No Regrets

by Ostrosky, John, Frehley, Ace, Layden, Joe

  One man who wasn’t scared, in any sense of the word, was Bill Au-coin. Bill was one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met, a real eclectic guy who, on the surface at least, probably seemed like exactly the wrong person to manage the career of KISS. For one thing, he’d never been a rock ’n’ roll manager. For another, he didn’t exactly look like the hippest guy in the room. But Bill wanted the job and that’s why he came to the Hotel Diplomat that night—to see us in person, and to pitch his services.

  Bill was a former television producer whose credits included a show called Flipside, which was actually about the record business. Gene always figured that KISS was a media venture as much as it was a rock band, so he was intrigued by Bill’s television experience. That’s why Bill was one of the hundreds of industry executives who regularly received information about KISS. Gene saturated the marketplace, targeting anyone who might possibly be of use to the band, in almost any capacity. And remember, in those days it took a ton of effort to communicate this type of information. You didn’t just send out an e-mail blast. You wrote letters and made flyers and brochures (sometimes including fake reviews of your concerts), and you made hundreds of copies, and then you put them all in the mail. Multiple lines in the water, so to speak, waiting and hoping for a strike.

  We never would have guessed that Bill would turn out to be the big fish, or at least the right fish, but he was. By this time he owned a company that produced television commercials, usually related to the music industry. Bill had been worn down by our persistence. I guess he figured that any band with that much ambition was at least worth investigating. So he showed up at the Diplomat… and we blew him away. And very quickly our roles were reversed. Bill came backstage after the show and said that he wanted to manage our band. Suddenly we weren’t chasing him anymore; he was chasing us. He showed up backstage again a few days later, after another show, this time making an even stronger pitch.

  “Give me two weeks,” he said, “and I’ll get you a record deal.”

  I was skeptical. I think we all were. But Bill seemed so genuine, and so enthusiastic, that we were willing to give him a shot. Anyway, what did we have to lose? There was no contract, no risk. Just a handshake agreement with a guy who promised to turn KISS into a household name. All he wanted in return was a small and exclusive window of opportunity.

  So we gave it to him.

  We also gave him a copy of our demo, in case he wanted to introduce the music of KISS to people in the industry. In fact, Bill did have someone in mind. Someone very specific. Bill was a shrewd guy, far more savvy than he appeared. Think about it. Who in their right mind would guarantee that he could line up a recording contract for an unknown band? In a span of two weeks? Unless, of course, they had a close, personal relationship with someone in the industry. Someone who had power and influence.

  Someone who could make miracles happen.

  Someone like Neil Bogart.

  HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, KISS

  Two weeks came and went, without any indication that a record deal was in the works. Bill was so much smarter (and shrewder) than I realized, smarter than any of us realized. Impatient as we were for our big break, we all sort of presumed that Bill merely talked a good game. Two weeks was a ridiculous deadline, of course, but it was Bill who had made the offer, so we figured we might as well hold him to it.

  One day we all went down to his office in midtown Manhattan, the idea being not necessarily that we’d dump him, but merely to ask for an update. But so much had been happening. In fact, as I’d learn much later, Bill had put the KISS machinery in motion well before he even met us that night at the Diplomat. What we perceived as an outrageous promise (“Give me two weeks!”) was actually just Bill being the master showman that he was. Like any great gambler (and KISS represented the biggest gamble of Bill’s career, by a wide margin), he’d done his homework and manipulated the odds in his favor. Managing a rock ’n’ roll band is at best a risky proposition; bankrolling that band and promising to make it one of the biggest bands in the world requires gigantic brains and balls in roughly equal amounts.

  Bill had both.

  He also had the proverbial ace up his sleeve.

  “Let me introduce you to someone,” he said that day in his office.

  The “someone” was Neil Bogart, the president of Buddah Records, and one of the more powerful (and interesting) men in the recording industry. Neil and Bill enjoyed a friendship; they also had worked together—Buddah had been one of Bill’s biggest clients when he was producing music commercials. Before he’d even met with us, Bill had discussed the possibility of taking the band to Neil, who was in the process of leaving Buddah and starting his own record label. It was all very clandestine, insider shit, and I had no idea that any of it was taking place. Frankly I didn’t care. I just wanted to be told that we had a real record deal; if Bill Aucoin was the guy who could make that happen, then he was fine by me. I doubt that even Gene, who prided himself on being a shrewd businessman, had any idea what was really happening behind the scenes.

  Neil Bogart was a marketing genius whose early career (he was a record company VP by the time he was in his mid-twenties) included the rise (if not the creation) of what came to be known as bubblegum music. He was the man behind such hits as “96 Tears” by Question Mark and the Mysterians, “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” by the 1910 Fruitgum Company, and “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers. Not exactly my cup of tea when I was learning how to play guitar (bubblegum was disposable crap, as far as I was concerned, as it was to any self-respecting musician who loved the Stones and the Who and Hendrix). But there was no denying Neil’s talent. The guy had demonstrated an uncanny ability to find and promote acts that otherwise might have gone completely unnoticed; bands that were… different.

  KISS certainly fell into that category. Neil was the kind of guy who could stick a finger in the air and figure out which way the wind was blowing. He was always a step ahead of everyone else in the business.

  We needed someone like that. In retrospect, it’s clear that he and Bill Aucoin were the perfect team for KISS. Their vision and ambition were equal to ours, and without them in our corner, I doubt KISS ever would have become the blockbuster that it did. We owe a lot to those two men, and to at least one woman: Joyce Biawitz, who was both Bill’s business partner in Rock Steady Management and Neil’s future wife.

  When those three came on board, everything changed for KISS.

  The main thing I remember about Neil in that first meeting was his enthusiasm. The guy was incredibly energetic and passionate. He told us he loved our demo and that he wanted to make KISS one of the first bands signed to his new label. Our album, he promised, would be the first to appear on Emerald City Records. I guess Neil was a big fan of classic movies; for some reason he decided to change the name of the label before we were even signed, but he still went with an old-time Hollywood theme. The new label would be called Casablanca Records, and it went on to become one of the most successful record companies of the 1970s. For better or worse, Neil was the man behind some of the biggest acts of the disco era, including Donna Summer and the Village People. Whatever else anyone might have thought of him, you couldn’t say he didn’t know how to sell records.

  It’s funny, though. As much as Neil claimed to like our music, I’m not sure he completely understood what we were all about when we first met. He had a lot of big ideas about turning KISS into a multimedia supergroup. There was a lot of sales lingo thrown around in that first meeting, talk of cross-platform promotion and multilevel marketing, shit that didn’t appeal to me in the least, but that was undeniably important to the band’s success. I just wanted someone to tell me that we had a deal, and then tell me what we had to do in order to reach the greatest number of fans. And I’d do it.

  You want me to wear makeup? Fine.

  You want me to wear platform heels and spandex? No problem.

  You want me to shoot rockets out of my guitar? Cool. I’ll do that, too
.

  Whatever it takes.

  We all had that attitude, and we were excited to be working with people who seemed to share our vision and willingness to sacrifice, to put everything on the line.

  Only later would we find out that Neil didn’t fully understand what he was dealing with. He’d been told that we were a theatrical rock group, but he’d never seen us play live. So I don’t think he had a clear idea of what that meant. KISS, after all, was like nothing that had come before it. We made Alice Cooper seem tame; we made the Dolls look like a bunch of schoolgirls.

  To get that point across, and to secure the contract with Casablanca, KISS played what amounted to a private audition at the LeTang dance studio in Manhattan. The place was located right across the street from Bell Sound Studios, where KISS would record its first album. LeTang was tiny, really nothing more than a rehearsal space, but we treated it like it was a regular gig, with flash pots and smoke bombs, and enough noise to compromise the hearing of anyone in the room. We ran into the “audience,” which consisted mainly of Neil and Bill and some of the people who worked for them, along with some journalists. We forced people to stand up and clap their hands.

  Basically, over the course of a half-dozen songs and roughly thirty minutes (including solos), we fuckin’ killed it. I remember looking at Neil and thinking he looked almost shell-shocked, like he didn’t know whether to applaud or get up and leave.

  Clearly, though, Neil was impressed, because not long after that we had a deal with Emerald City (soon to be Casablanca) Records, and a distribution arrangement with Warner Bros. Neil had a lot of faith in KISS; there was a bit of the old carnival barker in him, and so he could appreciate what we were trying to do and see the potential for reaching a massive audience. But even Neil wondered whether we were a little too far out on the fringe for our own good. He loved the music and the brashness of our performance. But the makeup?

  “I’m not sure it’s necessary,” he said.

  This came up in early discussions, and again when we were shooting the cover art for the KISS album. I can remember Neil calling us up on the phone on the eve of our first album being released and saying, “Boys, are you sure you want to wear the makeup?”

  Yeah, we were sure. By this point the costumes had evolved from denim to leather and were on their way to spandex. Sneakers had been replaced by platform shoes. Each of us had refined the hair and facial makeup of his particular character. We’d been gigging throughout the city and its environs as KISS, a band like nothing you’d ever seen before. The characters were an accepted (and highly anticipated) part of the show. There was no turning back. If you wanted KISS, you got the entire package, makeup and all.

  It was, admittedly, a completely unproven formula at the time, so I’m not surprised that Neil might have had some minor misgivings. But we stuck to our guns. Once we said we were going to do something, we did it. We hadn’t attracted the attention of major record company executives by playing it safe, and we weren’t about to start doing that now. Neil agreed. Both he and Bill (and Joyce) put everything they had into KISS, and I’m not just talking about their time and energy. These guys, especially Bill, reached deep into their own pockets to keep the band afloat in those first few months (and even years). KISS was Casablanca’s first signee, so in many ways the success of the label would rise or fall on our backs. KISS was also the sole client of Rock Steady Management. Bill couldn’t afford to have us fail. If we failed, Rock Steady would crumble. So he did everything he could to prevent that from happening, including draining his life savings.

  One of the first things Bill did was convince the guys in the band that we should establish an equal partnership. To an outsider, or to someone familiar only with the regular business world, this probably doesn’t sound like such a novel concept. In the music business, however, it’s highly unusual. Bands are not democracies. Oh, sure, they start out that way sometimes—four kids hanging out in their parents’ garages, playing music and dreaming of stardom, splitting everything (the money, the chicks, the cars) equally. But when the dream edges toward reality, practical considerations tend to get in the way. The truth is, very few bands are composed of equal parts. More often than not, one or two people do most of the heavy lifting: the writing, the singing, the marketing. The guy at the front of the stage tends to get more attention and thus more of the money. The same is true of the person who does the majority of the writing. Publishing revenue can really skew the income of any band, leaving one or two primary members (think Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, or John Lennon and Paul McCartney) with bigger bank accounts, bigger egos, bigger fan bases, and groupies with bigger breasts. When that happens… adios, amigos. The four guys in the garage become warring factions, and the band invariably splits up. Bill Aucoin had seen that happen too many times in the past, and he envisioned it happening with KISS before we even released our first record. So Bill had this unique idea:

  “Why not form a partnership?” he suggested. “With everything split equally.”

  It seemed like a noble approach to problems (greed and ego) that weren’t really an issue at the time. Well, I don’t mean to imply that we were a completely unselfish group of guys. We all had egos; we all liked the spotlight and craved stardom and success. I don’t deny that, and I’m sure Gene, Peter, and Paul would acknowledge as much. Hell, Gene is one of the most arrogant and egotistical people I’ve ever met. Those characteristics served him well when we were building KISS from the ground up, and I suppose they serve him well today, although I’ve heard his cocksure, abrasive attitude has gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion. But in 1973, when we were just getting started, we were a little like the Three (Four) Musketeers:

  One for all and all for one!

  I liked that about KISS. We were sort of a family. A strange, dys-functional family comprising disjointed and unrelated parts, but a family nonetheless. As primary songwriters Gene and Paul certainly could have argued for a greater share of the pie; to their credit, they did not. Bill convinced them, and all of us, that we should be equally invested in the band’s future. If everything worked out the way Bill and Neil planned, then money would come raining down on all of us, and everyone would be happy. There would be no petty bickering about percentages and splits. Everything KISS earned, including merchandising, concert revenue, and record sales, would be divided equally among the four founding members.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Eventually quite a lot went wrong, as so often happens when the checks get big enough. There was a time there in the late seventies when the money ran like water. I couldn’t spend it fast enough: cars, houses, boats. And drugs, of course. Lots of drugs. But it always seemed like there was plenty of money, so I didn’t worry about it. Instead of royalty checks being cut to each individual member of the band, all proceeds were funneled back into the corporation, into a single, huge, ever-boiling pot. Only later did we discover that the arrangement was a bit of a scam, and we ended up suing our business managers and accountants, and parting ways with Bill.

  Whatever Bill received for his work with KISS, though, it probably wasn’t enough. In a very real sense, he was part of the band, his expertise and ingenuity every bit as important to our success as anything we contributed as musicians. A strong sentiment, perhaps, but I believe it. Bill was remarkable.

  For example, before we even formalized an agreement with Rock Steady Management—before we had anything in writing—Bill agreed to pay us out of pocket so that we could concentrate on writing and rehearsing and preparing to record our first album. While the “salary” wasn’t much by today’s standards—seventy-five dollars per week for each band member—it was a life-changing gesture for us. You have to understand: I was dead broke, driving a cab a couple of times a week, making deliveries for a liquor store, so that I could afford to eat. When you don’t have a lot, seventy-five dollars is pretty good money. Paul was able to quit his job at a deli, where he’d been forced to wear his hair tucked up
under a wig so that no one would freak out while he was making sandwiches. Gene was the only person in the band who continued to work, probably because he was the only one of us who had anything resembling a legitimate job. I think Gene enjoyed walking into the offices at Condé Nast. And if KISS fell apart, he had something to fall back on. I didn’t look at cab driving as a career. It was something to be endured; it was a means to an end, nothing more. As soon as I got my first check from Bill, I put my hack’s license in a dresser drawer.

  I still have it, in fact. But it hasn’t hung on a visor in nearly four decades.

  On October 10, 1973, KISS entered Bell Sound Studios in New York to record its first album. I would have preferred to work with Eddie Kramer again, but the recording industry, like so many others, is ruled largely by politics and personal relationships. Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise, a production team that had worked under Neil at Buddah, ended up getting the assignment to produce our first record. You couldn’t really argue that they were the wrong people for the job, or that they weren’t qualified. Kenny, as I understand it, had been a strong advocate for KISS from the first time he heard our demo. He and Richie were former musicians (they had played together in a band called Dust, along with Marky Ramone) who had worked on the production end of things for a number of bands, most notably Badfinger. They were technically sound and I think they understood exactly what KISS was trying to accomplish with its first album.

  The actual recording of the album went smoothly, as we had pretty much all the parts already worked out before we went into the studio. There wasn’t a lot of writing or improvising to be done. That happens sometimes with albums. You go into the studio with a blueprint, and then you tinker and expand and see how everything works out. With KISS, our first album, we used exactly the opposite approach. We had been rehearsing the songs over and over again. We’d been playing them live at every gig. The goal with KISS was simply to get the songs on record—to replicate, as closely as possible, the sound of our live performances.