ACE FREHLEY REFLECTS UPON HIS DEPARTURE FROM KISS IN 1982 – “I WAS MORE CREATIVE AWAY FROM THOSE GUYS BECAUSE THEY’RE CONTROL FREAKS”
Forty-six years after its release in 1978, former KISS guitarist Ace Frehley recently joined Ken Sharp of Goldmine for a conversation detailing the back story of his self-titled solo album. An excerpt follows:
Goldmine: Having a hit single off of your solo album with “New York Groove”, did that plant a seed for you to leave the group, or did it give you more confidence in yourself as an artist, songwriter and record maker?
Ace Frehley: “Well, after the success of my solo album, the writing was on the wall for me. I realized I was more creative away from those guys because they’re control freaks, and they like things the way they like them. I don’t like recording the way they record because sometimes they would do 20-25 takes and I’d say, ‘We’re beating a dead horse here on this song.’ That happened with Bob Ezrin working on the Destroyer album. When I’m recording, if I’m working with a drummer, it’s just me and the drummer. If I can’t get it in three, four, five takes at the most, I’ll just say, ‘Let’s try something else’ because after five, six, seven takes, you start losing spontaneity and you start getting bored, actually. Doing 25 takes of a song is completely absurd.”
Ace Frehley: “I don’t remember what song it was, but it was one of the songs on Destroyer, I said to Paul (Stanley) and Gene (Simmons), ‘Listen, why don’t we just put this to sleep right now and try something else? We can come into the studio tomorrow and try it again.’ And lo and behold, we came into the studio the next day and did it in two or three takes because we knew the song, we knew what the pitfalls were and the mistakes we made, and we knocked it off and it had spontaneity. Paul and Gene have a certain work ethic that I don’t have. For example, when Gene was living in Manhattan in his penthouse, he told me he’d go into his closet, he had a little amp and a recorder set up there, and he’d write a song every day. And I’d say, ‘Why do you force yourself to write a song every day?’ He goes, ‘That’s just my work ethic.’ I go, ‘I can’t work that way, Gene. I can only write a song when I feel inspired.’ So for example, I’ll go three weeks without writing a song and then the following the weekend, something would inspire me and I’ll end up writing two or three songs in a weekend. Out of 365 songs that Gene wrote in one year while he was living there, there was probably only a half a dozen songs that we used.”
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