KISS: NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE EXCESS

Oh, glory that was Kiss...Who cared, that under their pancake and out of their platform boots, the members were four ordinary looking guys from the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan? What did it matter that the bass player, who manifested himself as a monstrous comic book creation, had been a copyboy at Vogue, elementary school teacher, and a 90word-per-minute typist (ask Gene, he’ll show you)? When Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss laced themselves into leather and became the men behind the masks, the effect was immediate—worldwide, profound, and long-lasting. In retrospect, what Kiss’s songs sounded like pales behind the band’s visual shell-shock. For Kiss, the medium was truly the message.

Hoping, but far from realizing that they would singlehandedly revitalize the moribund New York music scene, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley formed Kiss in 1972. Searching for a drummer, they lucked onto Peter Criss, who had advertised in Rolling Stone as “willing to do anything to make it.” How perceptive of him. Figuring that they’d never get airplay if the band was named “Fuck” (their first choice), Kiss was chosen to inherit the earth.