Kiss
“This is my music, it makes me proud
These are my people and this is my crowd
These are crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy nights”
Growing up in the early seventies US imports, both physical and cultural, were everywhere. Everything that I had access to seemed to be bigger and better in the US.
We had three television stations that transmitted for less than half the day – in the US they had hundreds of stations playing all the time.
We had a freezer for keeping leftovers and garden vegetables – Stevie Ryan’s mum went to the US and found full meals in the freezer, even frozen toast.
We went to a Warner’s holiday camp on the Isle of Wight where my nan won the glamorous granny competition - my mate Jon, whose mum was Californian, came back from somewhere called Disney that had funfair rides.
We went out occasionally for a treat to the local Berni where my dad might have a ‘surf and turf’ and my mum would always have rump steak ‘well done but not burnt’ – in the US they had different food from places like China and Italy and you could ‘take it away’.
But Glam Rock came along I knew that this was something that the UK could beat the US at and, looking at chart hits, I was right. There were always rumours however of a group that breathed fire, spat blood, had the God of Thunder playing for them, were never seen without their makeup and wore clothes that made Gary Glitter and the Glitter Band look as if their wardrobes came from the Salvation Army. Of course I never believed any of this until Jon came back from one of his US holidays, took me to one side and said “Look it’s true, they’re big, they’re loud and they’re called Kiss”.
The roots of Kiss go back to the late sixties when two vocalists/guitarists (one bass, one rhythm) with big egos met and didn’t get on. In fact it wasn’t until Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley had spent a couple of years occasionally bumping into each other while playing with other groups that they decided to work together. It was 1971 and the group was Wicked Lester. Playing rock and roll they were a live hit on the New York scene and signed a record deal with Epic. This however was as far as they went, the album they recorded was never officially released and in 1972 the band split.
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