On January 30, 1973 Kiss performed their first concert at a seedy hole in the wall in Queens, New York called Coventry. Tickets were a few bucks and they were lucky if a few people showed up. Inside this ratty club Kiss first came alive on stage. Their mission was simple – they wanted to conquer the world. In 2008, on the 35th anniversary of that momentous night, Classic Rock looked back at 1973, the historic first year in Kisstory…
Rising from the ashes of Wicked Lester, singer Paul Stanley and bassist Gene Simmons formulated ideas for a group that would combine the musical muscle of Slade, Humble Pie and The Who with the theatrics of Alice Cooper and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Placing a ‘Musicians Wanted’ ad in the August 31, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone magazine (‘EXPD. ROCK & roll drummer looking for orig. grp. doing soft & hard music’), drummer Peter Criss was the first to join.
Peter Criss: Gene called me while I was having a wild party at my house and drinking Mateus wine, and he gave me this whole spiel, “Do I dress good? Is my hair long?” I had the newest velvets and satins because I had just gotten back from my honeymoon in England and Spain. So I went down to Electric Lady Studios. I was wearing one of my coolest outfits, gold satin pants and turquoise boots – I looked like Jimi Hendrix’s brother. I pass by these two guys leaning against a car wearing their mod shirts. I didn’t even give them a second look. I went inside and asked for a Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, and the guy said they were waiting outside. I look out the window and think, “Nah, that can’t be them!” These are the guys who asked me if I was a wild dresser? They looked like bums.
Paul Stanley: Peter asked us to come see him play with a band he was playing with at the King’s Lounge. He really had that sense that he was playing Madison Square Garden rather than a small dive in Brooklyn. I’m not sure Peter was initially what we were looking for in terms of style. But we wound up adapting our writing and our sound to work more with his style.
Lydia Criss (Peter Criss’ then-wife): Peter, Gene and Paul got together as a trio in the fall of ’72. They rehearsed for a few months before finding Ace.
Bobby McAdams (Kiss roadie): They rehearsed at a loft on 10 East 23rd Street above a bar called Live Bait.
Paul Stanley: We rehearsed constantly. We wanted to have a certain level of proficiency before we played for a paying audience.
Bobby McAdams: One day in December of ’72 I brought the Village Voice to Ace’s house and I left it there. He saw an ad in there about a band looking for a guitar player with stage presence.
Peter Criss: We must’ve auditioned close to 60 guys.
Ace Frehley: My Mom drove me to the audition with my 50 watt Marshall amp in the family’s big Cadillac. I was in such a rush I put on one orange and one red sneaker by accident. Before I went upstairs, I quickly chugged two 16-ounce cans of beer to relax.
Bobby McAdams: He walked in, stumbled and tripped. He was a real klutz. They thought he was a freak. He was a very weird-looking guy.
Gene Simmons: Paul and I looked at each other when we played Deuce and Ace started soloing. We finally heard the sound.
Ace Frehley We jammed for a few more songs and then they said, “We like the way you play a lot. We’ll call you.”
Paul Stanley: Ace belonged in the band. He was the missing piece, the missing link. I remember it being a defining moment. Musically it was a very compatible yet combustible mix.
Ace Frehley: The one thing that pissed me off was the ad in the Village Voice said ‘guitar player wanted for band with recording contract’. It turned out there was no recording contract. But I felt the guys were as serious as I was about putting together a theatrical rock group and I liked the music.
By December ’73, the original line-up of Kiss was had solidified. But in the beginning, Kiss were more Clark Kents than comic book superheroes, not yet fully transformed into the world-beating band we know today. It would take months of trial and error before Superman was ready to walk out of that phone booth.
Peter Criss: We copied a lot of things. A lot of our ideas, the art of what we did, came from The Beatles, Alice Cooper, The New York Dolls. We went to see an Alice Cooper concert and I’ll never forget it. Gene and I kind of looked at one another and said, “Wow, this guy is really good!” We got back to our loft that night and said, “Wait a minute, what if there was four Alice Coopers?” We thought the idea was pretty hot, and we became the characters we are today.
Gene Simmons: When we first toyed with the idea of make-up it happened very fast. Paul and I bought two four-foot mirrors for $15. As we leaned them up against the wall, they bent slightly. When we looked at our faces in the mirror we had this freak-house look. We hadn’t yet put on the whiteface except me. I plunged into it all the way. It was cathartic. For the rest of the guys it was like, “Let’s play dress up and be in a band.”
On January 30, 1973, Kiss performed their first show ever at Coventry in Queens, New York.
Paul Sub (owner, Coventry Club): Coventry opened in the early 70s. It was located on Queens Boulevard and 47th Street in Queens. I renamed it Coventry after a town in England.
Paul Stanley: When we played Coventry, it was called Popcorn, and they were trying to change their image. It was a perfect relationship in that we brought in a certain New York credibility to the club so other bands started coming across the water and playing there too. Years later that I found out that the big tall guy watching us in the back with the specs on was Joey Ramone.
Joey Ramone (singer, Ramones): I was at their first show ever. Kiss and The Ramones both grew up in Queens. At the time I think they were the loudest band I ever heard. They were fun and had great songs. I saw them when they first started out and they just had dry ice. This was way before their image and show came together.
Gene Simmons: Paul did the artwork for our concert ads and placed them in the Village Voice.
Paul Stanley: One of our early ads had a drawing I did of a naked girl. I knew if anything was going to get someone’s attention it would be a naked girl. Sex always sells – whether it’s rock’n’roll or toothpaste. It was very funny because the Village Voice, the progressive paper in New York, made me put a bathing suit on the girl. It ran once with the naked girl and the second time it got masked.
Gene Simmons: I was always the asshole who decided to pick up the phone and bother people and get us to where we wanted to go. On my way into work I used to pass by this club in Queens. I got the manager on the phone and started selling. I said, “We’ve got a band called Wicked Lester. You should book us because we’re terrific.” So he agreed to put us on for three nights during the middle of the week when nobody went there. That first night we changed the name of the band from Wicked Lester to Kiss.
Ace Frehley: I wanted to call the group Fuck, but Paul thought Kiss was better suited for the press and we agreed. I came up with the idea for the Kiss logo with a felt tip. Paul cleaned up my artwork with a rapidograph pen – he always had steadier hands.
Paul Stanley: Ace came up with the initial design of the logo, it was a great idea but it wasn’t a fully realised design so I turned it into something more like a car emblem.
Gene Simmons: One of Ace’s friends took the photo [on p58] in the staircase at our loft on 10 East 23rd Street. The early photos of us didn’t have the Kiss make-up on. It looks like I have silver hair in the photo but it was grey colour spray. We didn’t know who we were at the time but we knew we had the musical goods. That photo showed us looking like a New York glitter band. Everyone was pouting their lips and doing that kind of, “Look at me, I’m neither straight or gay.” The androgynous thing. We blew up the photo into a poster about three feet high, which was put into the window of the club.
Peter Criss: We looked like four guys in drag. Gene looks like a transvestite, Paul looks like some whore and Ace looked like Shirley MacLaine.
Paul Stanley: The make-up was always basically the same, but what was on my eye kept changing.
Ace Frehley: People don’t know that I designed Paul’s make-up. Paul’s original makeup was a circle around his eye. I said, “Why don’t you do a star instead of that, that looks retarded.”
Gene Simmons: That night at Coventry, I wore a sailor suit for the first show.
Ace Frehley: I started laughing the other day ’cause I saw an old photo from that time period and Gene was wearing a shirt with a silver skull and crossbones and I was wearing a shirt with silver wings and I realised that my Mom had sewn both of those shirts by hand.
Paul Sub: Nobody knew Kiss at the time, they didn’t have a following.
Peter Criss: Nobody was there. It was a nightmare. We killed ourselves for six people.
Gene Simmons: We played a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and were paid $30.
Lydia Criss: The only people who showed up at that first Coventry show were me, Jan Walsh, who was Gene’s girlfriend at the time, and her friend plus the road crew – Eddie Solan, Joey Criscuola, Peter’s brother, and Bobby McAdams -- and the people who worked at the club.
Lew Linet (Kiss’s first manager): Coventry was a toilet. Those gigs were awful. Nobody liked them, nobody clapped.
Lydia Criss: Even though there wasn’t anybody there they weren’t discouraged. The band made $30 that night but all the money went to the road crew.
In March of 1973, the band entered New York City’s Electric Lady Studios and recorded a five-song demo with producer Eddie Kramer of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin fame.
Paul Stanley: The studio owed Gene and I some money and we said, “Give us some time in the studio and get Eddie Kramer to produce our demo.”
Eddie Kramer (Kiss demo producer): We recorded it in Studio B, which is a very small studio. We did it very quickly in a matter of a couple of days. To this day Gene and Paul and Ace think it’s one of the best things they’ve ever done. The demo has five songs – Deuce, Cold Gin, Strutter, Watching You and Black Diamond.
Ace Frehley: The original demo is much more relaxed than the actual album.
On August 10, 1973, veteran TV director Bill Aucoin walked into the Crystal Room at the Hotel Diplomat and saw Kiss perform for the very first time.
Bill Aucoin Kiss manager, 1973-1982): Kiss was sending me notes every week saying, “Would you come to see us?” and there would be a hand-painted pass to the Diplomat Hotel. Their show wasn’t really that elaborate at that point but I loved it. They had the red beacons, a couple of amps. They wore jeans, no one could afford leather. The show was just a pretty regular rock’n’roll show except they had spontaneity.
Gene Simmons: When we came off the stage after our Diplomat performance, Bill cornered me. I still had my makeup on. As soon I saw him, I motioned for a girl that I had just seen the night before. She was dressed very sexy and she came and sat on my lap. While he was talking to me I was bouncing her up on my leg for effect so that he thought, “My God, something’s going on!” He was very enticed by us and he was the one who pitched to manage us.
Bill Aucoin: The guy who came with me to see the Diplomat show thought I was out of my mind. He said, “You’ve flipped, you’re not going to do this!”
Peter Criss: Bill Aucoin was like our Brian Epstein. He was a force. He was very bright, dressed immaculate and had a great way around people.
With Bill Aucoin on board as manager, Kiss continued to fine-tune their stage show and costumes.
Bill Aucoin: Kiss wanted to be different so they started playing off what they loved in their own life. Ace loved space, Gene loved horror movies, Paul always wanted to be a rock star and Peter loved cats.
Gene Simmons: On stage, we did a lot of ménage à trois kind of stuff. I’d put one leg out, and Ace would kind of wrap around my leg and Paul would get in behind Ace, and we’d all move around, back and forth. When we did Firehouse, Paul had a bucketful of confetti that had ‘Water – In Case Of Fire’ on it. And at the end of the song, he took the bucket and threw it into the audience and everyone went, “Oooh!” But there was no fire-breathing or any pyrotechnics. Just a lot of gyrating, a lot of jumping up and down.
Bill Aucoin: Gene had this ‘I’ll do anything’ attitude. I didn’t plan for Gene to do the fire-breathing. Originally I had Paul in mind to do it.
Gene Simmons: Bill Aucoin said, “One of you guys should be breathing fire. Who doesn’t want to do it?” And everybody raised their hand. It was a negative question and I forgot to raise my hand so I was stuck.
Joyce Biawitz (Kiss co-manager, 1973-82): We hired this magician named Presto who came into my freshly painted white office to teach them to spit fire. The first time Gene breathed fire he blew so hard that he scorched all my white walls black and I had to call the painter back in.
Manager Bill Aucoin made good on a big promise and landed Kiss that all-elusive record deal.
Bill Aucoin: I told Kiss I’d get them a record contract and to give me 30 days to do it. Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise [producers, Kiss’s debut] heard the tape and told Neil [Bogart, then head of Buddah Records], “Come on Neil, sign them.”
Kenny Kerner (co-producer, Kiss’s debut): I used to go to Neil’s office every week or two and pick up a box of tapes that came in the mail and I’d take them home. In one of the boxes was a demo reel-to-reel tape from Kiss with a black and white photo. It looked like some kind of kabuki act in make-up. I got the idea instantly of what they were trying to do. The tape was great. It had Deuce and Strutter on it. This was on a Friday. Monday morning I took the tape and picture back to Neil and said, “This is a great tape, we should do sign these guys.” And he said, “I can’t sign them to Buddah but I’m starting a brand new label called Casablanca.” He listened to the tape and the next day he said, “You’re right. We’re going to sign them as the first act to Casablanca.”
Bill Aucoin: Neil had just enjoyed great success helming a string of hit singles for Buddah Records. Warner Brothers gave Neil the money to start his own label – Casablanca Records. They were the money and distributor behind Casablanca.
Kenney Kerner: One night, Bill, myself, Joyce [Aucoin’s business partner], Richie [Wise], Neil, Bucky Rheingold, Larry Harris, the Kama Sutra/Casablanca promotion staff, went into this little rehearsal studio called Le Tang Studios. The room was as big as a shoebox – the back of the stage to the front door couldn’t have been more than 30 feet. The group came in and they looked 12 feet tall. They had platform shoes that had to be a foot high and the stage was about a foot off the ground so they looked like skyscrapers. They all wore black outfits and their faces were painted. Gene had his tongue going. They came on in such a demonic way – Gene especially looked really demonic – that I was scared shitless. I could see kids just going nuts for this stuff.
Sean Delaney (Kiss road manager/choreographer): They finished the first song and no applause. Gene walks down to Neil Bogart, grabs both of his hands, and makes him clap… Neil started applauding because he was scared to death. And I said to myself at that moment, “I wanna be involved in this.” Because that’s the kind of balls you have to have to do anything.
Joyce Bogart (wife of Neil Bogart): After the show, Bill, Neil and I met in a tiny room. We stood in a small circle, the group in full costume and make-up as Neil told Kiss he wanted them to be his first signing for Casablanca. When he finished his speech outlining their future and telling them that he thought they were stars, Peter Criss fell down. He just fell off of his high heels and landed with great force on his rear. We all roared, including Peter. You might say it sealed the deal.
Signed to Casablanca, Kiss entered Bell Studios in November ’73 to record their debut LP under the production guidance of Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise.
Richie Wise (co-producer, Kiss’s debut): The first Kiss album took six days to record and seven days to mix. We would cut three basic tracks in a day – drums, bass and two rhythm guitars. Ace would overdub his solos. We spent the last three days of the recording doing the vocals.
Ace Frehley: It was the first time I ever did a real album. We knew those songs backwards and forwards. It was one of our best records because it had that spontaneity and that tough kind of sound. We were all very hungry at that point in our lives.
Paul Stanley: Recording the first album was the culmination of everything I’d worked for. It was exciting because we were doing an album but early on I thought that the sound was lacking in terms of what I wanted it to be. I don’t think it’s a competitive sounding album in terms of our contemporaries at that point. That became a familiar story every time we went into the studio.
Gene Simmons: The recording process was simple, direct, but at times we felt disappointed that the producing team of Kerner and Wise didn’t get a better handle on our sound. Kramer understood it better.
Paul Stanley: As a collection of songs the first Kiss album totally stands up. Musically it’s timeless. Those songs sound as current as anything else.
Gene Simmons: We had a ball and we actually made $75 per week salary! We didn’t have to work for a living anymore and we thought we had made it.
On December 21 and 22, 1973, Kiss returned to play two final shows at Coventry, before embarking on their first tour.
Gene Simmons: When we played there in December, there may have been 80 to 100 people. But there was a special excitement in the band because we had just signed to Casablanca. For all we knew we were about to become big stars. In the beginning you dream big. That would be the last time we’d play a New York club. We had full outfits, we had the candelabra.
Wrapping up the year in style, on December 31, 1973, Kiss scored their biggest gig to date playing a show at New York’s Academy of Music. But first they had to deal with Warners…
Bill Aucoin: In late ’73 Warner Brothers called Neil and said, “Can you ask Kiss to take the make-up off, we don’t believe in it.” At that point Alice Cooper’s records were starting to sell less and his make-up was nowhere near as extravagant as Kiss’s, so I guess that scared them off. Neil called me and said, “I know this is gonna be a tough one, Bill, but can you please just ask the band if they’d take their make-up off.” I went to the dressing room and asked the question. They had real puzzled looks on their faces, and they asked me what I thought. I told them we should stick with the make-up, and they wholeheartedly agreed. I called Neil back and told him, “You tell Warners the make-up’s staying on.”
Gene Simmons: We said, “All or nothing. You get the make-up and the band or you get nothing.”
Bill Aucoin: The truth was Warner Brothers hated Kiss and thought the group was a disaster. They sent a memo around Warners not to work the record. Because Neil knew so many people at Warners someone slipped him the memo. He went in with guns blazing and said, “How can you go against me? We just started a new label and this is my first act, I can’t work this way.” They admitted to him that they sent the memo and begrudgingly stayed on board.
Peter Criss: The first time I really felt like a star was at that Academy of Music show. I was going, “I don’t know if we’re gonna make it. We ain’t going nowhere.” At the time we were riding around in milk trucks and beat-up station wagons. And all of a sudden up pulls this stretch Mercedes and I went, “Wow, this is cool! This is what the big guys must feel like.” We wanted to make a grand entrance to the gig, but nobody was there when we pulled up!
Gene Simmons: The first time Kiss had made it big we opened a four act bill at the Academy of Music. It was Teenage Lust, Kiss, Iggy Pop and Blue Öyster Cult. Without sounding too big headed, we punished them severely and we knew that we had arrived.
Paul Stanley: We’d played clubs and now we were playing a place with a 4,800 capacity. I thought the stage was huge and the audience was enormous. I remember busting the snap off the top of my pants and being afraid that if I didn’t keep the guitar pressed against it I was gonna lose my pants. There were a few mishaps that night. This magician had come up with this idea where Gene would light flash paper, which had flash powder inside of it, throw it up in the air over the audience and there would be a burst of fire and then an explosion. But Gene’s aim wasn’t as good as one might have hoped. He basically lobbed it into some guy’s face and it blew up. But the guy came backstage and thankfully was a huge fan. Through the blisters on his face he said, “You guys are awesome!” We could have been in a lot of trouble…
Gene’s hair also caught fire that night. It was early on and nobody realised if you sprayed hairspray on your hair you’re basically bathing your hair in flammable liquid…
February of ’74 saw the release of Kiss’s self-titled debut album. Two studio albums followed quickly, Hotter Than Hell and Dressed To Kill, but it wasn’t until their double-live set, Kiss Alive! stormed record shops in September ’75 that the band became a household name. A hit record and sold-out shows across the country, Kiss had pulled off the impossible and finally hit the big time.
Paul Stanley: We were primed for success but it was going to take a little bit of time. I remember being driven to the airport for our first tour by Mom and Dad. I think our parents thought they were sending us off to summer camp when they were actually sending us off to a whore house…
Ace Frehley: Back in those days we all had lots of laughs together. I never in a million years thought things would turn out the way they have today. We were all success-driven, but to what ends I would only find out much later on down the road. Regrets? Yeah, I have a few, too few to mention. Sinatra says it best…
