Face the Music: A Life Exposed (13 page)

First I tried out red makeup. Then I tried a ring around my eye like Petey the dog in the
Little Rascals.
But stars had always fascinated me, and now, of course, I also intended to be the frontman of the band, the focal point onstage. No longer would I be the awkward kid, the outcast. I would be
the Starchild
.

I painted a star around my right eye. It was hard work trying to draw a two-dimensional symbol on a three-dimensional object—my face. It looked one way from the front and another from the side. I was tired by the time I finally created one good star. I didn’t want to struggle through painting another one on the left side. Done.

It was eye-opening to watch the other guys come up with concepts that suited their personalities. Ace’s design was ethereal, spacey. And in the short time I had known him then, that was exactly how I would have described him—the Spaceman. He often joked about coming from a planet called Jendal; he constantly threw out off-the-wall sayings like “one by one I kills ’em” and spoke in made-up languages and gibberish. Sometimes he would shiver and ask, “What was that—did we just have an earthquake?” And we’d say, “That was you—you just had a tremor.”

Peter’s makeup was elementary—the symbolism was direct, not abstract. He felt that over the course of his life he’d gotten lucky during a few close calls, and thus had nine lives. You know, like a cat. The Catman suited him. Peter was not what you’d call an intellectual.

Gene’s makeup was arguably the strongest of all. It was symmetrical and demonic. It was lascivious. It had the drama of Kabuki. It was a striking image, and then when he stuck out his tongue—it just made sense. The Demon. And as we would soon realize, his look and mine—me smiling, him scowling—created a great juxtaposition onstage: light and shadow.

The only measure of whether the images “worked” was the extent to which each guy felt comfortable in his. The images all enhanced or reinforced characteristics in each of us, and in that way, they weren’t just costumes. They were outward shows of things inside of us. It made sense. And we all in some way enabled each other to find those personas.

We never sat down and articulated the “why” behind the makeup. We had no real understanding of why. We just wanted to go further than others had, to become a band the likes of which we ourselves had never seen. The makeup allowed us to embody all the qualities of the English bands I idolized; it presented a cohesive look, a united feel, and at the same time offered the possibility of distinct personalities.

From this point on, we began to create a world that we ultimately inhabited and ruled. But at the start, we certainly weren’t at the center of anything. We weren’t part of the clique of New York bands. We weren’t junkies; we didn’t hang out at the Chelsea Hotel trying to relive somebody else’s past; some of us could carry on at least semi-intelligent conversations, and that wasn’t cool. We were the outcasts of the outcasts. The New York Dolls and other cool bands hung out in clubs surrounded by beautiful girls. We had no time for clubs or girls. We were still too busy trying to become the band we wanted to be.

The proof would be in the pudding. And we would eat it like kings.

We booked two more shows, this time out in Amityville, Long Island, at a bar called the Daisy. It was basically a storefront and couldn’t have held even one hundred people. They sold watered-down drinks for thirty-five cents.

I rented a vehicle at Public Service Rentals again—this time, a decommissioned milk truck. We loaded in our gear—and by “we” I mean Gene, Peter, and me, as Ace, as usual, refused to help—and drove about twenty miles outside of the city. The staff bristled from the word go—I think we looked too weird and effeminate out there in the suburbs. The guy scheduled to be the bouncer that night said he was going to kick my ass. We ended up locking ourselves in the manager’s office, hiding and doing our makeup. Periodically someone pounded on the door and screamed, “I’m gonna fucking kill you!”

The upside of having to wait in the office was that we could answer the house phone. Several people called and asked, “Who’s playing there tonight?”

“This great band called KISS. You’ve gotta see them!”

When we finally emerged and took the stage, there were about thirty-five people in the house. Ace looked at his makeup in the reflective surface of Peter’s bass drum and started cracking up.

Still, we didn’t encounter the antagonism from the crowd that we might have expected given the bouncer’s reaction to us even in our street clothes. A few people chuckled, but more than anything, people were just curious. And pretty much as soon as we hit the stage, they realized two things. First, we were serious. Second, this was great. We might have lacked technical ability, but we played with undeniable focus and ferocity.

My makeup was a mask that provided distance between me and the crowd. It gave me the shield I needed. Whatever fears I had of being ridiculed—whether for my normal appearance or for wearing makeup—disappeared. The makeup was armor. It protected me.

It was also freeing.

Some people were born with it all. I certainly hadn’t been. But now I had it.

And I was on a mission. Out came the persona I had in mind. Out came Jimmy Swaggart and Billy Graham. Out came the rock and roll evangelist. I sang the praises of mighty rock and roll and all the things I aspired to when I saw the bands I loved.

This is my calling
.

I knew I still had a lot of work to do—fronting a band is a craft—but I managed to engage the crowd. I was able to communicate with the audience and elicit a response. I preached rock and roll.

“Hi! I mean, are you high? Everybody having a good time?”

More people showed up the next night, and we killed it again.

After the second night, we got paid. Once the truck rental and our other expenses were taken care of, we each walked away with thirteen dollars. It was the first time I’d ever ended up on the plus side after a show. I had actually earned money playing rock and roll. What a feeling. And everyone seemed to share that feeling.

With these shows under our belts, we felt confident in our songs. Sure, we still had tinkering to do on our look and stagecraft, but musically, we had gelled extremely quickly, and our set already sounded the way we wanted it to. The next step, we figured, was to make a demo to shop to labels.

Ron Johnsen from Electric Lady had stayed in touch with me and Gene. We had even provided some background vocals for projects he had recorded there. Since we hadn’t been paid for those sessions, we approached him with a deal. “Instead of paying us,” we suggested, “get Eddie Kramer to do a demo with us at Electric Lady.”

Eddie Kramer was a legendary audio engineer and producer who had worked with the Kinks, the Small Faces, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin. We’d seen him at the studio, and he was a striking character. He sometimes walked around Electric Lady in a cape, carrying a cane. He elicited both fear and awe.

Ron set it up. Well, sort of. Eddie oversaw the sessions, but his assistant Dave Wittman did the actual recording. We cut demos of “Black Diamond,” “Strutter,” “Deuce,” and “Watchin’ You.” The other track we cut, “Cold Gin,” was a song Ace brought to the table and Gene and I tweaked.

Gene and I knew we would be depended on to bring in the songs for KISS because Peter and Ace never showed much ambition in that department. I didn’t begrudge them their limitations, but when Ace showed up with the framework of a song, I was thrilled. After all, we wanted to be like the Beatles—four identifiable characters. People liked the Beatles, but they also had their favorite Beatle. George Harrison had a song or two on Beatles albums, and even Ringo got to sing a novelty song now and then. It made the band—any band—more interesting. Toward that end we had Peter sing my song “Black Diamond.” We wanted Ace to sing “Cold Gin,” too. But he refused.

We figured the more fully realized the individual members of the band were, the stronger the group would be—adding more ingredients would only make the soup better. I wanted KISS to be a club where every member was represented. I wanted it to be multidimensional, with four formidable personalities. The fact that one of the other guys in our band actually contributed to that illusion—by bringing in a song idea—was a bonus.

Now, with a demo in hand, we knew we couldn’t be stopped. If you stood in front of us, we were going to crush you.

I
think in some ways all bands are dysfunctional. Often, part of the reason people get involved in rock and roll in the first place is because they themselves are dysfunctional. If you get lucky, you find camaraderie and some sort of chemistry—the fact that you each feel different brings you together. And certainly it’s nice to be part of a club of misfits. Life is easier with a support system.

From the very beginning, I felt part of something with KISS. We were all oddballs—quirky, idiosyncratic, neurotic—but we had each other now. I can’t speak for anybody else, because I don’t know what made them tick or what the appeal was for them at the onset, but for me, KISS gave me a feeling of finally belonging—an us-against-the-world kind of mentality, and I was part of that sense of “us.” It was empowering.

In KISS, I had a gang. I wasn’t as lonely as I’d always been.

But despite our shared sense of purpose, I think the four of us all saw the others as odd. We
were
all odd. And not necessarily in a way that made us gel. In KISS, we had a collective reason for being, but outside of that, we didn’t have a lot in common. So we didn’t socialize together outside of the band. Ace and Peter had a lot of friends, and Peter was already married. Gene had a girlfriend. I was still pretty isolated outside of the band.

Even within the band, I never let my guard down. I remained remote around my bandmates. I maintained a wall that made it difficult to get to know me at all and impossible to get to know me well. When the other guys joked around with each other, I chimed in. When they made fun of me, however, I didn’t take it well. I never betrayed why I was sensitive. I sure as hell wasn’t going to expose myself to potential ridicule by telling them about how shattering my experiences as a child had been as a result of my ear and deafness. I wasn’t going to bring up painful things with people who might use those things against me.

“You can dish it out but you can’t take it,” the guys would say. And it was true. It was an instinctive reaction on my part. They didn’t understand how I had spent my childhood being scrutinized and ridiculed. How could they? I didn’t tell them.

Still, it took a lot of effort to cover something like that all the time, and it certainly affected my behavior. But I wasn’t comfortable enough with myself to handle it any other way.

Peter, it quickly became apparent, was also a very troubled person. He seemed to get off on causing problems within the band. One night after rehearsal, we all went down to the Chinese restaurant where Gene and I used to eat back when Wicked Lester practiced in Chinatown. Peter started making fun of the waiter—in a really derogatory way. We found his behavior embarrassing, and told him that if he didn’t stop, we would leave the restaurant. Peter said, “If you leave the restaurant, I’m quitting the band.” He kept it up. We got up and left. And sure enough, he quit the band for a few days. This type of needless drama became part of the way he operated.

Ace didn’t do things to sabotage the band at that point. Though lazy, he was smart and funny. He constantly told jokes. He liked to drink, but it didn’t affect our work—at least in the beginning. Only later would he start to forget the punch lines to his own jokes and have to ask us how they ended. In the early days, when we practiced or played live, he stayed focused and bore down.

Once Peter was back in the fold, we booked two more gigs at the Daisy in April. Quite a few more people showed up than the month before.

I was still learning to control an audience. I felt like a lion tamer. The only way to avoid being destroyed was to put yourself in charge. “It’s really great to be back,” I said, pretending we’d been out on the road. “We haven’t been here because we’ve been so busy playing.”

Yeah, in our egg-carton-lined rehearsal space
.

We continued to set up onstage the same way we had from the very start at Coventry and even in our rehearsal space: two vocal microphones, with one on either side of the drum kit. I may have seen myself as the frontman, but my mic was never center stage. We were a combination of elements, and so, like the Beatles, we never wanted anyone in the middle. Either person could be the singer, depending on the song. The odd thing was that because I stood “stage left” (which is the right side from the audience’s perspective), my deaf side faced the rest of the band. But it never occurred to me to set up on the other side.

Before and after the shows, Ace continued to say, “I don’t want to carry shit.” That took colossal balls. But I realized that was who he was, and that together we had something special. I had to weigh things in terms of what was important; I had to prioritize. Was it more important to get some guy off his ass to carry amplifiers— “carry shit or leave” —than to keep moving forward with the band? No. When I carried the gear, I wasn’t doing it to be kind or to help
him
out. I was doing the right thing
for me
. I wasn’t being charitable to his lazy ass. I knew in the end it would benefit me. It reminded me of my initial reaction to Gene. I put up with crap from him because I stood to gain more by accepting some of his behavior than I would lose by telling him to take a hike.

In May we played our first show in New York City proper, on the eighth floor of a factory building on Bleecker Street. The loft served as the rehearsal space for a new band called the Brats, whose founder, Rick Rivets, had originally been in the New York Dolls. We had seen their debut show a few months before, when they opened for the Dolls.

We agreed to play at their loft for free and provide our PA to the other bands—the Brats and Wayne County, a transvestite and eventually transsexual who fronted a band called Queen Elizabeth. When we loaded our gear in that afternoon, the members of the Brats were not too friendly. They wanted to look like the Yardbirds and pulled it off pretty well. They all wore shag haircuts and the best rock and roll clothing—tailored velvet jackets, satin bell-bottom pants, platform boots—all the latest things from England that I recognized from the windows of Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Granny Takes a Trip. And they had rock star names: in addition to Rick Rivets there was Keith Ambrose, Sparky Donovan, and David Leeds.