No Regrets

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

  I sort of got the feeling that Gene fell into this category. I can’t say for sure because I don’t know a lot about his sexual history prior to KISS, but I do know that once we got out on the road, Gene reacted like a starving man at a smorgasbord. I believe Gene is a sex addict, in much the same way that I’m an alcoholic. We all have our issues and vices, and I saw Gene’s behavior affect him and the band sometimes in a negative way. Maybe not to the extent that my drinking impacted the band, but certainly there were consequences.

  Gene has had a lot of unkind things to say about me over the years. Some of the criticism is legitimate. In sobriety you embrace accountability, and I can’t deny that my drinking and drug use eventually became highly disruptive and problematic. But some of the personal jabs have been harder to take, partly because we were all friends at one time, and we did do something remarkable, but also because Gene wasn’t exactly the easiest guy to get along with, either. Fastidious, if not downright anal in his professional life, Gene was an utter mess in his personal life. I guess having a love for money doesn’t have anything to do with cleanliness. I should know—for the first several tours Gene and I were roommates. Strange, considering we had so little in common. A more logical pairing would have been Paul and Gene in one room, me and Peter in the other. At first I thought it had something to do with the fact that Peter and I were the guys who liked to party, and by splitting us up the risk of catastrophic behavior was minimized. But that wasn’t the case at all. Paul knew Gene well enough by this point to understand that he was a lousy roommate. As I quickly discovered, Gene was an epic slob. I remember the first time we were sitting in our hotel room after a show, and I looked over at Gene, and saw him spitting on the floor, over and over.

  “What the fuck are you doing, man?”

  Gene cleared his throat, dragged up a thick wad of phlegm, and spat it onto the carpet.

  “Throat’s killing me,” he said in a raspy voice.

  On one hand I felt bad for him. Gene had a problem. Whenever he did the fire breathing, which was just about every night, for hours afterward he’d be spitting and coughing up shit. The kerosene really agitated his system, which was understandable. What wasn’t understandable was his insistence on spitting all over the floor. I was afraid to walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night for fear of stepping in a pile of mucus.

  “Jesus, Gene, can’t you at least use a garbage can or something?”

  “Hwwwwwwwwwk.”

  Another gob of phlegm, another puddle on the floor. It was disgusting, although not as unnerving as the crabs.

  See, Gene in those days seemed to live in a state of perpetual infestation. He would fuck almost anything (and I think he’s admitted as much). Short, tall; plump, svelte; attractive… merely tolerable. We all opened our beds to companionship on a regular basis, but somehow Gene was the one who would end up with bugs in his bush. I got creeped out just thinking about it; when you’re rooming with a guy, and you know he has pubic lice… well, it’s a little disturbing. Every time I scratched my balls I’d wonder whether the little bloodsuckers had crept into my bed as well, leaving me infected simply because of proximity.

  Sometimes it turned out that I had been. It wasn’t just the fact that I shared a room with Gene that left me vulnerable. In those days we did everything on the fly. Stages were set up and torn down in record time. We packed lightly and traveled fast. As a consequence, our costumes were often thrown together in a single pile and packed into one suitcase, sometimes without even being washed. You can imagine how that worked out—the suitcase filled with hot, sweaty leather, crabs jumping gleefully from the Demon to the Starchild to the Cat and the Spaceman. Must have been like a giant petri dish. And sure enough, within a few days we’d all be walking around, tugging at our crotches, scratching incessantly.

  Gene would just laugh.

  “Occupational hazard, boys. You’ll be fine.”

  So you see, even when we weren’t sharing women (which we did from time to time), we were still sharing the experience and the aftereffects. The thing is, when you’re young and crazy, it isn’t that big a deal. You go to the drugstore, apply some ointment or medicated shampoo, and you move on. Almost nothing bothered us back then. Compared to the modern-day consequences of unprotected, anonymous sex, pubic lice was a relatively minor inconvenience. You didn’t have to worry about sexually transmitted diseases—well, not anything that could kill you, anyway. I remember when AIDS hit the scene in the 1980s; it was scary. Prior to that you worried about crabs, or maybe syphilis or gonorrhea if you were really unlucky. Those things were easily dealt with. Every month or two you’d go see the doc and get a shot of penicillin. Not necessarily because you’d contracted anything, but just as a precautionary measure. Given my behavior over the years I was incredibly lucky. Never had anything more debilitating than a urinary tract infection. It could have been so much worse.

  The funny thing is, Gene was actually somewhat bashful when it came to his sexual escapades. He was, by nature, a private man. Peter and I occasionally shared women. Paul and I, too! Sometimes the three of us would share women. Later on, when there were more women than we could handle, we’d pass the chicks on to our bodyguards and the road crew. There was a pecking order (or fucking order), mind you. Bodyguards and roadies got leftovers or extras; it was never the other way around. Gene rarely joined the festivities. No orgies for Gene. Shit, he wouldn’t even shower with any of the other guys in the band. The three of us, we’d take off our makeup in the dressing room, jump in the shower room together, then get dressed in front of each other and go back to the hotel. It was like being on a baseball team or something, and this was our locker room. Not to Gene, though. He’d go off by himself, or wait until we were done. Maybe he never played team sports when he was younger?

  What can I tell you? Gene is eccentric. Always has been. He had a lot of idiosyncrasies. That’s okay. To each his own. I just thought it was a little strange.

  Our first tour began in Canada, in the dead of winter, and the main thing I recall is being unbelievably cold the entire time. I didn’t mind, though. Here I was, almost twenty-three years old, and I’d never even been on an airplane before, so the whole experience was new and exciting. Our first show was in Edmonton, Alberta; there was about two feet of snow on the ground, and yet still people came out to see us. I’m not even sure how they had any idea who we were. Maybe they were confused. Sure seemed that way sometimes. We’d hit the stage at 100 miles an hour, blowing the roof off the place, and people would just stand there for the first twenty minutes, their mouths hanging open in stunned disbelief. I couldn’t even tell if they liked the music or hated it, or if they’d come just because they’d heard about this strange new band that wore makeup and costumes, and they just wanted to see what it was all about.

  The special effects on those first few tours were naturally limited by technology and resources, but we did the best we could with what we had. On one of our first trips through Canada I decided to go out and get some smoke bombs and fireworks and try to incorporate them into the show. The physics of a Les Paul (my Gibson guitar of choice at the time—and I’m still a Gibson guy after all these years) presented some obstacles to what I wanted to accomplish. It had a back plate that was virtually airtight, meaning everything went to the channel where the wires met the pickups. I wanted smoke to come out of my guitar—real smoke, not dry-ice smoke—but I realized that if I put a smoke bomb in that back chamber and lit a fuse, all the smoke would have to come out of the pickups, because that was the only canal through which it could travel. So in the middle of a show, right before one of my solos, I picked up a cigarette lighter and lit the fuse. It looked all right and the crowd seemed to get into it, but I wanted more smoke. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that while the smoke didn’t necessarily affect my playing, it did affect the equipment, screwing up tone and volume controls. So that whole concept went out the window for a while, until I could get together with an engineer and come up wi
th a more practical design.

  The most important thing was that we played with conviction, regardless of whether we were headlining or opening for another act, and we came across as being a serious band—a powerful, exciting visual band. People got caught up in that. Usually by the end of the show, or even halfway through, as the special effects (the flash pots, the fog and the fire, and the smoke bombs) kicked in, people would get completely wrapped up in the show and we’d win the audience over. Even the folks who started off being skeptical would invariably be applauding and calling for encores, asking for more. They might not have known what they’d just seen, but they sure as hell wanted to see more of it.

  Critics were less easily impressed. We got ripped in the New York Times, ripped in Rolling Stone, ripped in CREEM. Serious rock journalists seemed incapable of looking past the makeup and costumes and objectively reviewing our performances or recordings. Or maybe they just hated everything about us. I don’t know. But the negative reviews served mainly to fuel curiosity and controversy. Some critics were less spiteful, offering grudging respect for our musicianship and writing, and especially for the energy we brought to our shows. Mainly, though, it was word of mouth that proved most beneficial to KISS. We built a fan base the old-fashioned way, by getting out and playing night after night, in town after town, encouraging legions of fans to join what would come to be known as the KISS Army.

  The most interesting moments occurred when KISS tried to enter the realm of stodgy, mainstream entertainment. Bill Aucoin and Neil Bogart weren’t about to leave any opportunity for publicity unexploited, so while KISS might have been seen by some as a hard rock band (bordering on metal) whose members were into weird satanic imagery or sadomasochistic fetishism (neither true, of course), our management craved exposure to a more diverse audience. In short, they wanted KISS to be seen and heard by everyone, from teenage stoners in New Jersey to housewives in the Midwest.

  So we taped three songs during a performance on Dick Clark’s In Concert, which was one of the few places on network television (cable was little more than a blip on the radar at the time) where a band could be seen and heard. We taped the show in late February—performing “Firehouse,” “Black Diamond,” and “Nothin’ to Lose”—and it aired at the end of March. Dick was terrific, as smart and gracious as I’d expected him to be. I’d grown up watching American Bandstand and always thought Dick was not just an astute businessman but a real music fan as well. He treated us professionally, without a hint of condescension or bemusement. In return we performed live and with our customary fury. This wasn’t a small thing—most bands who appeared on television shows in the seventies opted for the safety of recorded music and lip-synching. Not KISS. Same thing when we went on NBC’s The Midnight Special. KISS was a live band, a spectacle. There was no point in faking it.

  KISS just trying to be KISS—with each of us staying in character, regardless of the circumstances or venue—could lead to moments of unintended hilarity and genuine “What the fuck!?” cluelessness. Like the time we appeared on The Mike Douglas Show, in April 1974. Now, I’ll say for the record that I always kind of liked Mike Douglas. Like Dick Clark, he was a Philadelphia guy seemingly too polite and well-mannered for the town that made him famous. A bit of a square, too, but that was okay. I’d grown up watching American Bandstand on weekends and The Mike Douglas Show on weekday afternoons. It was a plain-vanilla TV talk show, weirdly comforting in its blandness. You could always count on Mike to smile his way through a show, regardless of the guests, and to perform a song or two in his own little lounge act sort of way. He seemed like a legitimately nice guy, and I don’t think it was just an act.

  Still, it was a bizarre decision for KISS to use The Mike Douglas Show as the forum for its first live interview on national television. But, as always, there was a method to the madness, and it sprang mainly from the dementedly fertile mind of Neil Bogart. Neil heard about a promotional contest, hatched by a pair of Florida disc jockeys, to use our band’s name as a hook for a kissing contest promoted by their radio station. This was the sort of nonsense that could help a band in its infancy; too much of it, though, could destroy a band’s reputation. KISS always walked the fine line between parody and promotion. It was easy to lose your soul if you did too much of this sort of thing, and God knows there was no shortage of people who wanted to exploit the fanaticism of KISS fans.

  In this case the idiocy began with what appeared to be a fairly benign kissing contest. But Neil took the concept nationwide, and even suggested that KISS do a cover of the old Bobby Rydell song “Kissin’ Time” as a way to help promote the contest.

  If ever there was a moment when the guys in the band were united in their opinion of Neil, this was it. We owed the guy just about everything, sure, but a cover version of “Kissin’ Time,” the sugary little teenybopper tune from the late 1950s?

  It was spectacularly inappropriate. Completely fucking nuts. And we all knew it. KISS covering “Kissin’ Time” made no sense at all. It made a mockery of everything we were trying to do. We were supposed to be loud, edgy, dangerous. Why in the name of Christ would we try to be a bubblegum band?

  “Because it’s brilliant,” Neil argued. “People will love it.”

  There was a twisted logic to the promotion, and I suppose, in the end, it had precisely the impact Neil wanted, which was to get people talking about KISS and to create more opportunities for exposure. It was never about the music with Neil. It was about the show. It was about making money and expanding the brand. But at what cost? We all wanted fame and adulation, but in the weeks that we rewrote and recorded “Kissin’ Time,” none of us felt very good about what we were doing. This was the first time I felt like our deal with the devil—choosing style over substance—had unintended and seriously unpleasant consequences. And I think all the guys—even Gene, who never met a promotional opportunity he couldn’t wrap his tongue around—felt the same way. But Neil was the boss. He owned Casablanca Records. He could pull the plug any time he wanted. He could cut our touring and recording budgets. He was the ringmaster, and we were part of the circus.

  The show must go on, right?

  “Kissin’ Time” was recorded as a single and added to the first album when it was reissued a few months after initial release. We all hated the song—much more than we hated the contest promotion, actually. The contest was stupid but harmless; the song damaged our reputation.

  Anyway, it was the contest that brought us to Philadelphia and The Mike Douglas Show, where we’d perform live (we did “Firehouse,” not “Kissin’ Time”), but only after Gene had been invited to chat with Mike and his panel (which included comedians Totie Fields and Robert Klein) for a few minutes, just prior to introducing the winners of the national kissing contest. Serving as the unofficial face of KISS, Gene sauntered out onto the stage in character while the rest of us watched on closed-circuit television backstage.

  “We have a new rock group for you, Totie,” Mike had said, just before holding up a copy of KISS. “But before we see them perform, I want you to meet one of the members of this act close-up.”

  As the boys and I howled with laughter backstage, and the crowd reacted with disbelief, Gene took a seat between Mike and Totie.

  “Mind if I spread my wings?” he asked, unfurling his spindly frame (made even longer thanks to eight-inch platform shoes) and exposing the batlike torso of his costume.

  Mike played along good-naturedly, but when Gene described himself as “evil incarnate,” Totie Fields cast him a look that at first seemed to betray disgust or revulsion, but was quickly revealed to be merely annoyance. Hey, Gene was just doing his shtick. He was being the Demon, or whatever the fuck he thought he was. If it had been me, and I was supposed to stay in character, I would have walked out there and cackled stupidly and said, “Hey, Mike, I’m the Spaceman! Nice to meet you.” None of it was real or to be taken seriously. It was supposed to be fun, and I thought Gene did a great job with it. But as the interview went on,
and the repartee grew sharper, I couldn’t help but be thankful that I hadn’t been asked to do the job.

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if under this he was just a nice Jewish boy?” an exasperated Totie said at one point.

  The crowd roared as Gene smiled coyly.

  “You should only know,” he said with a chuckle. It was intended as an inside joke. Gene, of course, was 100 percent Jewish, having been born in Israel under the name Chaim Witz. I doubt Totie Fields knew anything about Gene’s background, but she didn’t miss a beat. Totie, after all, was a professional comedian, and Gene was no match for her when it came to trading one-liners.

  “I do,” she shot back. “You can’t hide the hook!”

  Gene furled his brow and snarled halfheartedly. He was smart enough to know when he’d been beaten. The interview then turned to the subject of the national kissing contest and the “winners” were brought out onstage. Gene stood and wrapped them both in his bat wings, and a few minutes later we all came out and performed “Firehouse.”

  The whole thing came off fairly well, I thought, and we got good reviews for the show. Believe it or not, some people didn’t know how seriously to take Gene. It was brilliant that way, even if it wasn’t necessarily intentional. It allowed KISS to maintain the element of danger that was such an important part of our early persona… and our early success.