Makeup to Breakup (19 page)

The
Dynasty
tour began in June and ended in December of 1979. By then the cancer of our four solo albums had even infected the song selection for our concerts. I went ballistic when we started incorporating songs from the solo albums and not one of mine was picked. I threw a shit fit, so they tried to work out “Tossing and Turning,” but can you imagine musicians like Gene and Paul trying to play that? They had no funk, no soul. We actually tried it live twice and it was horrible. They put no effort into it at all.

Ticket sales for the tour started very soft. We had new costumes now,
studded with rhinestones. We were a caricature of ourselves. Someone should have taken us in the back like dogs, made us get on our knees, and put a bullet in each of our heads. We had gone totally Vegas. I looked like a trapeze star in my fucking new outfit. Gene began to believe his own hype. He gave an interview and said, “KISS has become rock ’n’ roll circus entertainment for the whole family. Rock ’n’ roll tried to create a generation gap, and KISS is bridging it. If the parents could swallow KISS, every other rock ’n’ roll band will be much more palatable. The rules of rock ’n’ roll no longer work with us, we’re a band unto itself.” He was out of his mind.

Hearing shit like that just solidified my resolve to escape the madness. I was burnt out on KISS. I was sick of playing disco songs and selling Barbie dolls. Between the drugs and my marriage dissolving, I was a wreck. Ace was almost as bad with his drinking. Gene and Paul’s egos were cascading out of control. I don’t know how I made it through some of the shows on that tour with all the blow I was doing. I really believe that I had two angels looking over me, one on each arm—Double Deckers, I called them—to help me make it through the night. I’d be the first to admit that I played like shit that tour. How couldn’t I? I play from the heart. If I can’t pick up those sticks and play with feeling, then I can’t play with you. I didn’t have any feelings then, I was so anesthetized with coke. But even if I hadn’t been high, I still didn’t want to be involved with them anymore and my playing would have suffered.

It was no secret that both Ace and I wanted to go out and have solo careers at that point. That was one end product of the solo KISS albums. Winning that People’s Choice award for “Beth” had definitely blown my head up a bit. I was delusional behind the coke and thought that I could start emulating Sinatra. Hey, he was a much better role model than some disco diva!

We were spending money like water on the show. We had five elevators onstage, the highest riser I’d ever used, fog machines, the works. Paul shot a laser beam out of his eye. My drum riser had the capacity to turn in all directions. Ace’s guitar would emit blasts that would shoot down elevated speaker cabinets. Gene was able to fly around the stage. We had really begun to believe our own hype.

That balloon was punctured when shows started getting canceled ;
font-weight: normal;s” due to poor ticket sales. When all these high-tech tricks began to break down, I saw it as a metaphor for the state of the band. In Lakeland, the first night, my riser wouldn’t go back so Gene, Paul, and Ace had to push it back.

One night Gene’s flying contraption broke and he started being dragged back and forth along the stage like a rag doll. We all laughed so hard we pissed our pants. Gene was trying to stay in character and made his growling monster noises and flicked his tongue in and out, but it was clear that he was a puppet on a string. One night he got stuck way up in the air and we started calling him Mary Poppins.

By the middle of July, Marks and Glickman called an emergency meeting of the band and management. We met at Carl’s office in Cleveland on a day off during the tour. Carl opened the meeting by informing us that we were losing a ton of money on the tour. To counter that, a plan was proposed that there be two shows. The A show would play in all the major markets. But a scaled-down version of the show, the B show, would play the secondary markets. This way we could save money. But the band thought that the idea of a B show was heresy. Bill backed us—he didn’t want to dilute the show at all.

We compromised on costs by cutting Ace’s champagne. By then he was traveling with his own custom-made steel traveling bar, stocked with Taittinger. Ace agreed to pick up his own bar tab. But we wouldn’t think of changing to regular rooms instead of suites. And we wouldn’t touch the twenty-four-hour limos we all had. We were spoiled rotten.

On September 13, my divorce was finalized. Lydia got a lump-sum payment of $1 million. She got the house in Greenwich, all the new furnishings, the stereo, the Mercedes. I left everything behind, even all my personal photos. I knew I was wrong for what I’d done to her, and the least I could do was to let her have everything to help assuage the pain. Little did I know that years later she would cause me so much hurt by publishing a coffee-table book full of the photos and personal items.

That same month, Bill’s contract with the group was expiring. Marks and Glickman were egging on Gene and Paul to get rid of Bill. Bill had let KISS’s success go to his head and he expanded his business, signing lots of
new clients. We were jealous that he was spending a lot of time with his other clients, especially since we were probably the only ones to generate income for him then. I also think that the coke was making him paranoid, so he didn’t want to be around us.

Marks and Glickman arranged for a showdown with Bill in Fort Wayne. They all flew in along with our lawyer, Paul Marshall. We booked the conference room at the Holiday Inn. We all sat around and listened to a litany of things that Bill was doing poorly. All these Judases like Howard Marks, who Bill brought in, and Paul Marshall, who was originally Bill’s lawyer—everyone was reaming him, and Bill just sat there and took it.

Of course, Gene and Paul realized that Bill was being hung, so they jumped in and made sure the rope got pulled extra hard. They started in with how much more Bill was making than us, how Bill was going to have to give it up or get out, how Gene and Paul agreed with Marks and Glickman and Marshall. Ace and I were quiet, but I couldn’t keep still any longer.

“I don’t agree at fucking all,” I piped up. “Maybe some of this is true, but how can all of you forget how we got here in the first place? You forget whose credit card we lived off. Boy, it’s easy to forget now that we’re all sitting here nice and fat and rich.”

I looked over to Glickman an came to me” ayld Marks.

“Life is nice, huh, that we made you motherfuckers so wealthy and now you’re telling the guy who started all this which way the door is? If he goes out that door, I’m fucking right behind him because I’ll quit this band. If Bill goes, I go.” This time I really meant it.

Bill looked at me and smiled. What did I care? I was dying to leave the band. I figured that if I went with him, he’d manage me and get me a band. Regardless, he deserved my loyalty.

Then Ace said pretty much the same thing. He suggested that we renegotiate some of Bill’s fees and percentages, and Bill agreed to do that.

Marks and the others had probably planned for this all along, because they opened up a new book and started reeling off proposed changes to Bill’s contract. It was sad because now they were dictating to Bill what his job would be.

We resumed the tour, and it was torture. Every night, despite my drug
abuse, despite my desire to be anywhere else than on that stage, the high point of the show was my drum solo. I’d go crazy, taking out all my frustrations on those skins, and I’d end up hitting a huge Chinese gong. The audiences would go wild. But during the solo, the other three would take a break in a special dressing room constructed under the stage and laugh and make fun of my solo. They wouldn’t acknowledge, “Wow, our drummer is kicking ass.” It was more like, “What the fuck is he doing up there?” Once in a while Ace would compliment me on my solos, but never once did those other two fucks say, “You were really hot tonight.” But why should I expect them to give me a compliment when they never had in the past?

I was out of control. So I began to sabotage the show. I was wrong. I was an asshole. Cocaine does not allow you to make good decisions. I certainly should never have taken my troubles out on the fans, I know that now. But cocaine is an evil drug. I wouldn’t dream of staying at a Four Seasons hotel now and throwing the TV through the window. I couldn’t fathom picking up a lamp in the room and smashing it into the mirror. When you’re addicted to drugs, you do bad things.

In retrospect, bringing Deb on tour was a big mistake. By then we were fighting. In the middle of the night you’d hear glass breaking and furniture being overturned. She was a drama queen, so she’d rush out into the hallway half naked and everyone would come out to get a look, of course.

“He’s going to kill me,” she’d scream, and look for a shoulder to lean on. Usually it was George Sewitt, the tour manager. I started calling him Mr. Shoulder. It was always drama: the Playmate and the Rock Star.

As far as Gene and Paul were concerned, all they had to do was control Ace’s and my craziness and the band would continue to rake in the money. It was all about control. And in October, Gene and Paul learned, on national television, that Ace and I would no longer be controllable.

We took a break from the tour to fly to New York to tape
The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder
. Doing shows like this usually intimidated Ace, so he started drinking champagne hours before the show.

“Hey, Cat, you want a little champagnio?” He had his own name for everything. So we both started drinking water glasses full of bubbly. We emptied a bottle and Ace opened another one.

Meanwhile, we were putting on our makeup. Paul was in front of his
mirror, fluffing up his hair. He must have used at least five cans ;
font-weight: normal;s” of Aqua Net, the cheapest hair spray, before every show. I’m convinced that Paul alone is responsible for global warming.

On the other side of the room, Gene was finishing his makeup and starting to make monster noises. He’d stare at himself in the mirror and Ace and I would look at each other and say, “Gene’s going away.” That’s what we called his transformation.

In the middle of this madness, Bill came in with a bottle of vodka. So Ace started gulping vodka along with the champagne. You can’t mix vodka and champagne. By the time we walked out on that set, we were wobbly as hell.

But we loved Tom Snyder. We felt like this was the ultimate—he was even cooler than Carson. So he started to ask us questions, and Ace all of a sudden picked up Tom’s teddy bear that he kept on the set and started customizing it with his wristbands.

“What are you doing to that teddy bear?” Tom asked.

“It’s a space bear now!” Ace proclaimed.

Tom was astonished that Ace was so lively: His producer had told him that he’d be lucky to get Ace to open his even mouth once. But Ace was drunk off his ass and he was hilarious, and Gene was getting more and more pissed off. At one point Tom asked us who our audience was, and Paul answered that he once looked out his hotel window and saw parents with kids and twenty-year-olds and older people, all in line for our show.

“And if you saw our show in Bombay, you’d see cows in line too,” Ace cracked.

The more Ace and I cut up, the more Gene was fuming. Every time Ace mentioned drugs, Gene quickly cut in, “He’s kidding.” Paul seemed really pissed off too.

When Tom asked me what my hobbies were, I said that I had a gun collection.

“Toy guns,” Gene interjected.

“No, I collect guns. I shoot them at a range, I’d never shoot an animal,” I said.

Then I said that gangsters fascinated me, and if I could go back in time I’d love to be Dillinger or Baby Face Nelson.

“In the movies,” Gene cut in. He was so concerned about one of us saying something real, something he couldn’t control.

Even Tom picked up on it. He turned to Gene.

“So you’re the guy who keeps it all straight?”

“He’s the mother,” I said.

“He’s the mother superior,” Ace added, and we all cracked up. Except for Gene and Paul, who were fuming.

“Everybody’s got a fantasy and we’re all good guys. You know what I mean?” Gene had to have the last word.

“Tell me what you were doing at four this morning,” Tom suddenly asked Ace.

“No. I don’t want to be arrested,” he said, and we all cracked up. Except for Gene and Paul, of course.

For the first time in KISStory, Ace and I had hijacked an interview from Gene and Paul, and the result was hilarious. When the show was over, Tom came back to our dressing room, but Ace had passed out on the couch.

“Great show, guys,” he said. “Everybody on the staff is still laughing.” He shook our hands. “And tell Ace when he wakes up that I love him. He was great.”

Maybe the Tom Snyder appearance em with Lydia wasd ever boldened me, I don’t know. But I certainly wasn’t going to take the same shit I had taken for years from Gene and Paul. On December 8 in Shreveport, Paul humiliated me in front of the audience in the same way he had done many times before. That night, in front of a packed house, Paul turned toward me in the middle of a song and he lifted his arm in an exaggerated gesture to tell me to slow the tempo down. What that says to everybody in the arena is that I’m the one fucking up the band.

He may have had a point. My coke dealer was at the show that night, and we were doing blow in my room before the show. So maybe he was right. I was a little edgy and probably playing a little too fast. But his exaggerated gesture was a slap in the face. And now he was waving with both hands, gesturing to slow it down.

“You want it slow, you’ll get it slow, motherfucker,” I said to myself, and I slowed the song down to a crawl. When I started slowing real down,
he turned around again and faced me and gestured wildly with both arms: “Up, up, up.”

I’m like, “
Make up your motherfucking mind!
” People in the audience could hear me screaming that at him. I just stopped playing. I didn’t care anymore, and Paul said, “We’re out of here, good night.” We went back in the room and yelled back and forth for a few minutes and then I think we went back out and did two numbers and left without a real encore. I was finished. Ace suggested we end the tour and go home. I refused to commit to any more shows until I talked to my lawyer. Then I told Paul that if he ever did that again, I would throw a drumsticknd stormed off