Ace Frehley, who played lead guitar as a founding member of the painted, blood-spitting, fire-breathing hard rock band Kiss, died Thursday in Morristown, New Jersey. He was 74 years old.
His death was announced by his family, who said he had recently fallen. “In his final moments, we were fortunate to surround him with loving, caring, peaceful words, thoughts, prayers and intentions as he left this earth,” the family said in a statement.
In his alter ego as Spaceman, Frehley played with the original version of Kiss for less than a decade, from 1973, when he formed the group in New York with Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss, until 1982, when he left shortly after Criss left. However, he was instrumental in creating the band's stomping, sparkling sound, which can be heard on songs such as “Detroit Rock City”, “Rock and Roll All Nite”, “Strutter” and “I Was Made for Lovin' You”. In the late '70s, these hits, along with Kiss' stunning live performance, made the band an inevitable pop culture icon, seen in comic books and on lunch boxes; today the band is widely regarded as a pioneer of rock and roll merchandising.
A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Frehley returned to Kiss in 1996 for a highly successful reunion, then left again in 2002 to return to the solo career he began in the early '80s. In 2023, Kiss completed what Simmons and Stanley called farewell tour with a hometown show at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Fraley, whose real name was Paul, was born on April 27, 1951 in the Bronx. He learned to play guitar as a child and joined Stanley on rhythm guitar, Simmons on bass and Criss on drums after answering an advertisement in the Village Voice.
Inspired by Led Zeppelin, the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper, the quartet named themselves Kiss and began performing around New York; Frehley designed the band's eye-catching logo, which features a pair of lightning bolts. Each participant chose a look with a specific makeup scheme: Frehley the Spaceman, Stanley the Star Child, Simmons the Demon and Criss the Catman.
Kiss signed with Casablanca Records and released their self-titled debut album in 1974; Stanley and Simmons wrote most of the songs, although Frehley wrote “Cold Gin” about a broke guy who isn't too proud that “the cheapest stuff is all I need to get back on my feet.”
The group made a splash in 1975 with the release of Kiss Alive!, a live album that cracked the top ten of the Billboard 200. By 1978, Kiss had become such a sensation that each band member released a solo album on the same day; Frehley scored a hit with his cover of Russ Ballard's “New York Groove.” That same year, the group starred in the television film Kiss Meets the Park Phantom, which was partly filmed at the Magic Mountain amusement park in Valencia.
“Kiss is the band that made me and millions of others fall in love with rock and roll,” Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. said when he introduced Kiss to the Rock Hall in 2014. “What Elvis and the Beatles were to previous generations, Kiss were to us.”
Frehley left Kiss in 1982, shortly after the band's “Music from 'The Elder'” was poorly received.
“The kiss started out as a great idea, but after a while it became a nightmare for me, like a chain around my neck,” Frehley said The Times ten years later. “I didn’t want to wear that damn makeup.” He recalled drinking too much after a concert in Paris. “I fell asleep with my makeup on and when I woke up my eyes were puffy from an allergic reaction to the silver paint,” he said.
Backstage kiss in 1979: Ace Frehley (from left), Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.
(Bettman Archive via Getty Image)
After Kiss, he recorded and performed under his own name and with a group he called Frehley's Comet. In 1996, he reunited with the other three original band members to tour and release the album Psycho Circus; in recent years he has collaborated with the likes of Slash, Lita Ford and Pearl Jam's Mike McCready.
His survivors include his wife, Jeanette; his daughter Monica; his brother Charles; his sister Nancy and several nieces and nephews.
During Frehley's Kiss rock hall induction marked that he had been sober for seven and a half years and used this opportunity to promote sobriety from the stage.
“Some people think it has to do with willpower, but unfortunately most addicts are born that way,” he said. “It is only by the grace of God that I am here.”
