Kiss and Make-Up (15 page)

When the record was finished, we went to shoot the cover photo. Our image was extremely important to us, and we wanted to get it right. The record company had paired us up with Joel Brodsky, a well-respected rock photographer who had taken cover shots for dozens of acts, including Leslie West, the Nazz, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Carly Simon, and the Ohio Players. He was best known for the cover of the Doors’
Strange Days
, a surreal, carnivalesque shot with a strongman and a midget. He had a studio in midtown Manhattan, and we all showed up there a little early, because we wanted to leave time to get into makeup.

From the second we walked in, things were different from what we were used to. First of all, we were accustomed to doing our own makeup, but they had hired someone to do it for us. That’s why Peter’s makeup is completely different on that first album from what it eventually became. But that was only a minor hiccup. Once we were all made up, Brodsky put us in front of the camera and then draped a black cloth over us so you could only see our heads. That was intentional; it was what we called the
Meet the Beatles
effect, just four heads coming out of the darkness.

Then Brodsky asked us who wanted to hold the balloons. We didn’t understand, until he explained his concept. “I get it,” he said. “You’re clowns. I’ll go get the balloons.” It took us a while to explain to him that we were completely serious. It’s easy to see why he was confused—up until that point, you didn’t have popular bands coming out with makeup on. Alice Cooper was a front man in makeup, and obscure bands like Roy Wood’s Wizzard and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown wore makeup. But to have a real rock band with four guys, all of them in makeup, was unprecedented. It didn’t have as much in common with rock and roll as it did with the movies or Las Vegas. But we convinced Joel Brodsky that we were serious.

The album was recorded. The cover photo was done. Then Bogart suggested that the drums should magically levitate—and something else: one of us would have to spit fire. We gathered in Aucoin’s office, and a magician stepped up and spit fire clear across the room.
We were asked which of us would like to do it during the concerts. No one else raised a hand, but I curiously found that my own right arm was thrust high in the air. The guys were happy I’d be the one.

All we had to do now was wait—and play as many shows as we possibly could. We joined the bill for a big New Year’s show at the Academy of Music, which later became the Palladium. There were a bunch of bands, including Iggy Pop and the Stooges and a band called Flaming Youth, a name Paul later borrowed for a song. The headliner was Blue Oyster Cult.

It was a very exciting time. I had a liaison with one of the girls in Flaming Youth, and I was in a rock band about to play its first show. We had yet to release our first album and we had a half-hour to go out there and do our stuff. We finally went on fourth, and we just killed the crowd. We played with fury from the first explosion of the opening chord of “Deuce.”

By the third song, “Firehouse,” the stage was covered by fog. Sirens were going off, flashing lights were blinding people, and the entire place was on its feet, fists pumping in the air. And if they thought they had seen it all, we would give them more. I emerged from the fog in full KISS gear, carrying a sword with the hilt lit on fire and my mouth full of kerosene. I came to center stage and I spit out the kerosene. A huge ball of fire erupted out of my mouth, and the audience went nuts. I stood there, legs spread apart, soaking in the adulation. It was then that I smelled something burning. I had wanted to look extra cool on our opening night, so I sprayed extra hair spray on my hair so it would really puff out. Sean Delaney ran out and wrapped my head in a wet towel, and they went out of their minds! We came. We saw. And we damn well conquered. We were the sensation of the show, and a few weeks later, when a British magazine called
Sounds
published a New Year’s roundup of shows across the world, they printed a picture of me.

It wasn’t exactly fame yet, but it was getting closer and closer. Audiences would scream when we came onstage. We would be recognized in the street. And sometimes we would even be recognized by
girls. When I was a freshman in high school, there was a senior girl who was one of the most popular girls in school. She was in the student government and was the president of this club and a member of that society. She was so stunning that when she walked by, I’d lower my head, only to bring it up a second later to check out her lines. Everything about her spelled arousal. So I was walking down Forty-second Street, after KISS had been around for two or three years and everybody knew us, especially in New York. And I heard this squeal in back of me and then this voice. “Gene, Gene, it’s me, it’s me, it’s me.”

I didn’t recognize her at first, but then it came to me. She was still beautiful.

I played it cool. “Oh,” I said. “So you like the band.” She nodded. “Well, I have to go now,” I said. “Do you want to come over tonight?” It was as simple as that.

“I’d love to,” she said. And that night I made up for all those nights of imagined passion. Being in KISS had its side benefits.

In February 1974
the Michael Quatro Band dropped out of a tour in Canada. Michael Quatro was the brother of Suzy Quatro, who made a name for herself as a glam-rock star. As a result of their sudden departure, we were named the replacement band on the tour. It was only a few cities, and small Canadian cities at that, but it was a real tour, and that meant everything to a band that had never been out of the New York area. Within a week we were on tour.

The first place we went was South Edmonton in Alberta, and I had my first authentic groupie, a girl with green hair. She didn’t know who KISS was. We were just a rock band. I grabbed her, and she spent the night with me. I was in heaven. This girl was spending the night with me just because I was in a band. No courting, no relationships, no dates, no “what does it all mean?” The very thing that women want out of a relationship is this kind of heaviness of “life and meaning.” All I wanted was no meaning. Twenty-four hours of experiencing life with a warm female body.

Early on the other guys in the band would tease me for not being selective. They would say, “She ain’t so hot,” or, “I could have had her.” But I didn’t care. For me, it was not a contest—your girl is prettier than mine or mine is prettier than yours. All I cared about was satisfying my carnal needs; I always seemed to have the “urge to merge.” The lifestyle really appealed to me; bedding down a girl whose name I barely remembered was something I wanted to do all the time. Some girls seemed to have a kind of fascination with my tongue. Others had a fascination with the whole concept of KISS. In fact, more than one asked me to leave on my makeup and my costume while we went to bed—or to the bathroom, or to the floor of the dressing room. It wasn’t always the bed.

The band ran on adrenaline because we had nothing else to run on. We were in the back of a station wagon, four of us, and Sean Delaney was driving. We would torture him. Peter and Ace would strip off their pants and stick their dicks against the window of the station wagon we were touring in.

Sean tolerated all of this. We checked into motels, and he was like a camp counselor. When we had girls, he would storm into the room and tell them to leave. “Get out! These guys need to sleep!” One time a girl wouldn’t leave. Sean was pulling her by her hair, and she wouldn’t leave: “Fuck you! You can’t tell me what to do.” Then this other language poured out of him. With his body language, he was very flamboyant. But it was all so entertaining. Brand new. New cities, new foods. Grits. “How y’all doing?” What are you, on
Gun-smoke?
I had never heard that kind of language except on TV, and I thought cowboy hats went out in the eighteen hundreds.

Even though the girls on the road were starting to pile up, I was still seeing a girl named Jan, off and on, and it was at her house that I heard our music for the first time on the radio. There was a deejay in New York at the time named Allison Steele. She went by the name the Nightbird, and she was the kind of deejay that they don’t have anymore, the kind who would dig around in a pile of records until she found something she liked. I was over at Jan’s house, down in her basement in bed with her, and we were listening to the radio, and Allison Steele came out of one record and went into the next one. I thought it sounded pretty good, and it took almost a minute before I realized it was KISS. A few weeks after that, the album came out in stores. This was in February 1974.

Once our stage act was refined by the short tour, we were ready for our first big industry showcase, which was happening out in Los Angeles. Neil flew us out west and rented us cars, and for a little while we soaked up California. It was a new experience, the West Coast. All the girls were pretty, and they had the sun in their hair, and the weather was always nice enough for them to show a little skin.

The showcase would happen at the Century Plaza Hotel. Neil had packed the place with record executives and businessmen. They weren’t sure what to expect, but it’s fair to say that they weren’t expecting KISS. Soft rock was starting to become more popular at this time, and the bands that were on everyone’s minds were acts like the Little River Band and John Denver. When we came out, their jaws dropped. By now we were used to this reaction, and we played it for all it was worth. That’s what made it rock and roll, in some sense: scaring the suits.