Original subtitles

[helicopter blades whirring]

[ominous music]

♪ ♪

All: We want kiss!

We want kiss! We want kiss! We want kiss!

We want kiss! We want kiss!

We want kiss! We want kiss!

We want kiss!

- From the beginning our bond was the belief in the band,

Our belief in kiss.

[cheers and applause]

- The heights we've reached-- wow.

But it was a lot of hard work.

[loud explosion]

- Nothing could get in our way.

- We've always lived it big.

[boom]

[funky chords]

- All right, vancouver!

- We rise to the gauntlet.

We threw down on the floor for ourselves.

You wanted the best...

- You wanted the best!

- You got the best.

- You got the best!

- Believing in yourself against all odds.

- The hottest band in the world...

- That's kiss!

- Kiss!

[kiss' "shout it out loud"]

♪ ♪

Whoo!

- ♪ well, the night's begun, and you want some fun ♪

♪ do you think you're gonna find it? ♪

[together] ♪ think you're gonna find it ♪

- ♪ you got to treat yourself like number one ♪

♪ do you need to be reminded? ♪

[together] ♪ need to be reminded ♪

- ♪ it doesn't matter what you do or say ♪

♪ just forget the things that you've been told ♪

♪ can't do it any other way ♪

♪ everybody's got to rock and roll, whoa-ohh ♪

All: ♪ shout it, shout it, shout it out loud ♪

- Super group kiss hit like a thunderbolt.

- Since 1974 kiss has produced a gold album

With every single album.

- Kiss is playing to sold-out crowds everywhere.

- We gonna get this place hotter than hell!

- It's being compared to beatlemania.

- Come on! - They're larger-than-life

Comic strip superheroes.

- A monster, a cat, a spaceman,

And a harlequin lover.

- Who are these people?

- They are four of the most recognizable faces

On the planet, and one of the most iconic

And badass bands of all time.

- The kiss sound was unapologetic,

Big, badass rock 'n' roll.

- Kiss blew it up

Into this nuclear combination.

It's the lights, explosions everywhere, fire.

Nobody has ever done it as big as kiss.

- Whoo!

We love you!

♪ ♪

[cheers and applause]

[siren wailing]

- Together legendary rockers kiss say

They are about to embark on their farewell tour.

- The end of the road tour,

The most ambitious undertaking of their 45-plus-year career.

All: ♪ all night ♪

♪ and party every day ♪

♪ I wanna rock and roll all night ♪

- I'll tell you what's a little different about this tour.

We've never spent months rehearsing,

Not because we don't know the songs,

But this is-- this is just pride.

This is the last time people are going to see us.

So with that in mind, we want to be going out

With the greatest show we've ever done.

- By the time we're done, we'll be close to 50 years

Of playing tours on stage.

Paul and I are two different sides but of the same coin.

I couldn't be who I am and was without paul.

And I'd like to think he thinks the same way.

- Gene and I, we've both been through a lot.

I think at this point gene is as much family to me as blood.

♪ ♪

Kiss has always been the underdog.

We were the people who weren't supposed to succeed.

Now we're the proof

You can thrive following your own instincts.

But we didn't get here overnight.

♪ ♪

[loud explosions]

[waves lapping]

[flag flapping]

- I was born in israel.

Both my mother and my father came from hungary

After world war ii.

When I was about 6 1/2

My father picked up and just walked out.

And my mother and I came to america.

In new york, my mother goes to a sweat factory.

She makes half a penny for every button

She sews on to a winter coat,

Clears just enough money to pay the rent and food.

And we survive.

- If gene was a stranger in a strange land,

I was a stranger in a strange neighborhood.

I grew up in a one-bedroom apartment

In an irish catholic area.

We were the only jews.

My mom had been born in berlin

And had fled to escape the nazis

And the extermination of 6 million of our people.

I grew up with people around me

With numbers on their arms.

On top of that, I was born with a condition

Called a microtia, so I had no right ear.

It was just a crumpled mass of cartilage.

And I couldn't hear on my right side.

When you don't look like everybody else,

The scrutiny is unrelenting.

And for a little kid to be stared at or pointed to

Or taunted is devastating.

Gene and I, what we share

Is a sense of being outsiders for different reasons.

But we also found escape in music.

- I came here as chaim witz.

I couldn't speak a word of english.

I was aware I didn't fit in. I still feel like an outsider.

But I soon devoured everything american.

- Rambler american by american motors.

- New generation of youth.

- Protect your complexion.

- And I started listening to the radio all the time.

I heard chuck berry and jackie wilson and fats domino.

I couldn't speak english. I just loved the music.

I had a little pocket transistor radio,

And I walked around with it waiting to hear the beatles.

- Now, at 9:30 tonight a special beatles segment

Like we have every Saturday, the beatles...

- Ladies and gentlemen, the beatles.

Here were these four guys...

- They may have been aliens...

- They looked like buddies.

- I'd never seen anything like it.

The girls were going out of their minds.

- And I had an epiphany.

- And I thought, "that's a pretty cool job."

- It was a revelation to me.

I'm a little overweight kid

Named stanley bert eisen.

I'm deaf in one ear.

But I see the beatles,

And I go, "I can do that."

[cheers and applause]

"I can touch that nerve."

Why I thought that god only knows.

- My mother bought me a copy of a hofner bass

Called a kent.

And I've never looked back.

- I knew I wanted to make rock 'n' roll.

♪ ♪

[siren wailing]

[engine revving]

[horn honks]

- Wow, how different is this?

♪ ♪

It wasn't this easy to get in.

From the beginning,

Gene felt more like a relative.

- I guess that's the electric lady.

- I felt real fortunate to have met him

In spite of him driving me crazy a lot of times.

- We were here. I remember being in studio a

When stevie was recording "superstition."

This way. - Oh, there.

Paul and I,

The chemistry worked, but it didn't start that way.

[guitar strums]

- No picks? - There's two.

Well, I never met anybody else who wrote songs.

And this guy stephen coronel,

Who was my school chum

Growing up, said,

"oh, this guy paul, you know, he actually writes songs."

And I actually said something like, "oh, really?

What do you got?"

[strumming kiss' "let me know"]

♪ ♪

[kiss' "let me know"]

♪ ♪

- I picked up a guitar,

And I played him "Sunday driver."

- ♪ let me be your Sunday driver ♪

♪ let me be your Monday man ♪

♪ I'll take you anywhere you want ♪

♪ just as fast as I can ♪

♪ ♪

That was called "Sunday driver."

And that was changed to "let me know"

That we recorded, and I went...

"wow, that's a-- that's a good song."

♪ just gotta decide, girl, and then you let me ♪

Both: ♪ know oh oh oh ♪

- And then gene played a song.

- I played--did I play "my uncle is a raft"?

- Yes.

[upbeat guitar music]

♪ ♪

- You played it like this.

♪ my uncle is a raft ♪

♪ and he doesn't even know it ♪

- ♪ he is so good to me ♪

♪ he treats me tenderly ♪

♪ and it doesn't matter who you are ♪

- It was like... "ah-cha-cha-cha."

- He didn't think much of me. He thought I was arrogant,

An asshole, and he thought my song sucked.

- He was obnoxious, but look, I'm the first to admit

That the chances of success--

Certainly on the level that we've had--

The chances of that were slim and none.

Meeting gene was-- was the key to it all.

[rock music]

Gene and I started writing,

And what we were doing sounded good.

It was fun. It was interesting.

It was what became wicked lester.

♪ ♪

- We had a five-piece band, stephen coronel,

Who can play a little lead guitar,

A keyboard player named brooke ostrander,

And a drummer who wasn't the best drummer.

But he had cool long hair and a handlebar mustache.

He's got to be in the band.

And we started rehearsing in a loft

On mott street in chinatown

Doing all-original material, about half of paul's songs,

Half of my songs.

- At the same time, in my neighborhood in queens

There was a head shop, and I was hanging out there,

Because I seemed to fit in there better

Than going to little league or anything of that sort.

And one day I came in, and they said,

"hey, a guy was in this morning from electric lady."

And that was like somebody from valhalla,

You know, somebody from, you know, some hallowed ground,

And they said, "yeah, we got his phone number for you."

And it had a scribbled name "ron."

[mid-tempo guitar music]

♪ ♪

- Electric lady studios was jimi hendrix's home.

The '70s was the beginning of the rise

Of electric lady studios,

And it had a vibe like no other studio.

♪ ♪

It was built for jimi.

And it attracted musicians,

'cause they wanted to be part of that.

You walk in that studio, and you want to make music.

You want to play.

- So I call up electric lady, and I say,

"hey, can I please speak to ron?"

And I called back over and over and over incessantly.

And finally, one day I said,

"you tell him that it's because of people like him

That bands like mine break up."

- [laughs]

- And that--that did it.

[rock music]

- In the wicked lester days,

They were always hanging outside picking up chicks.

The scene on 8th street was really a fashion show,

Lace and satin and platform boots,

Just really hot women that at that point

I didn't have a chance of getting.

- Like the doors of fantasyland,

A world that we didn't have access to.

Nobody had the access.

♪ ♪

- We were that much closer to where we wanted to be.

Just getting through the door

At the top of these stairs was monumental.

- We were just eager beavers.

We would literally hang out

And see everybody from stevie wonder to jeff beck.

Actually, stephen stills was in this recording booth.

And stills comes out and says,

"hey, I hear you've got a bass guitar

"that sounds really good. How much do you want?"

He pulled out a wad of hundreds.

And he just rolled off three $100 bills.

I went, "wow. I want to be a rock star."

Like, anybody you could imagine

Were coming and going recording there.

- So we spent a year working on an album.

And we did it on what's called spec time.

You find out when a session is going to end,

And you sit and wait.

You could be sitting there for six or seven hours.

♪ ♪

- At that point, wicked lester was following

Almost every trend, whatever was hot.

One song had flutes all over the place.

It sounded like a jethro tull record.

They were kind of throwing all their influences

Into a melting pot.

♪ ♪

- If one week a song with a ukulele was a hit,

We'd put a ukulele on the song.

If next week there was a song that had a trombone...

[imitates trombone tooting]

We'd put a trombone on.

- We knew nothing, nothing about the recording process,

What these songs should sound like.

♪ ♪

But somehow ron johnsen at electric lady studios

Brought the tape to epic records,

And we got signed right away.

♪ ♪

- And when the album wasn't too far from coming out,

We listened and went, "this is soul-less, ball-less,

Just a neutered hodgepodge of music."

It wasn't working, and it wasn't cohesive,

And it didn't look great.

- The sound was generic,

And we didn't want to be generic.

And every song sounded different than the other.

♪ ♪

- We literally walked out of electric lady studios.

We had a contract; we got some money.

I don't know, $44,000,

Some ridiculous figure in those days,

Which sounded like a lot of money.

And you know what? It wasn't satisfying.

♪ ♪

- The other guys in the band were just happy

To have an album; we weren't.

Gene and I just realized

That this wasn't the direction for us.

♪ ♪

We had to scrap it in order to get back on the path

That we should have been on.

- So we told the rest of the guys in the band,

"you're fired. We're pulling the band apart."

- The guys in the band were going,

"no, no, no, no. We have a record deal."

- "you can't fire us."

- "we're staying." - "okay, then we quit."

[birds chirping]

- We went back to the loft,

And all the equipment was stolen.

You remember that?

And I remember, "gotta start all over again."

So I went to university, upstate new york.

And I think I remember saying,

"I'm gonna go up there, you know, and start a band."

And you in essence said, "I'm coming with you."

You remember that? - Mm-hmm.

- Why the hell would you want to do that?

- Because I knew I was stronger with you.

And even if you didn't quite see at that point

That you were stronger with me,

Quite honestly, I was more concerned with me.

And it was better to have you with me than me alone.

For gene and I,

It was almost unspoken what needed to be done.

- We started all over again with new songs

That were being written fast, "deuce" and "strutter"

And all these songs that felt finally right.

- We made it a point to only have one sound

And that this would be identifiable.

So we immediately started to hone in

On what we wanted to do, who we wanted to be.

[rock music]

- I remember being in a subway

Going with paul back to queens.

And I remember him saying,

"stanley eisen, that's not cool."

- I hated my name.

And I told my parents when I was six years old

That I hated my name and that I was gonna change it.

I really couldn't see, "the hottest band in the land

Featuring stanley eisen and chaim witz."

- I remember him saying, "I'm gonna be paul stanley."

Paul stanley. That's interesting.

And I remember turning around and saying,

"and I'm gonna be gene simmons," just like that.

[percussive music]

- So gene and I wrote all these new songs.

And now we needed a band.

- And I remember paul and I saw an ad in "rolling stone,"

And I made the phone call on a pay phone.

"hi, how you doing? I'm gene simmons,

And I'm looking for peter criscuola."

[percussive music]

- Peter criss played in a lot of local bands

In new york city

Playing in the village, playing every club he could,

Really, really worked hard to make it.

And I think he was ready to throw in the towel

If he didn't make it with paul and gene.

- I got this crazy call from the bass player gene.

He goes, "are you skinny?" I said, "yeah."

He goes, "you have long hair?" I said, "yeah."

"would you like to wear makeup?

"would you do anything?

Would you wear a dress on stage?"

And I said, "yeah, I'd do anything to make it."

And he goes, "well, come on down."

♪ ♪

- We initially thought maybe we'll do a power trio,

Big chords, big riffs.

It was good enough for the who.

It was good enough for hendrix.

And peter had that whiskey voice,

So we can do a three-part harmony as well.

So we rehearsed as a trio.

But it didn't feel yet like the full sound.

We need a lead guitarist.

- I put an ad in "the village voice,

"lead guitarist wanted with flash and balls."

But "the village voice" wouldn't let us say "balls."

So it became "flash and ability."

- And we had everybody come down.

- And towards the end of auditions this kid

When he walked in kind of sauntered in,

Not very steady on his feet, one orange sneaker,

One red sneaker, and he plugged in.

- The first song they played for me was "deuce."

You know, they just said we're gonna play this song.

It's in the key of a, tuned down a half step, of course,

And I just jammed and played every riff I knew.

[kiss' "deuce"]

- The kid started playing, and I knew right then

And there that we had it...

♪ ♪

Not because we were great,

But there was something sonically happening.

The four of us got together,

And there was something going on that was undeniable.

The sum greater than its parts. This is the band.

- ♪ get up and get your grandma outta here ♪

- I guess it's like love.

When you feel it, it's instantaneous,

And you know when it's real.

He started playing, and I don't know what I can say.

We fell in love. It was like...[gasps]

♪ baby, do the things he says to do ♪

- When you think about that guy,

That's rock 'n' roll

Guitar playing,

Almost like a rhythm and blues, honky-tonk guitar player.

- There's that sound,

That thing we haven't heard up until now.

♪ ♪

Slow, melodic, but fast when it needs to be

With a crescendo that builds.

- Simple and emotive and tasteful leads.

- His solos made sense.

♪ ♪

- And we immediately went, "do you have a band?

"where do you live? Do you have a job?

What's your name?" "call me ace."

♪ ♪

- After they heard me wail,

They knew right away that I was the guy.

♪ ♪

- Now, what are we gonna look like?

[rock music]

♪ ♪

New york, early '73, it was the glitter scene.

- This undertone, so to speak, of art and music and fashion.

- It was incredible.

- And the new york dolls were the darlings

Of the rock scene.

♪ ♪

- I remember going to see the new york dolls,

And in the early stages,

They were ahead of us by about six months.

And they looked great. - Fabulous.

Big, teased hair, lipstick,

Platform boots.

Their waists were like my wrist.

They looked like stars.

But when it came to them musically...

Gene and I looked at each other and said, "we'll kill 'em."

♪ ♪

- We tried to do the androgynous thing,

But we weren't convincing at it.

I'm 6'2", and at the time, I weighed 200 pounds.

And it's not convincing

When a big guy starts to prance around.

- The dolls looked the part.

We looked more like linebackers in drag.

No matter who you aspire to be,

You're never going to be better at being them

Than they are, so you got to be the best you.

It's so hard to verbalize how the kiss makeup came about.

- One of us-- could have been me,

Could have been anybody else--said,

"hey, let's go to woolworths and buy some clown makeup."

- There was no talk of what we were going to do.

- It's like when you're a kid and one of your friends says,

"hey, let's jump into the deep end of the pool."

- Everybody just tapped into a part of who they were.

- Basically, they're kind of extensions of our,

You know, alter egos and our personalities.

- For paul, it was the butterfly

Out of the caterpillar, if you will.

- I can remember being in third grade

And my teacher had me come up

To the front of the room so she could look at my ear.

I felt incredibly degraded.

But really your choice in life is to use being a victim

As an excuse or you suit up.

The whole character that I came up with,

Great-looking, confident, brash,

The front man might as well have been

A wish list of things that I wasn't,

Things I became.

♪ ♪

- I wanted to delve a little deeper

Into what I loved growing up,

"the phantom of the opera" with mary philbin

As the girl who unmasks him.

I'll never forget as a kid

It frightened the hell out of me.

The shadows hit the phantom's face.

And I remember starting to draw that face,

The imprint of the shadow on the eyes.

And that was the beginning of the demon.

- I may be the voice of kiss,

But gene has always been the face of the kiss.

It's just, man, he hit a home run.

[ball hits bat thwack, crowd cheers]

Ace's makeup, his jagged design,

For him symbolized being a spaceman.

- Ace has always been spacey and stuff,

And he would verbalize it.

"I can't even stand up straight,

And I can't-- my equilibrium."

- Peter felt like a cat or felt like he had nine lives.

- Peter just shrugged his shoulders,

"I like cats." [cat meows]

And he put on the cat just like that.

- But it all worked beautifully together.

That was the start.

We were stage-ready to go out there and take on the world.

Then it was, "okay, what are we gonna call ourselves?"

- And I knew...

Be it a kiss of death, a passionate kiss...

[crowd yelling]

- It just made so much sense.

You know, I took a deep breath and said, "what about kiss?"

- Ladies and gentlemen, kiss!

- You originally put whiteface on

And had a round circle like pete the dog.

- Petey, petey the dog.

- On "the little rascals," young--"little rascals."

And it may have been ace who said,

"you're the rock star. You want to be a rock star.

Why don't you put two stars on your eyes?"

And how did you wind up with one?

- I think it's because my face is asymmetric or was

Because of my ears

That I think I fell into, you know, something asymmetric.

I remember seeing gene's hair on top of his head

And thinking, "that's so cool."

I almost was going to take all my hair.

- Oh, really? - Yeah.

And pull it up to the top of my head.

But there was a physical aspect that I didn't want to reveal.

[crowd chattering]

- One, two, three, four.

[kiss' "strutter"]

♪ ♪

We started doing gigs,

But we were never part of the new york scene.

♪ I know a thing or two about her ♪

We were outcasts to the outcasts.

♪ I know she only made you cry ♪

- Unlike other new york bands that would play

Max's kansas city and the mercer art center,

Kiss were playing at a hole in the wall

In queens called coventry or they were playing

In amityville, new york, at the daisy.

These places were 45 minutes away,

But they were almost lifetimes away

In the sense of the new york scene.

- ♪ everybody says she's looking good ♪

- I never wanted to be the best band in new york.

I wanted to be the best band in the world.

- Everything we did we did ourselves.

You know, we had to create ourselves,

Design our own logos,

Literally make our own clothes.

We took a black t-shirt, put glue in the kiss logo,

And then poured glitter on it.

Do whatever it is you got to do to set yourself apart,

Just figure out yourself what makes you special.

We created kiss out of nowhere out of our imagination.

- Those first shows,

I think there were probably five people,

And they were at the bar.

But we got in full makeup, went up there.

When we first walked out, "all right, here they are.

Nobody cares."

And then within two or three songs, everybody goes nuts.

[crowd whooping]

- We played like it was madison square garden,

And the audiences grew.

- I remember being on that little small stage

And looking across and seeing rock stars.

♪ ♪

The look, the song, all we needed was a demo.

[bluesy guitar music]

♪ ♪

- Gene and I had done a lot of sessions

At electric lady studios.

We would sing backups on anything

Where they needed extra singers, and we would get paid.

So we said, "instead of paying us,

"give us studio time.

And you have to get eddie kramer."

♪ ♪

- For his credits at the time, you couldn't get higher.

Hendrix, the beatles, zeppelin.

- Eddie was lofty.

This would be monumental, a game changer for us.

♪ ♪

I said, does everybody want to boogie?

Whoo! All right.

[kiss' "watchin' you"]

- Eddie kramer came to see us live,

And he got it right away.

- It was insane,

Kabuki theater stuff, 4-, 5-, 6-inch boots,

And just the energy.

It was just such a magical transformation

Of the boys into those persona.

So I said, "I'll do it.

But we got to do it the old-fashioned way, four-track."

- ♪ livin' as you do, and I'm watching you, oh-oh ♪

- In studio b right here we recorded "black diamond,"

"watching you," "she,"

"strutter," "deuce."

♪ ♪

Those first demos, I put them on today,

Still sounds good, because it's honest.

- There's a purity and a naivete about it.

♪ ♪

The passion was undeniable.

- ♪ what to do ♪

♪ ♪

Eddie kramer just let us be authentically us.

- Those demos, that was done in one day.

- ♪ watching us ♪

♪ ♪

♪ whoo ♪

When we listen back to it in totality, five or six songs,

Gee, this sounds like a band.

- That's what we went shopping for a deal with.

[uneasy music]

♪ ♪

Whenever we would play, we would send invitations out

To all the managers, booking agents, whoever.

And at one of those shows, somebody had come from

Rock steady, somebody named bill aucoin.

♪ ♪

He was a television producer.

And he had no background as a manager,

But he just seemed to get us.

- I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll get you a deal

Within two weeks, or we'll just call it quits.

- So we signed.

And right away, this guy neil bogart shows up

Debuting a new record label called casablanca records.

- Casablanca record and filmworks.

- And we would be the first act on casablanca.

- Music is gonna be fabulous.

Entertainment's gonna be spectacular.

♪ ♪

- Neil and bill, their vision went so far beyond ours.

And also bill's boyfriend sean.

- Sean delaney was actually the guy...

- Testing, one, two. One, two. It's working.

- Who first set up video cameras for us.

- Put your two lips together, ladies and gentlemen, kiss!

Kiss! Kiss!

- And so we're able to see ourselves for the first time.

[kiss' "deuce"]

♪ ♪

- I was stunned at what I saw.

I wasn't doing anything,

Going like this from 20 feet away looks like nothing.

- ♪ get up and get your grandma outta here ♪

- That was a wake-up call.

I realized the stage is prime real estate,

And you've got to use up as much of it as possible,

Legs apart, arms open.

Everything has to be seen from 300 feet away.

♪ ♪

We were in rehearsal one day.

And I think just by chance we did this,

And when we finished the song, sean said,

"wait a minute.

Do that move where you rock back and forth."

♪ ♪

- And the reaction, I have to say, was like,

"well, we're not the temptations."

- I don't want to be paul revere and the raiders,

You know, all of us jumping around together.

- He goes, "don't worry about that.

"you're in kiss.

You can do anything."

- And sure enough, we're still doing it today.

♪ ♪

- Neil bogart with our manager bill aucoin, they said,

"if you're going to be a live band, let's put together

The biggest, loudest statement

Of any band ever."

The only way you're gonna get attention from the masses

Is by doing things much, much bigger.

It was neil bogart who had the idea,

"I want the drum riser to levitate."

They went up maybe 6 feet.

♪ ♪

- But nobody had ever done that.

- We went up to bill's office one day,

And there was somebody else in the room.

Could have been amazo the magician.

We said, "who's this guy?"

- Bill aucoin said, "you guys are doing

"a song called 'firehouse.'

One of you guys has to spit fire."

- "who wants to try?"

♪ ♪

Literally the very first show we did,

My hair went up like a [bleep] matchstick.

And the fans loved it.

- Bill was also the guy who came up with the idea,

"you guys are never gonna be seen without makeup."

- He said to us, "marilyn monroe,

"she never took a photo

"where she looked frumpy without her makeup.

"whenever you saw her,

"she was marilyn monroe 24 hours a day.

That's what you guys should be doing."

So we did.

Our first album came out early February 1974.

- The first album was all those great songs

That we had been playing at coventry.

- It's crazy when you think about it.

There was nothing out there like us.

- It had to work. We were unstoppable.

- They went out on the road

And just kicked ass for pretty much two years.

- Bondage gear, blood spurting,

Overkill kabuki makeup.

Gene's tongue getting closer to ace and ace

Sort of recoiling back but not too far back.

Billowing smoke, shooting rockets across the stage.

Kiss was about to be...

- Rock 'n' roll!

- The most dangerous and feared band in america.

♪ ♪

[cheers and applause]

- Please welcome one of the most unusual bands, kiss!

- Hey, world. We're kiss.

We want everybody here to come along with us,

'cause you've got nothing to lose.

Two, three, four.

- Those first two or three tours,

It was us against the world.

200 shows the first year in a station wagon,

Doubling up on rooms,

Making a glorious $75 a week.

But it was a magical time.

♪ before I had a baby ♪

♪ I didn't care anyway ♪

♪ I thought about the back door ♪

♪ I didn't know what to say yeah yeah ♪

- When we went out on our first tour,

Our parents drove us to the airport

Like we were going to summer camp,

And we were going to a-- a whorehouse.

- ♪ you got nothin' nothin' to lose ♪

- Chicks. And wake up with girls

Whose name you'd never bothered to learn.

Wow, this is a good job.

- ♪ ahh yeah ♪

- What we had been singing about and fantasizing about,

It actually existed just the way we thought it did.

We were experiencing this together for the first time.

Both: ♪ you got, you got, you got nothin' to lose ♪

- It was like all for one, one for all, like brothers.

- It was a constant party.

And it was great.

- Sure, there was some drinking

And sure, there was some drugs.

But the shows were killer.

Every single show we would get encores,

And our road manager noticed that the headlining act--

I think it was argent--

Kept pulling our power so we couldn't do encores.

At the end of one of our sets, all of a sudden,

"wow, we have power. Let's go back out again."

- Then we heard that our road manager

Had pulled one of these bowie knives on the tour manager

And locked him in one of their road cases.

[cheers and applause]

We went across america, wound up on the west coast,

And literally ran out of bands to play with,

'cause they kicked us off tours,

'cause we kept blowing them off the stage.

- We were literally stuck there.

We didn't have enough money to go home.

And we had shows coming up in two weeks.

- We're staying at a motel someplace in san francisco.

- "and we're eating beans and hot dogs out of a pot.

How cool are we?"

[cheers and applause]

The first album, I think it sold about 60,000 copies.

And it wasn't a big success.

So we put out another album.

- A big san francisco welcome

For our special guest tonight, kiss.

[kiss' "hotter than hell"]

♪ ♪

- ♪ she looked good, she looked hotter than hell ♪

♪ all dressed in satins and lace ♪

- And right around that time we had a, you know,

A moment of sobriety with our record company president.

- ♪ she showed me her wedding band ♪

"you guys are costing me a fortune.

You don't have hit singles.

And that's okay. I'll stick with you.

But you keep getting thrown off tours."

♪ ♪

"I don't know how to tell you this,

But you need to stay on a tour.

Could you be less good?"

And we literally said something like, "no way."

You can't put a tiger out there

In front of lambs and everything,

"do you mind just walking by that lamb

And don't tear its throat out?"

No, I'm a--I'm a [bleep] tiger.

[tiger roars]

It's what I do.

♪ ♪

- When I discovered them, I was 15, just turned 16.

And I was one of the very first kiss fans

That I was ever aware of, because I saw them

In a magazine called "rock scene."

And that was their first time in a magazine.

- This had to have been back in 1974.

And I got to the very back of "circus--circus" magazine,

And I saw this crazy hair and makeup, and I go,

"what the hell is this?"

- Then after I saw them in concert,

Seeing them seals the deal.

♪ ♪

- Kiss was my first concert.

And my ticket said "a partial view of kiss."

Now, I thought they were gonna be revealing

Some deep corner of their poetic souls.

It really meant that my seat was behind a pole

At the side of the stage.

Despite that, it was still the most invigorating,

Energizing, exciting two hours of rock 'n' roll music

That I've seen to this day.

[percussive music]

- I've got a question for you.

- Early on, the audience was there to see the headliner.

But soon enough, people were showing up

At the concerts wearing our makeup.

- Believe in rock 'n' roll?

[cheers and applause]

- Kiss first broke in the midwest.

And as an illinois lad myself, that is not surprising to me.

The coasts may have been more drawn to t. Rex and bowie,

But kiss really spoke to suburban kids like myself.

Like, you know, you're trapped in some conservative suburb

Where the best you can hope for ever

Is to maybe get a job at the dairy queen

And along comes kiss.

And I could really see why it was cleveland...

♪ ♪

Why it was detroit. - How you feel, houston?

- The working-class bombast felt like it was built

For the industrial midwest.

♪ ♪

- Do you feel all right?

- Kiss represented something

More than just music.

Kiss seemed like theater.

♪ ♪

Kiss seemed like fantasy.

- We had the most expensive show out there.

- Come on and clap your hands.

- And the scale kept getting bigger.

♪ ♪

We were selling out concerts.

But the problem was, in those days,

Record labels didn't get any money from live concerts.

All they got were the records.

And so the label's losing money hand over fist.

♪ ♪

- I seem to remember bill aucoin saying to me,

"you know, these guys are in a little bit of trouble."

♪ ♪

- Neil bogart mortgaged his house.

And he had kids and a marriage and all that.

- The record company's really in dire straits.

So the key factor here was bill aucoin.

Bill aucoin used his american express card

To continue to finance touring.

- He was going into great mountains of debt,

And he was being chased by the creditors

And was running away as quick as he could.

- We didn't have hit singles, no album sales, nothing.

- And so financially we were in a lot of trouble.

We were all in a lot of trouble.

- We thought the problem

Was that we were not played on radio at all.

♪ ♪

- Rock stations receive an average of 100

Singles a week.

Well-known groups can get their stuff on.

For the unknowns to get on,

Somebody must be willing to take a chance.

- Stereo 101, chippin' away at the rock.

- ♪ wvts ♪

- Make your ears bleed and your...

- It actually started organically

In terre haute, indiana.

The radio station there wasn't playing kiss.

- This was early 1975.

The local radio station,

Which was just a brick enclosure outside of town

With an antenna on top in the middle of a cow pasture...

- Wvts is now broadcasting...

- A few people got together.

There was a guy named starkey.

[telephone rings]

- He got in touch with the radio station.

And he said, "listen, you got to play kiss.

It's my favorite band."

- "if you don't play kiss,

The kiss army will surround the station."

- Vts with evans. Still nobody's out there.

- The radio station thought that was very funny.

But lo and behold, when they didn't play kiss...

- Bill starkey is here.

You don't believe me. I've got my army out there.

- The radio station was surrounded.

- And that's where the kiss army was born.

- I've never seen something like this.

I've been doing rock 'n' roll for 2 1/2 years,

And I've never seen such mass participation.

- It's a volunteer army.

What could be better than having people volunteer

To wave the flag?

- The fans and the band fell in love with each other.

They tattoo their bodies with our faces.

They name their children after our songs.

There's some kind of authentic soul connection.

- Anything else before we move on?

Let's play some kiss music.

- But we still needed to write a hit.

[rock music]

♪ ♪

- By our third record,

Casablanca was in deep trouble.

We made two albums right away the first year, neither sold.

The third album, neil bogart

Decided to jump on and produce it for us.

- We were back in new york city

And trying to cut costs where we could.

If you look at "dressed to kill,"

The album cover, most of us didn't own suits.

But bill aucoin, our manager, had closets full of suits.

So we got suits from bill, and I'm wearing my dad's shoes

'cause all my shoes at that point had 8-inch heels.

And that's all I had.

- And then we met at neil bogart's office

At casablanca records.

He said, "you guys know who you are and all that stuff.

"but you haven't told us.

"politicians have a political platform.

"hamburgers can have 'have it your way.'

"we don't know what you stand for.

You guys should write an anthem."

And I had never heard that word before.

And I didn't know what it meant.

- And said, "what do you mean by an anthem?"

And he said, "well, sly and the family stone have

"'I want to take you higher' or 'dance to the music,'

Songs their audience identify with."

- Where the words tell people

What you believe in and who you are.

- And it was really perceptive, the idea of having

A rallying cry, a rallying song.

- And we went, "oh, that's kind of cool."

♪ ♪

So paul and I, we started strumming guitar.

"how about this? How about that?"

I had a song called "drive me wild"

About a girl as a car, but it didn't have a chorus.

And then paul said, "why not like a party song?"

♪ the party's just begun, we'll let you in ♪

- I wanted to be a preacher of rock 'n' roll

And sing about the glory of this incredible music

That celebrated life.

But how do you put this into a nutshell?

How do you-- how concise can this be?

And I picked up the guitar and went...

♪ I wanna rock and roll all night ♪

♪ and party every day ♪

♪ I wanna rock and roll ♪

So that it was emphatic, and went right back to it.

- And when you stuck those two bits together...

- It was magic.

All: ♪ I wanna rock and roll all night ♪

♪ and party every day ♪

- It's just one of those songs.

It's like "happy birthday."

- Basically says it all in the title.

And it's one way of looking at the world, which is,

"I want to rock 'n' roll all night and party every day."

There are some other problems in the world

That maybe we need to deal with,

But that's for other bands.

- I just wanna rock and roll all night and party every...

I've been there. It's fun.

All: ♪ I wanna rock and roll all night ♪

♪ and party every day ♪

- We thought it was gonna be a big hit single,

But it became what's called a turntable hit.

It got played a lot.

[loud explosion]

But it didn't sell through.

"dressed to kill" bombed.

Neil had to resort to going to certain people with vowels

At the end of their last names--

Let's not go farther than that--

To borrow money.

- He was calling in favors, you know,

"we'll make good on this payment.

But if you could give me a few more months."

At that point I think it was a pretty precarious situation.

- Casablanca, they were really down to the last dollar.

♪ ♪

We hadn't broken through with records.

We had three studio albums that just didn't sell.

They didn't go gold.

And so the record company just went,

"well, you know, we don't want to do another studio record.

"it's gonna be too expensive.

Let's just put out a live record."

♪ ♪

- The first three studio albums really never captured

The essence of what the band was live.

So we went back to eddie kramer.

He was the right person to do it.

- So I'm sitting in my office, and I get a phone call.

"hey, eddie, it's neil bogart.

Do you want to do a kiss album live?"

♪ ♪

[cheers and applause]

The enormity of the sound, you know, the fans

The pa, the smoke, the bombs, the blood coming from gene.

I mean, it's a total immersion in kiss.

Trying to capture that madness on tape,

This is a big challenge.

- "alive!" was the big gamble.

If it didn't hit with the seismic force

That kiss needed and bill aucoin and casablanca needed,

I think the whole thing would have went belly up.

[loud pop]

All: We want kiss! We want kiss! We want kiss!

We want kiss! We want kiss!

- You wanted the best, and you got it.

The hottest band in the land, kiss!

[kiss' "deuce"]

♪ ♪

- "kiss alive!" when you listen to those songs,

They weren't reinventing rock 'n' roll.

They were just doing their ballistic version of it,

Huge and live and kiss.

- ♪ get up and get your grandma outta here ♪

- Nobody would listen to that and go,

"gee, I went to a kiss concert. That's not what it was like."

- ♪ old jim is workin' hard this year ♪

- It is exactly what it was like.

- ♪ baby ♪

- But initially, when we bring the tapes

Back to electric lady, gene and paul said,

"nah, we got to make it sound bigger."

- We wanted to put you in the center of the audience.

- We took every tape machine that we could find

In the building and ran 100-foot loops of tape.

And we had high screams, low screams,

Clapping, all these different things to just...

[mimics crowd cheering]

♪ ♪

[rapid riffing]

- ♪ ahh ♪

- We wanted you to hear the chaos going around.

But when you set off bombs, microphones collapse.

So we replaced them with prerecorded cannon.

[loud explosion]

- Let me just say this,

There is some contention in the ranks

As to how much overdubbing was done.

♪ ♪

- Were there mistakes? Sure.

Do you want to hear a mistake

Every time you listen to a song?

No. So wherever play needed to be redone,

We replayed.

- I can assure you, in my memory banks,

It was a shitload of stuff we had to do.

But it sounds great.

- That album is considered one of the greatest live albums

Not because it's exactly what happened

But because it captures what a kiss concert was and is.

[cheers and applause]

[film projector whirring]

- So we finished the album; we liked it.

And neil bogart calls me and says, "hey, gene.

"I've been talking to your manager.

"he's not sending me the master tapes.

I need that to put the record up."

And I said, "you owe us radio royalties.

Send the check, and we'll send the tapes."

And I'll never forget this,

Neil bogart, who I thought was my friend

And was always a big supporter and everything,

But I think was scared to death, because he allegedly

And purportedly borrowed money

From the wrong kinds of people.

Well, neil bogart says, "listen, asshole,

"you don't know who you're dealing with.

"you're gonna send me those tapes

Or I'm gonna break your legs."

- The rock album of the year,

"kiss alive!" on casablanca records and tape.

All: ♪ I ♪

- We still didn't send the album

Till he sent us the money.

- "kiss alive!" came out and took off like a bloody rocket.

All: ♪ wanna rock and roll all night ♪

- "rock and roll all nite" live version went top ten.

It was a hit.

- The studio version, you know, it sounded okay.

But when you hear the live version

And the audience just chanting with them, come on...

All: ♪ I wanna rock and roll all night ♪

♪ and party every day ♪

- You can't replace that.

That thing saved the company's ass.

- Less than two years ago, kiss came to detroit.

And now they've sold a million records.

- "kiss alive!" sells a million records right away.

- We couldn't have done this without detroit!

- We were the second platinum album in history.

The first one was the eagles,

And within an hour, "kiss alive!"

- We really love you!

- That was the beginning.

- What is most important to you,

The spectacle or the music?

- The audience. - The audience?

How do you want your ideal audience to feel

When you're finished with them?

- Exhausted.

♪ ♪

The connection between the fans and the band comes

From a sense of reciprocity.

We give back what we are given, and that snowballs.

You know, we've said it before.

And we're gonna say it again.

You people are number one!

[kiss' "c'mon and love me"]

- We were having a great time.

We were really digging being famous.

And it did happen quick for kiss.

We got together, I believe, '71, '72,

And in '76 we were styling.

♪ ♪

- I think each one of us was really digging

The limos and the dressing up

With the best in clothes we could buy now.

We thought we were the shit, really.

"hide your daughters, kiss is in town."

- A lot of people have come up that want to taste the tongue.

- Hobnobbing with all the other rock stars.

It was very cool. It was a very cool time.

But I wanted that high all the time.

When we'd leave the stage,

I had to bring it back to my room.

So I partied, and I just kept taking it with me,

And that's dangerous.

You can't--you got to know when to leave it

And when to have it.

- The things that I sang about,

Everything I envisioned became real.

The kid who had to chase girls wound up being chased.

And the kid who was not popular became very popular.

[cheers and applause]

[end chords]

♪ ♪

- But when "kiss alive!" came out

And became a big hit, bill, in his wisdom, said,

"you might have this huge success now.

"but you need a great studio album,

Not like the last few."

- And in short order he said,

"and there's a guy named bob ezrin.

He should be producing you."

He'd worked with alice cooper. It was a big deal.

- I was pretty successful.

I'd had a couple of really big records.

And I was pretty full of myself.

I thought I had the answers to everything.

And that made me perfectly suited to working with kiss.

- Bob really took us to another level.

[percussive music]

I learned a lot from bob.

He opened my eyes to sonically what was possible

With other instruments,

Like with piano replicating what a guitar was playing

To give it more depth.

[percussive notes, chords]

- We were venturing into new areas for kiss.

- To me, their characters,

They were like big-screen characters,

And I wanted to treat them like that

In the music that we made.

So the stories we told were more dramatic,

And they were about people other than just themselves.

"detroit rock city," that was like a mini symphony.

It's like a piece of rock theater.

- ♪ I feel uptight on a Saturday night ♪

He had so many creative ideas.

He was a big influence musically, lyrically.

He'd say, "I don't like that part, but I like that part."

- "okay, that's the verse; who's got the chorus?"

Both: ♪ you gotta lose your mind in detroit rock city ♪

♪ get up ♪

- "and here's what the solo's going to be."

♪ ba-da-da-da ♪

♪ ♪

Every note of that solo was bob ezrin.

He told ace what to play.

"here's the harmony part."

And it was great.

- That was not a very rock 'n' roll approach.

And to ace's credit-- I mean,

He was the most rock 'n' roll guy of the group--

It just didn't sit right with him.

[loud explosion]

[ominous music]

- The "destroyer" sessions were tough.

- There was a lot of structure,

More structure than they were used to.

And yes, I wore a whistle.

And yes, I used to blow it to get their attention,

Because we didn't have time to mess around.

We had to move.

- Paul and I liked the "go back to rock school."

The other guys hated it.

And so we started to see some difficulties.

- People ask if I was aware of the tensions within the band.

♪ ♪

That's like saying, "well, when you were walking through

"the train wreckage,

Did you notice that there was an accident?"

- Bob kind of ran the show like a dictator.

And we weren't used to that, none of us were.

You know, we all have big egos.

- That's when you started to see

The first big problems go down with ace.

- Ace was struggling a little bit.

You know, he partied a lot. He was late coming in.

Sometimes he just didn't show up on a session

Where we were supposed to be doing lead guitar.

- I'm on the phone with ace,

"you got to come down and play a solo.

"you weren't here for the tracks and everything.

You got to come down." "hey, I--I can't come down."

"why not?" "I got a card game."

♪ ♪

So we got another guitar player to come in

And play the parts, which were great.

- I think he started feeling alienated and ganged up on.

And the truth is, he was.

- I've never been high or drunk in my life, just haven't.

Just never appealed to me.

So I never emotionally understood it.

- Really he was just being what he was supposed to be.

He was supposed to be a rock star.

And he was being a rock star.

♪ ♪

And look, in new york in 1976 cocaine was everywhere.

Your dentist had it. Your lawyer it.

Every rock star for sure had access to it

Whether they took it or not.

So yes, I had cocaine.

And yes, I recall doing it together

With some of the members of the band.

- I was doing coke trying to keep up with ezrin,

Which was an impossibility.

But I think, personally, that album,

Ezrin did everything perfect for it.

- I have to say that any drug use to me is excessive.

But bob was a functioning addict.

He managed to do what needed to get done and do it brilliantly.

He was--he was at the top of his game.

"destroyer" was far beyond anything

We could have come up with on our own.

Perfect proof of that is "beth."

- I think it was bill aucoin who told me it was important

That there be one peter criss song on every album.

It was just the political reality of the band.

- And one day peter was riding in the car with me,

And he starts humming, "beck," b-e-c-k.

Like, "oh, it's a song called 'beck.'"

- I sung it to gene one day, and he liked it.

And then when ezrin got it, he said,

"well, we can't sing about jeff beck.

We got to do something about it. How about beth?"

- And I asked if it would be okay

If I took it home and worked on it for a little bit.

And I know-- and it was very different

From anything they had done before.

But I was convinced that that song would touch everybody.

- Ksn in san francisco.

Right now, I want to play you a cut.

- Disc jockeys started playing "beth."

- It became massive.

"destroyer" propelled us to new heights of popularity.

I mean, "beth won" a people's choice.

- And the winner is... Congratulations, "beth."

[indistinct under cheers and applause]

- ...That we won the award for "beth"

For the best single in 1976.

[cheers and applause]

- Anything goes. We love you.

Rock and roll! Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

- By '76, when "destroyer" and "beth" became big hits,

Our lifestyle drastically changed.

- Kiss, a world-renowned rock group

That exploded out of nowhere.

- All of a sudden,

We were one of the biggest bands in the world.

- Kiss is said to be sharing the popularity

The beatles enjoyed.

- When I first realized how big we were going to be...

- A new breed of rock 'n' roll.

- And that it was now out of all of our hands...

- Kiss. - Kiss.

- Kiss. - Kiss.

- It was frightening.

I liken it to being pulled up on the roller coaster.

The chain is underneath, and it's pulling you up,

And you know that when you get to the top...

- The view from up there, breathtaking.

- That's when the ride begins.

That's what it felt like...

- Death-defying.

- Like all hell was gonna break loose.

[kiss' "shout it out loud"]

♪ ♪

- ♪ well the night's begun, and you want some fun ♪

♪ do you think we're gonna find it? ♪

- ♪ think you're gonna find it ♪

- From the time our first record came out February 1974,

Within a year and a half,

We were headlining anaheim stadium,

43,000-seater sold out.

- ...Seems to be the rock group kiss.

- Kiss inspires incredible passion.

- But why kiss?

- 'cause that's what's in now.

All: ♪ shout it, shout it, shout it out loud ♪

- It's the beatles in the '60s.

It's kiss in the '70s.

[booming]

- There is a reason for the extraordinary success of kiss.

It has something to do with their music.

But it has more to do

With the way they are hyped and packaged.

- That's the genius thing

About the band, the characters.

The makeup seemed to sort of invent these personalities

For each of them.

And offstage,

They were as mysterious as they were on stage.

- Any kiss fan can tell you you don't ever really

See these faces. It's all part of the mystique.

- Are you gene?

- Getting a picture of kiss without the makeup

Was like getting a [bleep] picture of bigfoot.

- You're not gene simmons, are you?

- No, I'm the bodyguard. - Oh, my god.

- We guarded our secret.

And there was a $25,000 reward on our heads.

- "people" magazine got this shot of paul

And actually got the film away from paul's bodyguard.

What, if somebody gets a picture,

You take the camera away?

- Yeah. - It's really that important.

Is that part of the mystique?

- Yeah, mystique.

- Their fantasies and the characters

That we're portraying, they always must be character.

- This idea, "you'll only exist in makeup."

As disappointing as it was

That we weren't gonna be recognized on the street...

- So what is it like for you walking

Down the street with no makeup?

- It worked.

I really don't look that different.

You know, I'm not quite this pale.

[kiss' "love gun"]

- We became so famous, so big,

So fast, you know, it was just complete insanity.

- All right, new york!

- I remember we sold out madison square garden

For three nights.

- ♪ I really love ya baby ♪

Then we sold out five nights at the budokan in tokyo.

- ♪ let's get together baby ♪

- The beatles had one day less.

We broke the beatles' record.

- Not past the beatles, 'cause I love the beatles.

They're my favorite band.

But we are a band. We do cause insanity.

[crowd screaming]

I haven't seen that since the beatles.

- ♪ love gun ♪

- Ironically, no matter how successful we became,

Part of the appeal of the band

Was in being a member of a black sheep society,

No matter how big it was, because there was still

A lot of people and critics who didn't like us.

- The beatles, the animals, rock group of the 1960s

Whose boyish looks and innovative music

Made young hearts pound and older generations cringe.

It's the late 1970s now, though,

When teenage musical taste

Have gone from boyish to the bizarre.

♪ ♪

- Kiss isn't music; they're theatrics.

They're a whole bunch of things.

- Kiss always had

An adversarial relationship with rock critics.

- Some critics say, "they don't make music.

They just make noise."

- But kiss was never a critics' band.

It always was a people's bad.

They self-identified as a band

That would go over and above for the fans.

- Critics have blasted the group for engaging

In nuclear-level prepubescent hype.

- Kiss is going to have its own comic book soon

Printed in real kiss blood.

Isn't that wonderful?

- Real classy act, guys.

- T-shirts and books. T-shirts.

- I've heard, I've read, "oh, those marketing geniuses."

When we first started, we were four idiots

Off the streets of new york

Who didn't have a [bleep] clue.

- Bill aucoin was far ahead of us.

It was his vision to merchandise the band.

- All the sheer excitement of kiss

Is yours to capture with the kiss radio.

- I remember the kiss radio.

Yep, that's it.

That's a kiss radio right up there.

So when I was a kid, I was like, "oh, my god.

"I want a kiss radio so [bleep] bad.

Like, I need the kiss radio!"

- Get your kiss radio.

- So like a dumbass, I order it cod without telling my mom.

They charge you on delivery. The guy comes to the door.

And I'm like, "it's my kiss radio."

And he's like, "this is a cod."

My mom's like, "I didn't order a [bleep] kiss radio."

So I never got it. That one, someone gave that to me.

♪ ♪

But come on, when it comes to, like,

Branding and merchandising...

- Kiss!

- Nobody can out-merch kiss.

- This is kiss.

Put them in any crazy pose you want.

- Kiss your face.

Introducing kiss your face makeup.

- Kiss your face makeup is from remco.

- Yeah.

- Kiss t-shirts, kiss buttons,

Kiss hats, kiss lookalikes, the young fans.

- Our mantra and our way of thinking

Was that you're not forcing anybody to have something.

You're denying them if you don't give it to them.

- Kiss is number one.

- It only got bigger and bigger and bigger.

- This was I would guess about 60 or 70--

You want to try it on? It has kiss on the back.

- We made a fortune.

- What are we talking about? What does--

What does kiss generate a year?

- About $117 million.

- 117 million.

♪ ♪

- Gene simmons has that one crazy room in his house

That has, like, every kiss product in history.

It's crazy. It's like a museum times ten.

♪ ♪

- We make everything from kiss condoms to kiss caskets.

Altogether now, we'll get you coming,

And we'll get you going.

♪ ♪

We've literally had thousands of licensed products.

♪ ♪

But again, with anything to do with kiss,

You're talking about different personalities within the band.

♪ ♪

- First, when it was happening, I thought

"well, that's kind of a cool thing, like a lunchbox.

I'll carry one of those around myself."

I thought it was cute.

And then more and more cute things,

I called them, starting to happen,

And I realized that the band,

This kick-ass band that came from the streets of new york,

We lost our edge; we were becoming dolls.

We always had a message, kiss, and it was totally

To rock and roll all night and party every day.

And that was going out the window,

And I saw it and I hated it.

We weren't a rock band anymore.

I called bill aucoin and told him

That this is terrible.

- Once money and fame and licensed products came in,

We started to move away from the magic

That was all four of us.

- We love you!

- That certainly was the crack widening.

- Now mix in drugs.

- Rock 'n' roll!

[rock guitar riffs]

♪ ♪

- 1977, we're at the peak of our popularity,

But there was trouble in paradise.

[cheers and applause]

[somber music]

♪ ♪

- No matter what anybody says, fame is a very powerful drug.

It can kill your creativity.

It can kill your desire to progress.

I don't think anybody goes through it unscathed.

- All of a sudden, I wake up one day,

There's these people blowing smoke up wherever

And telling me I'm the greatest.

- Peter criss, drummer

And also singer on one just beautiful song.

[cheers and applause]

- There's girl's fainting when I'm singing "beth"

And crying, and...

I didn't know how to handle it.

- When we became really successful,

Everybody was going their own way.

We lost some of that collective thought

That we had in the beginning and that magic.

It started to fade.

- Sometimes people talk about, "oh, fame changed so and so."

Fame doesn't change you.

It allows you to be the asshole you are.

[dramatic musical sting]

[film projector whirring]

- We both grew up with the attitude

That rock 'n' roll was an attitude.

- The alcohol and the drug use and the dysfunctional stuff

Started to hit the band heavy.

- Let's just say I'm the keith richards

Of rock 'n' roll in america.

- As far as ace...

Ace frehley on lead guitar!

We couldn't rely on him anymore...

♪ ♪

For anything.

[machine whirring]

When you're in the studio and you have to get a part done

Before the person who's playing it passes out,

That's really a shame.

[cheers and applause]

Yes, it was sad.

It was also a drag.

- What do you represent? - Destruction.

- Destruction? - Yeah.

- Yeah? - I'm a drummer.

- If we stood in front of the drums during a concert,

He threw sticks at us.

In his mind, the entire area in front of the drums

Was a no-fly zone.

Insane.

- Peter was undependable, was erratic, dark cloud,

Didn't show up at meetings, all that stuff.

- Ace and I, we looked at it as it was a party.

Rock 'n' roll was to let it all go,

Hang out, have a great time.

It had nothing to do with sitting in the office

With a shirt and tie

And figuring out what beat goes where.

- What's great about rock 'n' roll is performing,

What sucks is the traveling

And all the other bullshit besides performing.

[cheers and applause]

- There were two sides to ace and peter.

I'll always love ace and peter in the early days.

♪ ♪

They had the drive.

"nothing's gonna stop me. I'm gonna make it."

And onstage, rock stars.

They gave it their all.

But as success and money and fame started to come in,

They succumbed to it.

[cheers and applause]

I have to say, in all honesty, I did too.

I succumbed to fame

But not with chemicals and alcohol but with ego.

What a way to make a living.

Grand delusions of myself.

[camera shutter clicks]

Power, money, and girls.

My ambitions grew bigger.

My appetite grew more.

If a day went by and I didn't have companionship,

It was a disaster.

- Hey, if you thought you saw another celebrity

In the audience tonight, you probably did.

Cher bono was here.

- I started seeing cher at the time

And then her best friend diana,

Which that didn't last long.

[cheers and applause]

It's easier to look at somebody who's suffering

From alcohol and drugs and kind of say,

"you got a problem, buddy."

Mine was more hidden, being full of myself.

That's what it was.

- We were a bunch of guys hiding behind masks.

[cheers and applause]

In my case, it was you're superman,

And you're on stage,

And you're the envy of the people who are there.

But nobody knew.

[cheers and applause]

I had this deformity,

Born basically without a right ear.

Even the band had no idea.

Gene didn't know about my ear, because I covered it so well.

And I grew my hair past my shoulders,

How I listened to people, tilting my head.

It was this big secret that was at the core of my being.

But I tell you,

It's this crowd that's gonna burn this place down.

I was still very much the same guy that I had been

Before the band succeeded.

The only difference was, now I was famous,

And I had this persona.

Is everybody ready?

So the stage was not only my escape,

But it's where I wanted to live.

Rock 'n' roll!

Anytime I was home, I hated it.

I would be just counting the days

Until we would hit the road again.

Rock 'n' roll!

And that didn't make it

Any easier for the guys in the band.

The band was pushing the limit.

- When you're in love, you overlook

All the potential problems

And the foibles, although the signs were there.

- You work around it.

But we were about to go over the cliff.

[upbeat rock music]

♪ ♪

- "kiss meets the phantom,"

That incredible piece of celluloid.

♪ ♪

- We had been told, "this is gonna be 'star wars'

Meets 'a hard day's night.'"

Um, hardly.

♪ ♪

By that time, the band literally

Wasn't talking to each other.

None of us had read the script.

It was a disaster waiting to happen.

- We've got to get out of here.

- Leave it to me, starchild.

I'll bend these beams with my mind.

- Sometimes we would be on the set shooting.

And ace or peter would disappear.

They'd literally leave the set, and we'd have stand-ins.

♪ ♪

And in some of the scenes,

You can see that it's not them.

♪ ♪

- At the end of filming, there was a meeting held backstage,

And ace made the announcement

That he has to leave the band.

- "I want a solo career. I want to write my own songs.

I'm leaving the band."

On the way out, he turned to me

And he said, "I'm gonna sell 10 million albums."

I said, "ace, you can have your solo career

"and you can be in the band.

Have your cake and eat it too."

- The idea was maybe we could let this blow over and heal.

- Let's all take time from each other.

And let's all do solo records.

And we'll bring 'em all out on the same day.

♪ ♪

- The kiss albums, one by each of the four kiss stars

On casablanca records and tapes.

[ace frehley's "new york groove"]

- We're gonna turn the microphone over to ace frehley.

- ♪ many years since I was here ♪

I was really resistant to record "new york groove"

On my solo album.

It wasn't indicative of any of the other songs on my record.

♪ here I am ♪

But eddie kramer talked me into it.

He goes, "ace, this is a great song."

And it gave me a lot more confidence.

♪ you'd better believe I'm back ♪

♪ back in the new york groove ♪

- The beatles "white album,"

It's when the harrison finally broke out

And ringo finally did his thing.

We're doing it now.

- One of the things that I realized

With the success of my solo record,

That I was probably more creative away from those guys.

They were always making me feel

Like maybe I wasn't good enough.

♪ I feel so good tonight ♪

- Ace's solo record,

Those songs would have been great tracks on a kiss record.

- ♪ you better believe I'm back ♪

- A band, I believe, nine out of ten times

Is always stronger than a solo performer.

But we had no choice.

The solo albums, they were like a little band-aid

To put on this gushing wound.

- ♪ I'm back ♪

- Now, four, five months ago, "newsweek" magazine called

Disco the entertainment phenomena of the '70s.

- It's here to stay, isn't it? - Absolutely.

Discos are replacing the nightclubs.

They are becoming the nightclubs.

[disco music]

- Casablanca records became the preeminent

Disco label anywhere,

Donna summer, the village people, and so on.

- Towards the end of the '70s, we had very little to do

With casablanca.

From my recollection, they seemed more concerned

With when the blow was arriving.

- Let's dance. - Let's dance.

- Music.

[kiss' "I was made for loving you"]

- Kiss, it's the album you've waited two years

To hear, kiss "dynasty."

All: ♪ I was made for lovin' you, baby ♪

♪ you were made ♪

- Dynasty is a real reflection of where music was

At that time.

Disco was the rage, and kiss was kind of at a crossroads.

All: ♪ can you get enough of me tonight? ♪

- ♪ tonight ♪

- Could you explain why you changed from rock to disco?

- I don't really think that we made any drastic change.

The song you're referring to as disco is really rock-disco.

- ♪ tonight ♪

- "I was made for loving you."

It didn't really sound like kiss.

It had more of a dance feel.

- But it was something we couldn't say no to.

It was a no-brainer. This was a monster hit.

All: ♪ I was made for loving you ♪

- The problem was that it pushed us into territory

That we hadn't been.

- And this is gonna be your favorite song?

- Yep, the first one. "I was made for loving you."

- "I was made for loving you."

♪ ♪

- All of a sudden, they went from being this

Kind of underground

New york punk band to being in "sixteen" magazine

And "tiger beat," and all of a sudden

The little kids started liking them.

- They're just fantastic. We all love them.

There's no other group like them.

They're just the best.

- I like kiss, because they got a hard-driving rock beat.

- We found ourselves trying more and more

To appeal to a larger group.

- It became evident and clear

Just by looking out into the audience.

You started to see five-year-old kids show up.

- There were people certainly who saw it as selling out.

The only upside was that

There were a lot of single moms showing up.

- It's not cool when you're 18 to go to a concert

And have old people and little kids there.

- I enjoyed it. It was exciting.

- It was not "cool."

- We were no longer the band we had been.

[dramatic musical sting]

[somber chords]

- The look of the band reflected who we had become.

And that was neutered, glamorous, kind of a cross

Between vegas showgirls and a disney picture.

That's who we were at that time.

We were in the midst of a tumultuous period.

- We were lost.

We were keeping the band together by very thin threads.

Ace and peter were going through bad behavior,

Drugs, alcohol, and stuff.

- It's like getting ready for surgery.

- [inaudible]. - [laughs]

- "getting ready for surgery."

- Historically, ace and peter

Would keep their problems off to the side.

- Okay. Time to rock 'n' roll.

- By the time we did tom snyder's show,

Well, it turned out horrible.

- Now here are the remarkable members of kiss.

And first of all, mr. Gene simmons,

Who is the bass player, mr. Peter criss,

Who is the drummer, mr. Paul stanley,

Who is the guitarist,

And ace frehley, who is the lead guitarist.

- I'm not the lead guitarist. I'm the trap player.

[laughter]

- Although it's fun to look at today and people

Get a kick out of it,

Really what was going on was, we had a member

Who literally didn't show up

Till the last minute and showed up drunk.

- I think this outfit is self-explanatory.

[laughter]

- When you see peter laughing, it's really reveling in seeing

How it's affecting gene and I.

It wasn't about it being funny.

It was about the joy in seeing us squirming.

- When you see the audience going crazy,

What goes through your minds?

- When you see all these people screaming

And crying and all that--

- Screaming and crying.

"why did I spend all that money?"

[laughter]

- As tv, the fans loved it, because they love the drama

Of ace being completely drunk saying crazy stuff.

- Ace is back in his house.

- I mean, the thing that makes people on a highway stop

Is a wreckage.

The bloodier it is and the worse it is,

The more people want to stop and watch.

- Space bear. The only space bear in captivity.

I got him. He's captured.

- Needless to say, I was really angry.

[laughter]

- It had reached a point in the band

Where you just kind of shrugged your shoulders

And hoped for the best and realized the worst.

[cheers and applause]

Our philosophy was always,

Whatever is going on in the band,

You leave it at the bottom of the stairs.

When you go up on stage, you're kiss.

We have to put an end to this.

- Marriages don't last; friendships don't last.

But somehow bands are supposed to last forever.

♪ ♪