Kiss and Make-Up (27 page)

Ah, it’s good to be king.

This was always a problem, but in 1979 the stakes were much higher. By that time KISS was a big fat bloated beast. We each had our own security guard. Culturally the band reached its peak around 1979. We topped the Gallup poll as top rock band three years in a row, from 1977 to 1979. Number two was the Beatles, then the Bee Gees, then Led Zeppelin. We were so much a part of the cultural landscape, so much a part of what people thought of when they thought about rock and roll, it was hard to imagine being any bigger.

The bodyguards served us all in different ways. I liked it because I could get twice as many phone numbers from girls, and they were certainly handy during a concert, when I would say, “Fourteen-three,” which meant “After the show bring me the girl in the fourteenth seat, third row.” For me, it was all about skirt chasing. I didn’t need them as actual security: I’m six foot two.

For the Dynasty tour in 1979, I wanted to make up with bombast what we had clearly started lacking in musical precision. We made the stage much bigger, with a design Paul brought in. We had elevator lifts that brought us up from under the stage, which everyone from Michael Jackson to Jon Bon Jovi to Garth Brooks would do later. We also had a lighting system that looked like it came out of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
It could move up and down. The drums levitated higher than they ever had. We even had the front of the stage disconnect and lift the band over the heads of the people in the front rows.

To up the stakes even more, I got the bright idea of having a rig built to fly me up to the light system fifty-five feet above the ground. Every night, I would throw up the blood that had been hidden in my mouth during the previous blackout, stand there erect and proud, and wait for the audience to give me my due. I would demand it. And although at that point I felt powerful, the feeling would quickly dissipate as I was flying straight up through the air at six feet a second. I was scared stiff every night and I kept thinking
to myself every time I flew up there in the dark,
What an idiot I was to have gotten myself into this mess.

My relationship with Cher had changed my romantic life. It made me reconsider some of the basic things I had assumed about women. It also changed my financial life. In some ways, I guess, it forced me to grow up. Before Cher I had never lived with anyone. Even in 1979, when we were on top of the world, I was paying two hundred dollars a month rent in New York City, and that was my full exposure financially. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t know how to drive and didn’t want to learn. I was completely happy and was amassing a nice fortune, because I wasn’t spending any money. I hardly ever went shopping and had no real girlfriends to throw money at. Every once in a while I’d splurge and ask Tavern on the Green to send food up to my apartment, but that was it.

While I was with Cher, though, I got used to spending more money. In fact, all of us had more expenses, whether they were real expenses, like families or girlfriends, or childish expenses, like cars. So for creative and financial reasons alike, we needed a hit.

KISS was everywhere in the 1970s.
(photo credit 11.1)

By the time of the
Dynasty
recording sessions, Paul was specifically trying to write a hit single—and he did. He came up with one with a guy named Desmond Child. Paul’s song, “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” dovetailed nicely with what Casablanca wanted; they were hinting more strongly than ever that they wanted to have a single from KISS. Paul embraced this idea, and I fought it slightly, although not out of any sense of grand principle. I would sit down and try to work with Vinnie Poncia, who had come from a different school of thought, but who I liked. He had produced Ringo Starr, and he was a pop singles guy. “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” had a certain driving force and a catchy melody. I didn’t really see it. Paul knew it was a hit song, but it was Vinnie Poncia who pushed for us to record it.

At the same time, the whole band was being pulled apart. The biggest problem was Peter, who was by this point becoming unhealthy, in part because of the chemicals, and certainly because he wasn’t allowed to play drums. We had always been able to placate him before, but this time, under even more pressure, he became harder to control. We hadn’t been away very long, only a year really, and fans had gotten plenty of music in that stretch—
Alive II, Double Platinum
, and all four solo albums, all of them selling platinum—but the record label was accustomed to having two KISS records each and every year, because of the blistering pace that we had set through the mid-1970s.

As we got ready to finish
Dynasty
, Bill Aucoin alerted us to the idea of a “Return of KISS” campaign and told us that we were going in for a cover photo shoot with Scavullo, the big fashion photographer. He put us in straitjackets; we got the photos done, and they looked great. A few days later we did a video session for a series of television commercials keyed to the same theme. That session went less smoothly. The director insisted on take after take, and the day was getting longer. Peter was especially unhappy with the way it was going, so he ran into the bathroom and started to complain. Bill Aucoin tried to calm Peter down. Peter then got so upset, either with himself or with the way things were going—and I assume that the chemicals in his system had something to do with it—that he took
his fist and smashed it into a glass case so hard that a shard went right through his hand. He had to be taken to a hospital and stitched up. Now there was a question of whether there was even going to be a tour, whether Peter’s damaged tendons would allow him to use his right hand at all.

We were horrified. Our initial thought right away was for Peter’s safety, because we lived with him and cared about him, no matter the consistent torture he put us through. But afterward, when the shock of the accident wore off, Paul and I got angry. “Oh, my God,” we would say, “what an idiot.” Can you imagine being so upset at anything that you’d drive your fist through a glass case? The whole James Dean lifestyle had never appealed to me. Because after that guy dies in a car crash, I’m going to sleep with his girlfriend.

Dynasty
was released, and immediately “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” went to the top of the charts. It was huge, the biggest single we’d ever had worldwide. To this day it is one of only two gold singles released by KISS. (The other one is “Beth.”) But when you have a hit single, you also have pressure to follow it up with more singles and even more aggressive touring. A year before, the four of us had been feeling our way through our own lives, getting a little breathing room. Now here we were, right back in the thick of things.

The tour was huge, and both Ace and Peter were so miserable they turned on each other and, for a moment, actually swung at each other. They both cried and fell into each other’s arms afterward.

It was 1980—time for another album. Once we started working on
Unmasked
, it was clear that Peter’s chemical problems had become major and that he needed some serious help. But he couldn’t get that help within the context of the band. There was too much temptation, too many distractions, and he was causing all of us too much stress.

We had a discussion with Vinnie Poncia, and he said, “Look, I don’t want to use Peter on
Unmasked.
I want to use Anton Fig.” Anton, who later became the drummer for David Letterman’s latenight
band, was a friend of Ace’s, and he had appeared on Ace’s solo album. He was also in a band called Spider that was managed by Bill Aucoin. Using Anton instead of Peter played into Ace’s hands, because it made him feel more in control. This was the kind of balancing act that Paul and I were used to—one year making Peter feel better about himself, the next year doing the same for Ace.

The decision to use a different drummer on the album was just the first step in dealing with Peter. We honestly weren’t sure what to do with him. He had been with the band since we started, and KISS was an extremely loyal organization. Toward the end of the recording sessions, Poncia asked him to come in and add some harmonies on selected songs. That didn’t go very well either. After the album came out, we were getting ready to go on tour, and Bill Aucoin came by to talk. “Look,” he said, “you guys have a tour to do. I don’t want to get another drummer. Give Peter another chance.” Peter had talked with Bill and Ace, and they agreed that he needed another chance. He wanted to come in and show how different he was.

So we set up a meeting at SIR Rehearsal Studios in New York, and at the appointed time Peter appeared, carrying a music stand—the kind that symphony orchestra players have, with a clip for the sheet music. He looked very serious and intense. Peter couldn’t read or write music, not then and not now. None of us could. We were a self-taught rock band. But by that time he was so delusional that he thought if he had a music stand, he could convince us that he had changed. I’m surprised he didn’t bring a baton. “You guys,” he said, “I’ve completely changed my life around. I’ve been studying drums and music for the past six months, and I can read music. I’m completely better.”

I looked at the music sheets incredulously and then at him. “Can you read and write music, Peter?”

“Sure,” he said, then mumbled something, but I couldn’t make head or tail of it. Then we started playing, and he was worse than ever. So we had a meeting afterward, and we said, “Peter is unhealthy. He’s going to kill himself. He’s got to leave the band and get some help.” So, after much deliberation, everybody, including Ace, voted him out of the band. To the press we used the traditional
rock-band excuses: creative differences, desire to begin a solo career, and so on. We never said that Peter was thrown out of the band because he was a drug addict. We wouldn’t have done that to him, to the fans, or to ourselves.