The album got to number 7 in the US and 60 over here. Just months later there was a compilation LP "Double Platinum" which reached number 22. Some of the inclusions had been re-mixed most notably "Strutter" from the first LP which made number 89 in the singles chart as "Strutter 78".
Now the band seriously began to over-reach themselves. They agreed to a TV film "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park" in which they played super heroes. In the finished product they looked like chumps who couldn't act; the long periods of down time also gave Peter and Ace more opportunity to indulge in substance abuse. For years afterwards Kiss forbade anyone to mention it in their presence.
In terms of recorded product they came up with the idea of releasing four self-titled solo albums on the same day in September 1978 , an act of hubris still unmatched. They all charted between 22 ( Gene ) and 43 ( Peter ) although Ace's turned out the best seller through spawning a Top 20 single with a routine cover of Hello's "New York Groove". None of the other singles charted in the U.S. although Gene reached 41 here with the Mott the Hoople -ish glam tune "Radioactive" in a rare example of a solo project spawning a hit before the parent band charted.
That wasn't long off though. The band reconvened for the next album without Peter who'd injured his hand in a car accident ; Gene and Paul were having concerns about his deteriorating playing before that happened. For most of the album, including this single he was replaced by session man Anton Fig who'd played on Ace's solo album.
"I Was Made For Loving You" was written by Paul with help from Desmond Child and Vincent Ponzia. Paul says it was a conscious effort to try and write a hit disco song. Ponzia provides the Giorgio Moroder synthesiser pulse that the song rests on , Fig stays on the beat and Paul, always the best melodic songwriter in the band comes up with the lover man lyrics and catchy tune. The result is not far from Abba's contemporary Voulez-Vous and set the template for Blondie's Call Me and ZZ Top's mid-eighties success. While we were a bit laggardly in recognising its merits it was a monster hit all round the world reaching 11 in the States , 1 in Canada, New Zealand , Belgium and Holland and 2 in Australia, France and Germany. And yet , perhaps inevitably, many diehard Kiss fans hate it, seeing it as the start of the rot that would see them struggling to maintain their position rather than a last triumph before rock and roll excess took its toll on band solidarity.
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