Kiss and Make-Up (38 page)

At our MTV
Unplugged
appearance. From left to right: Eric Singer, Peter Criss, me, Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley, Bruce Kulick.

Afterward we shook hands and wished each other luck. We didn’t think for a second about reforming the band, mainly because we had to fly to Los Angeles to mix our new album,
Carnival of Souls.

The conventions had reminded me that our fans were among the most passionate in the world. Plenty of other rock stars were KISS fans too, either openly or secretly, and one day I got an idea for a KISS tribute record. I wanted the top stars of the day to play their favorite KISS songs. Paul didn’t get it and didn’t think the record company would go for it. They did—Paul and I went to New York and sold it as a KISS record so that we could get our millions in advance, despite the fact that the band ended up appearing on only one song. Then on my own I started making all the calls. One of the first was to Neil Young, through his manager Elliott Roberts, who must have thought I was on crack. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You want Neil Young to appear on a KISS tribute album?” And I said, “That’s right, why shouldn’t he?” I made the same calls to Madonna’s people, because I wanted her to cover “I Was Made for
Lovin’ You,” and on and on. I worked the phones for about ten hours a day for two months straight, calling everybody in the universe. I lined up Ozzy Osbourne to team up with Stone Temple Pilots on “War Machine.” I got Nine Inch Nails to agree to a cover of “Love Gun.” I had Sir Mix-a-Lot doing a rap version of “Rock and Roll All Nite.” I didn’t care if they were my taste or not, I wanted a stellar lineup, because at the end I’m all about winning the prize. How you get there doesn’t matter.

The conception of the project was beautiful. The execution was trickier, mainly because the record companies got in the way. One of their complaints was that I wasn’t paying the bands very much to do the tracks. My attitude was that it was just for fun, that they should go into the studio and knock something out and see if it worked. Many of the musicians agreed with me.

Lenny Kravitz, for example, did a cover of “Deuce,” and after he sent the tape, he told me he had this fantasy of Stevie Wonder playing harmonica on the track. So I called Stevie. I had met him only once, when Diana Ross and I went to see him at Wembley in London. But he got on the telephone and immediately agreed. He and his assistant came down to Cherokee Studio, and I put on the Lenny Kravitz song, and he said, “Okay, what do you want me to play?” All of a sudden, this voice in my head said,
Oh my God. I am going to be telling Stevie Wonder what to play on his harp.
I improvised a little melody, and he played it back immediately. Finally I said, “You know what? I feel awkward telling Stevie Wonder to do anything. Why don’t you just do what you do? Just let the song go by. I’ll play it twice. Then just put down what you feel.” Within two or three takes, he did it and thank you very much. He is a genius.

The other big coup was getting Garth Brooks. Garth came through Paul, who had met him, and when I first spoke with Garth, he agreed to contribute a song to the record on one condition—that KISS back him up on “Hard Luck Woman.” We flew into Nashville at night, didn’t tell anybody. We had no bodyguards. We carried our own guitars. Garth was a complete gentleman. The whole studio was opened up for us. The song went smoothly. As it turned out, Garth was a huge KISS fan; Queen and KISS were his main influences when
he was growing up. I had never seen the connection before, but that’s because I knew Garth only from his records. When I finally saw him in concert, I understood what he was talking about: he was flying through the air, levitating the drums, shooting off fireworks. It was country KISS.

Even during this project, which was a tremendous amount of fun, the old KISS problems cropped up again. Paul came up with an idea for the cover: a take-off on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s
Presence
, which shows a family sitting together at a table. We wanted to do a similar cover but put the whole family in KISS makeup. So Paul went down to a photo house, and we found a picture of an American family and put everybody’s face in makeup. Somehow word got out, and somebody from Ace’s camp called and told us that we couldn’t use Ace’s makeup. We checked the contracts, and the truth was that we were well within our rights. We owned the Spaceman. But I didn’t want to fight with Ace, so we decided to change the makeup.

We went out of our way to make Ace and Peter feel good about the project. On the inside cover art, a handwritten note to the two of them said, “Dear Ace and Peter, hope you are well. This whole thing couldn’t have happened without you.” It was a very friendly note, very honest. When the album,
KISS My Ass
, came out, it did very well and became another platinum record for us. We played with Garth on the
Tonight Show
and life continued to be stressfree without Ace and Peter.

In the 1990s grunge music was the most popular style of rock and roll. Thanks to bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, it was dominant on the airwaves and on MTV. While we were making
Carnival of Souls
, we made a conscious effort to reinvent ourselves again, this time with swampy guitars and more alienation in the lyrics. The result wasn’t very convincing. We enjoyed making it. We had plenty of interesting times. We learned more about this new style and about our own musical abilities. But as we mixed the record, we realized that that version of KISS had run its course. I called George Sewitt to explore whether Ace and Peter, both of whom were now chemical-free, I was told, were up for a reunion.
Direct communication with Ace and Peter was always difficult. Neither of them had people skills and they never answered their phones. Peter always had a roadie who would be his mouthpiece, and Ace always liked to have a manager or a keeper around him. I told George that I would fly to New York to meet him at our lawyer’s office, although the lawyer wouldn’t be present, just George and me. At that meeting I told him what KISS would be willing to offer Ace for rejoining the band for a tour. I showed him how much ticket prices would run, how many people I thought would show up at the concerts, what the capacity of the concert halls would be, and so on. George studied the figure and then said, “Well, that’s an offer, but how come it’s not bigger?”

“Because,” I said, “this is not a negotiation. This is an offer of employment.” For fifteen years, I explained, we had gotten along fine. We had made KISS into a very big international band, without makeup, without Ace, and without Peter. The only way we would even think about letting the two of them back in was under an employee agreement. We weren’t interested in being partners. If Ace wanted to come on board and become a multimillionaire yet again, we’d be happy to have him. We offered the same to Peter. This was a guaranteed number, I explained. If the tour bombed, Paul and I would be on the hook. If it worked out, we might win big. Either way Ace was guaranteed to be a multimillionaire. George and I parted cordially. I told him he had two or three days to decide. To George’s credit, he saw the big picture and shortly thereafter called me to say, “It’s a deal.”

Garth Brooks is a huge KISS fan. We backed him up on “Hard Luck Woman” and he contributed a song to our tribute album.

Ace and Peter both flew out to Los Angeles and came to my guest house for a band meeting. I told everyone how happy I was to do this, how thrilled I was that we had come to an agreement. Then Ace turned around and reneged. “I don’t care what you give Peter,” he said. “I want more.” Peter was beside himself, because it was the same old stuff again, the two weaker members of the band playing off each other. Our instinct was to flatly say no to this demand, but we didn’t want the deal to dissipate, so we agreed. The next day Ace changed the deal again. “I want an equal split,” he said.

We said, “That’s the end of the deal. Thank you very much, good-bye. It’s been nice knowing you, God bless.” Ace then back-pedaled, explained that he had to have more than Peter, even if it was only slightly more. He kept insisting, and still does, that he was much more important than Peter. This was all about his self-esteem.

This was classic Ace. We always wondered whether he would do the work he said he would do and stand by the agreements he entered. We probably had legal standing to sue Ace, but despite all the dysfunctional elements, we have always looked at KISS as a family. We had once sued Polygram records and won. We had sued Howard Marks, our former business manager, and won. We have yet to lose a suit. But we didn’t want to resort to that with either Ace or Peter.

Once the band did finally get together, once the numbers were set, I personally typed up a list of conditions. First, whether the tour was doing well or miserably, we could pull the plug at any time. Period. Also, all band members were to show up on time. They were to do interviews when asked. There were going to be strenuous
rehearsals. Peter’s drumming had deteriorated to an unacceptable level, and he could not remember his parts. Likewise, Ace’s guitar playing had become a shadow of its former self. Ace’s memory did not serve him well either. Decades of self-abuse had, in my opinion, taken their toll. Tommy Thayer, who had been in a KISS tribute band after Black ’N Blue, knew all of Ace’s solos inside out, and he had to teach them back to Ace. We insisted that there would be a workout regimen with personal trainers every morning, and then arduous rehearsals, with no drugs and no booze. If anyone used, they were gone.

Right away Ace broke almost every rule. Peter, to his credit, showed up on time and worked hard. But Ace didn’t show up on time. He didn’t talk to the press. By the second or third week of rehearsals, I faxed George Sewitt saying, “We are ready to pull the plug. Ace Frehley is not a team player.” George Sewitt suggested we have a heart-to-heart with Ace. So Paul, Ace, and I met at the Sunset Marquis, about a month into rehearsals. Ace was full of excuses: his dog was sick, he was having trouble with his family, the government was hassling him about taxes. But he agreed to settle down.

We were without a manager at that point, but we needed one: it became clear that this tour was going to be much bigger in scope than we had expected. I called up ICM, CAA, and the major booking agencies to test the waters, to see what percentage we could get from a booking agency. I explained that KISS was reuniting and that we were interested in having a manager come on board, but that we were not interested in paying a percentage of gross, only net. We had come too far along in this business. We knew too much. Nobody was going to get a percentage of the gross before we paid expenses. They could participate after we paid all the expenses, but there was no way they would make more money than we would.

At some point in the search for a manager, I suggested Doc McGee. We had given Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi their first tours, and Doc had managed them both. We made him an offer, stressing that the terms weren’t really flexible. He accepted.

Right away Doc’s involvement paid dividends. While talking to an agent at CAA, he came up with this idea that we should appear
on the Grammy Awards: not perform, not even say a word, just appear in full makeup and costumes next to Tupac Shakur. “If you do that,” Doc said, “then people will know the band is back together.” That’s exactly what we did. There was no press, no nothing. We sidled right up to Tupac, who was going to present an award. By that point the word had leaked. A few minutes before, we had passed by the backstage green room, where all the stars hang out and wait for their turn to get up in front of the microphone. Everyone was there, from Gloria Estefan to Luther Vandross. As we passed by the green room, all the stars went into shock. “Hey, look!” someone said. Then the whole green room erupted with applause. Once we saw how these celebrities reacted, without any prompting, then we knew this was real. Before a single ticket was sold, before a single review was written, we knew it was the right time. The planets had lined up.