Talking with The Eddie Trunk Podcast, former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley talked about the band, his former bandmates, the reunion, and more.
A few excerpts can be read below.
Asked whether he would say yes if the guys “came to you tomorrow” for a reunion, the guitarist replied:
“Oh, absolutely. I got off the phone with [classic Kiss drummer] Peter Criss about an hour ago, Peter was nice enough to give me a sweet call, him and his lovely wife Gigi, so that was nice.
“I haven’t heard from Paul [Stanley] and Gene [Simmons], and I probably won’t, but that’s okay, I may get a text.
“We’re still on good terms, and you know, they’re just a little more distant than like me and Peter’s relationship, that’s all.”
It was always like that, wasn’t it? Even back in the day?
“Yeah, me and Peter used to pair up because we were the party animals in the ’70s. Gene would go his way, and Paul would go his way, and me and Peter ended up hanging out.
“When we were touring with Cheap Trick, we’d end up in Cheap Trick’s room or they ended up getting in our room, and so on and so forth, it was that kind of thing.”
You said many times that when it came to [1981’s] ‘The Elder,’ obviously you weren’t happy with the record, and one of the reasons why is you had recorded a bunch of lead guitars that didn’t make it on ‘The Elder,’ right?
Well, there’s a lot of solos that didn’t make it because I did a lot of different takes, and I have all of them. They may be released down the road when I do a compilation record, a box set, but you know…
“One thing I wanted to say about the solo in ‘Dark Light,’ I recorded up in Canada, not in my studio in Connecticut where a lot of people think most of ‘The Elder’ was recorded.
“We recorded a lot of ‘The Elder’ in my studio in Connecticut, and then Bob Ezrin, the producer, decided he wanted the rest of it in his basement up in Toronto.
“And that’s where that song was recorded, so you know. I think it’s a great record, I just think it was the wrong record for the time.
“I don’t have anything against the album, I just think the timing was bad.
“Somebody asked me if [1982’s] ‘Creatures of the Night’ would have come out instead of ‘The Elder,’ would you have left the group, and I said, ‘Maybe not.’
“Because ‘Creatures of the Night’ is a much heavier rock ‘n’ roll record, and I think it was more of what the fans were expecting from us, but you can’t turn back the clock. What’s done is done.”