Ace Frehley Remembered By KISS Authors & Journalists

Join us as we remember the legendary Ace Frehley in this special episode featuring KISS authors, journalists, and those who worked closely with him.

VIDEO

AUDIO

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hey guys, welcome back to Booked On Rock an unexpected episode one that really this is like Ozzy Osbourne really wish we didn't have to do. But this is a look back at the career the life of Ace Frehley, who passed away. He fell and his studio hit his head, and I remember at one point somebody telling me that he had a stroke, and I wondered if that was true. But that went on for a few weeks, and then the story came out that he had passed and that it was a result of the fall. He hit his head, and I believe there was a brain bleed, and he passed away.

And there are a lot of people like Eddy Trunk and people that were in the know that had to hold off on this until it became official. But it did not look good for a while. Yeah, wow, this is crazy. You know.

KISS is the second band on my list of favorite bands, right behind Van Halen, right behind Van Halen. I became a fan in 1979. I was seven years old, and a neighbor down the street from where I grew up, Tom Scricca. He gave me, give me a bunch of Kiss records, and I have him here.

He gave me a bunch of KISS records, and at the top was KISS Alive II. And yeah, here's Love Gun. You know, when you're seven years old and you're looking at that, that just blows your mind. Here's one I grabbed.

How about this unmasked? Yeah, that was towards the end of the original era, but here it is. Here's KISS Alive II. And this is the one. I mean, this is the same copy.

And I remember looking at that first, and it was a little bit, you know, seven years old, a little bit like, wow, this dude up in the top left there is a little scary, and he would go on to become my favorite member of the band Gene Simmons. But right behind him, second favorite, the Ace the Spaceman right there, Ace Frehley. And I remember the first, the first feeling I got when I opened it up and saw this here we go. That's beautiful right there, and I was immediately in.

So that was when I became a KISS fan, instantly looking at that. And then as the eighties came along, I kind of I kind of lost interest, or I didn't. I wasn't as avid a KISS fan, but I was still a fan. I mean, I had a friend who was buying their cassettes at the time, you know, during the non-makeup years when I wasn't there, and so I was still a fan. In fact, my first ever concert was nineteen eighty nine in New Haven, Connecticut, the old coliseum that was on the Hid Your Heart tour. I remember that well.

Paul Stanley had the bandage around his waist. He had gotten into that car accident, I think, shortly before that. And but yeah, there was always that wish that, oh, that's funny, this wasn't me. By the way, somebody put a nose ring on Ace.

That must have been a time, my friends, a nose ring on Ace. Now that would have gotten to as to last, which is which is gonna be my point. I don't think Ace wants anybody to be somber. I think he wants a good He wants us to get a good laugh.

Sorry, just knocked the microphone there. So but yeah, so there were two things that I really was hoping for, you know, as as a kid, were Van Halen reuniting with Dave and KISS, the original four reuniting with the makeup and KISS. Of course, did you know they did it. They did it first, and they got it right.

It was the original four with makeup. You know, it's great to see Dave back in the band, but as we know, that was without Michael Anthony. But it was still great. But KISS got it right, and that reunion, I didn't see the initial one, but I did see the one in the late nineties and again in the early two thousands.

I say it's the best show I've ever seen. Best show. Second behind that would have been the seven Show with Dave and Van Halen. With Ace, there was something about him too, that was just so. He had. He had two things about him. He had that rock and roll cool and but he was also hilarious, kind of similar to David Lee Roth where he kind of had that mix of both. And Ace was the kind of guy, you know, the rock and roll cool.

It's like nothing seemed to bother him or worry him or phase him, and to the point where that would get him into trouble, which would lead to some hilarious stories like driving down the freeway, like going over one hundred miles an hour the wrong way on the freeway. But he had that he always had that same pace with his walk, like everything's cool man, just chill. Never I mean, he was playing in front of a stadium full of people, especially on the Reunion tour that first night in Detroit, and still same Ace, just kind of you know, just walking out there with that cool stride. It was all about rock and roll to him.

He got that he was hugely famous, and he got how big it was for the fans, but at the end of the day, it was still just it's just let's just go out and play, let's have some fun. That's what I loved about him, and the funny side of him was, you know, when I first saw that picture of him, looking at that picture and the pictures of Ace in makeup as a kid, not knowing what he looked like or sounded like. When I did hear him talk in interviews in the late eighties, mid to late eighties on MTV, it was so not what I expected, and maybe you guys felt the same way. But I imagine him as this introspective, deep-thinking, quiet guy who didn't like to talk, and then you find out it's not the case.

Ace was. You know, he would love to talk, He would love to laugh, joke, talk about music, talk about space, Star Wars, things like that, and of course, there's that famous interview that he did, the Tom Snyder interview with the guys in the band. I mean, he was just absolutely hilarious, and he had that New York accident, and then the voice was a little bit high up is you know, he just, and he's calling people curly. It was nothing like what I expected.

And when I worked in radio, I had a coworker. I've worked on the New York line, Fairfield County, New York line. So there was a DJ friend of mine at the station who hung out with Ace, he was friends with. Sean. We called him Finster on the air, Sean, and every now and then he'd hang with Ace in the city, and then he'd come back and tell me the story that Monday.

And it was always great stories. I mean, just Ace was just out of his mind, and he did he I remember he telling me a story about helping Ace move. And I don't know if this was when he was moving to Florida or he was just moving from somewhere in Connecticut to a from place Connecticut, I don't remember, but point being that he said to Sean, he said, hey, you know, grab could you grab that cardboard box over there and just you know, throw it in my car And so Sean picks it up and there's the love gun outfit and he's just like, you know, like, Ace, this is your love gun outfit. You just throw it in a box.

And Ace is just like, yeah, man, I got plenty of those. It's like to him, just it wasn't that big of a deal. To him, he got how big it was for the fans, which was always cool too, because if you look at the clips of him online and he's meeting fans. To me, I think he gets how big it is a moment for the fans.

So he loved to put a smile on their face, you know. But for him, it was just like, you know, he just he just again he had that way, like nothing phased him, nothing stressed him out, or he just didn't. He just didn't operate that way. So he would tell you, Yeah, Sean told me stories about I think Sean was at that famous.

There was a story that got out. It was Ace's birthday and Ace was at the mic and he was talking about complaining about KISS and how they don't appreciate me and I'm the guy who had all the biggest hits, and I could write the songs and I played the best. And as he's saying that, Gene Simmons walked in the room with a birthday cake to surprise him, and Jean was just standing there like, Okay, that was Sean was at that birthday event. But anyway, yeah, one of the greatest guitarists.

How many guitarists did he influence over the years. How many guitarists today are playing the guitar because they saw Ace. You know, it's it's it's endless and the entertainment that he brought. In the early two thousands, when I started to go back and listen to all of the albums again that he was on with KISS, and then all of these videos started coming out.

Go to record conventions and you get the DVD or VHS version of a concert here, a concert there, Anaheim, whatever, Maryland. There were shows and I I was just so into it. I couldn't stop watching them. I couldn't stop listening to Ace and KISS.

I just got into a huge KISS phase. Nearly two thousand. It was like I was going back to my roots and I just realized just how amazing of a guitarist. Ace was and songs like Rocket Ride and Parasite, and I mean, it's like, this guy's fucking amazing.

I love Ace, and here we are now he's gone, and losing Eddie van Halen, for me was was devastating, even though we knew he wasn't doing well. You know, this one, I'd kind of a little bit more braced for these types of things, you know, after Tom Petty passed and Eddie and if we're just seeing it happen a lot so, but yet it is still very sad. So those are my thoughts, and what I want to do is share with you some of the thoughts from the people that interviewed Ace, wrote books on KISS worked with Ace. All right, here's one from Brad Tulinski.

Great writer, great author. He's been on the show a few times, written a book on Eddie Van Halen called Eruption, wrote another great book on the MC5, and he interviewed Ace in the past, as many of these journalists that we're going to hear from today have. And Brad actually he wrote a story on Ace back in ninety three. So he shared this story on his Facebook page, and then I shared it on mine.

Here is what Brad had to say. He says, Ace Frehley was always cool. Nothing ever seemed to ruffle his feathers. But the few times I hung out with him, I noticed he quietly sized up the room before getting comfortable.

He never lost that bronx instinct. The first time I met him was in nineteen ninety three for a Guitar World cover story. He'd been drummed out of KISS and was legally barred from wearing a Spaceman makeup. Ironically, he was never more popular.

Every medal and grunge kid at the time was raving about his influence, so we thought it'd be fun to have Dave Sabo of Skid Row and Dimebag Daryl of Pantera with the makeup in tribute. Gene and Paul couldn't sue them for that. Ace was genuinely grateful for the attention at a frustrating moment in his life. During the photo session, Dime asked Ace to sign his chest, then later had a tattooed it was kind of sweet in the Dime. It was kind of sweet in a Dimebag way.

A few weeks later, Ace sent me a personal note and a print of some of his computer art to say thanks. It might not sound like much, but in my twenty five years of Guitar World, almost no one ever did that. But that was Ace. He was cool.

He understood that when someone buys you a drink, the least you can do is give them a nod rip, buddy. And here is the cover. There's the cover from ninety three, Kissed Off, Ace Frehley tells all plus Dimebag Daryl and Snake Sabo pay tribute to King Ace. There it is from ninety three.

So that was a great post. Now I want to get to some of the clips that were shared, in no particular order really, just let's start with James Campion. And James wrote a great book. James been on the podcast before, a great friend of the show.

Well, James wrote a great book called Shouted Out Loud, the Story of KISS's Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon. So I reached out to James to give his thoughts on the passing of Ace Frehley. Here it is.

Hi, this is James Campion, and I'm speaking to you from a hotel room in Nashville, Tennessee. It's pretty fitting.

Thanks to my friend Eric from the Booked On Rock podcast for asking me to say a few words about the passing of Ace Frehley, who obviously was a great musician and. Certainly a character. A couple of things I want to say. His passing, of course, for someone of my generation.

I'm sixty three now. My first KISS record was KISS Alive!, and I got it when I was thirteen, so that's fifty years ago. And when we were kids, I mean, if you were a Kiss fan, you were in. You were all in.

And Ace was always the coolest and you could always sing his guitar solos. To this day, I could do it, and I told that when I interviewed him in 2016. We spent a little over an hour in a hotel room and it was great. He was clean and sober, and he was working.

He had a new album out, and we talked about everything, and I remember telling him I always sing his solos and he wanted to know which ones. He was excited, you know, to hear something like that from a music journalist or just a fan. So yeah, his passing for this generation, I tell the story all the time. I have a new book out on Prince called Revolution, and I talk about how I wrote his eulogy for the Aquarium Weekly back in 2016, And most of that eulogy is me really eutilizing, utilizing, eulogizing.

I can get that out my twenties, and that's kind of the way it is for a lot of people when a musician of this caliber, from your childhood to your twenties passes, like part of you is gone. So and the last thing I want to say, what Eric asked me to comment on, is Ace's legacy. Anybody who knows how guitar players from the seventies have influenced so many musicians, I mean, Ace is right up there, especially for the grunge era a lot of those musicians. I wrote about it in my book Shout It Out Loud by the way, a book that Ace loved about the making of Destroyer, about how that whole generation of the early nineties really were influenced greatly by Ace.

And a lot of the solos you hear, like on Pearl Jam records and other things are just right from his bag of tricks. So Ace Frehley was a great character, wonderful musician, and he certainly will be missed. So once again, thanks for book. Don Rock for asking me and allowing me to talk a little bit about Ace Frehley, my old Bronx buddy.

Anytime I always saw me, always said, forget about it. We love you Ace Peace.

Okay. Next up we have Martin Popoff. Martin's been on the show so many times I can't even keep count. And one of the books he wrote is KISS at 50 for Motor Books. So I reached out to Martin and he did send over this video clip which he ran initially on his YouTube channel, So let's check it out. Here he is talking about the passing of Ace Frehley.

Martin Popoff here from the Contrarians. It's a sad day. We've got to pay tribute to one of our fallen heroes. Here.

Ace Frehley died at the age of seventy four born April twenty seventh, nineteen fifty one. My birthdays April twenty eight, so the day before. And I always always liked that as well. The thing I.

Remember about Ace is that he seemed to always be available for us for the press, and you would talk to him, and he was unfiltered, just to he he was always cheerful in interviews. He's got that classic Ace laugh. He always puts you at ease. You know.

He didn't mythologize KISSso much. You know, he would he would answer your questions patiently on stuff, but he didn't want to make out like like you know, everything they did was a godly situation sort of thing. He just showed up, did his thing and what was his thing. So you know, Ace was uh was raised on all the guitar grades you think of the British Post British Blues boom guys or British Blues boom guys, your your Eric Clapton's and Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck and Jimmy Hendrix and free and all that stuff.

Loved a Zeppelin, you know, he he tried and uh and loved the look of and and a lot of different acts is over the years. But uh, you know, we remember him with the Gibson Les Paul Starburst. He was a big proponent of the Les Paul and he had this really cool lyrical style where he was kind of it was very rhythmic what he did solo wise, but it was also kind of melodic and songful phrasing, a lot of a lot of neat spaces in it. People remembered his his solos.

And I can tell you another thing about you know, interviewing a lot of a lot of say, you know, big metal stars, hard rock stars of the eighties, so many of them loved Ason Where and were raised on Ace. You think of the Anthrax guys, you think of dimebag Daryl. But you know, I I if I, if I worked on a list of this, I could probably come up with twenty people who mentioned Ace as a main, main influence. And I've always said this about KISS in general, that that really there's the second most influential band or inspirational band in all of rock after the Beatles.

And I'm just I'm just going on what people tell me about, you know, just being stung by the heavy metal b h so to speak, maybe a destroyer for a lot of people of a certain age kind of thing, or or the a live album, right, you know, just despite despite all his troubles over the years, and uh you know, sometimes it might have been the drugs or the booze talking where. Uh you know, maybe he didn't come off so good to to the fans or on stage or whatever. He like I say, he was unfiltered and he kept at it, and he was very apologetic for those years as well. I remember in some interviews I did with him, you can tell there was a change and change in him, and you know, he and he reflected and he worked on his own personality over the years.

So that was that was good to see. So sadly gone too soon at the age of seventy four. October sixteenth, twenty twenty five. Go listen to some Ace.

Next, we have Susan Messino, who's interviewed so many musicians and she's written some great books as well. On ACDC, she has one titled Rock and Roll Fantasy, My Life in Times with ACDC, Van Hilen and KISS, so she goes back aways with the guys from KISS. So asked her to share her thoughts on Ace Frehley. Hi, my name is Susan Messino.

I am a rock journalist and an author, and I had the pleasure of meeting, interviewing, and partying with Ace Frehley after he played a show here in Madison, Wisconsin in December of nineteen seventy seven. It was a no interviews policy, yet he let me ask him some questions, so I had quotes from my article. He was so funny and didn't care about the rules naturally, and he was an amazing person, very very funny, very kind, and we laughed a lot that night, believe me. And I'm going to miss him.

He was an incredible guitar player, singer, songwriter, definitely one of a kind, and I will miss him, as the rest of his family, fans and friends will. God bless you. Ace. All right up next to Chris Epting.

Chris recently was on the show to talk about all the great books he's written. He's written so many of them, but one of his early books is titled All I Need to Know I Learned from KISS Life Lessons from the Hottest Band in the Land. I reached out to Chris to get his thoughts on the passing of aase. Here's what he had.

Hi. My name is Chris Septing. I'm an author and a music journalist. And of all the people I interviewed over the years, Ace Frehley was always a favorite.

I grew up kind of a first generation KISS fan, KISS Army member, starting in nineteen seventy five, right when KISS Alive! came out. It was about eleven or twelve years old, and I just I got to know all the guys in Kiss over the years as a journalist, but Ace was always the most unfiltered, the most outrageous, the funniest, and I thought the one who really didn't care what he said in terms of worrying about how others might feel. He was just open and honest and in the moment, depending on what was going on, which is you know, unfortunately not most of what you get, especially today with publicists and handlers and people always very concerned. But a Ace just always cut through everything with that trademark laugh and wit, and I miss him along with the rest of the world.

Now here's one from Steve Roth, front of the podcast, senior marketing manager at Motor Books. And Steve's been in the business for a while, the book publishing business, the music book publishing business, but he's also worked in the music business as well, and he has a good story about working with Ace, going back to when Ace had his album Anomaly, and he shared Steve shared the story on Facebook, so I reached out to him and see if he could share this story on video as well. So here's what Steve had to say. Hey, Eric, Steve Roth from the DLR cast and another cool rock podcast here, and like seemingly everyone we know really bummed out about the passing of Ace Frehley and been thinking a lot about him, and certainly playing a lot of Ace's music and solo stuff, especially playing a lot of KISS stuff and all his solo albums, and I just I got to thinking a lot about Ace, and in particular remembering that Ace was the first member of kiss that I really gravitated to, and I guess you could say he was my favorite member back then, and even before I heard, even before I was cognizant or even really knew much about KISS's music, their look just certainly appealed to me.

But Ace's whole look, the space, the space costumes and the makeup, I just fell in love with that and always dug that look far more than I did Gene's or Paul's or Peter's. I think maybe just my love of comic books. It just I don't know. That's just hit me in a much different way than any of the other guys did.

And Ace to me always seemed like he was such an approachable and seemed like such a really nice guy right and certainly his public persona, but I had the pleasure of spending some time with him. He just always seemed like a down earth, regular guy from the Bronx, right. It certainly sounded like one, and I had the pleasure of spending a little bit of time with Ace back. I worked for the company that put out the Anomaly record.

I worked for the record label that did. That record back in two thousand and nine, which was his first albums in ten years, since twenty years, sorry, since nineteen eighty nine's trouble Walking, And it was an absolute thrill being a huge KISS fan and being an eighth reeally fan to be sitting across a conference stable from him while he was playing us songs that would end up on that record, and he was just self effacing and super nice and super enthusiastic. And I had the distinct pleasure of spending a little bit more time with him on the promotional tour for that album, which we did some radio stuff and visited some record stores, and the signings were a blast. He was really funny, just really happy to be doing that and also well, really late, but that's okay.

The fans waited and Ace just signed anything and everything and was just so happy and really appreciative, and you could tell he was so happy, and if you remember those interviews from back then, he was just really enthused to get some terrific new music out there in front of the fans again and to go out and play some new music. And he was, like I said, he was very appreciative of our efforts. Called me over at the end of this one in store at this one signing and said, Hey, if you ever need anything, here's my cell phone number, give me a call sometime, to which I was just kind of dumbfounded that he's really would give me a cell phone number. But you know, he thanked me for putting these things together for him, and just was that sort of regular guy where, hey, if you need me to do anything else, here's my cell phone number.

So you know. The other thing too, is I got to thinking a lot about a awful lot about Ace's impact and influence, and I think he was as influential as Eddie Van Halen was, and Eddie was certainly hugely influential, and a whole generation guitar players that came up through the late seventies in the eighties, certainly he had a massive influence on any number of Sunset strip hair metal bands, the hard rock bands of that era. But I think if you look at really the gen Z folks, the folks that came of age in the late eighties and really their careers blew up in the nineties, namely basically the entire grunge generation and all those grunch bands, all of them, they probably mentioned, all of them were hugely influenced by Ace. They you know, from Pearl Jam to Smashing Pumpkins, to Alison Chains to I mean Stone Temple Pilots, all of those guys.

If they haven't mentioned, I'd be shocked if you can find an invention with any of those guys back then where they didn't say that. They were huge KISS fans and Ace was a huge influence for them, a huge influence on them. And that's why I think he was as influential as onto so many people. I mean, all those people had KISS Alive!.

They all said, just about every one of them said their first album they remember getting was KISS Alive!, right, And of course KISS had come along a little bit before. Kiss was a few years ahead of timing wise ahead of Van Halen. But still, I just think, you know, Ace's guitar playing was super accessible. I think for so many of those people, and I just I love Van Halen, of course.

And one of the things I always loved about Ace though, is that was that massively fat tone that he had to those Gibson lest pauls, and I also loved all of his solos kind of give me a warm feeling inside. I always call that kind of descending sort of flourish that he does in the solos, everything from Geez, I mean, if you listen to Deuce his solo Induced to his solo in ten Thousand Volts, the title cut of his last Awesome record, if you hit hear that flow floursh I always called it descending little run the falling downstairs riff because it's just kind of like it feels like he's going to like kind of lose control a little bit, and he doesn't, And it's just all his solos are so memorable. He always played for the song, They always fit the song. It was never about trying to trying to blow anybody away with his guitar playing.

He just had that tone in a fantastic sense of rhythm, and his riffing was just was just incredible and one of the things I'm super thankful for, as with Ace in particular is that he provided he put out so much great music the last fifteen years of his life or so right, and certainly he did more in those years than all the members of KISS, everybody else in KISS past and present combined. Did I mean what? Did He put out four or five solo albums plus two of the Oranges Origins records, Volume one and Volume two, and apparently was working on starting to work out a Volume three, I guess before we passed. And all those solo records are great, man, I absolutely love them. And that's the other thing that reminds me.

One last point about ACE two is at Ace more than anybody else. And KISS and KISS collectively always stayed true to the music. He never went disco, never tried country, never said he wanted to be Billy Corgan and go grunge. He never followed the fads.

All of his records just there's a through line, and that is blues based Hendricks inspired late sixties early seventies kick ass rock and roll. And you hear that from from the Frehley's Comet records. Yeah, there was some synthesizer in some of them, some keyboards, but they were of the time. But there.

You couldn't call them hair metal. You couldn't say he was chasing some sort of friend all the way through to Anomaly, Space Invader, Spaceman ten thousand volts, and certainly when those origins records where he was really paying just great trip. You're doing fantastic cover versions. I mean, I got thirty Days in the whole with Robin Zandern vocals, Killer, what was it? Fire and Water with Paul Stanley singing, just all great stuff and just there's so many reasons while why Ace will be missed and why I'm really sad about his passing, but more than anything else is just the music and that we're never going to be able to see him play live again, and you know, won't know what he'll We'll never know again what he could come up with musically and creatively.

So rest in peace, Rest in power, Ace Frehley man. Am I glad I got to discover so all of your music, man, Thank you. Another one from Julian Gil Julian doesn't get any better. As far as KISSauthors.

Julian's written I think close to forty KISSbooks. He's amazing, He's got so many books on the tours, on albums, you name it, he's got a book on it. He's got a book on music from the Elder, Crazy Nights, amazing author. I had him on to talk about his book on Aerosmith at one point, I'd love to have him to talk about all his great KISS books.

I reached out to Julian. He responded with a great tribute to Ace. I asked, basically, what are his thoughts on aces passing, any memories of interviewing Ace for his books, and what Ace's legacy is. Here's what he had to say.

What are my thoughts on Ace Fairley's passing. It's still a very raw and difficult situation to feel that I can adequately put it into words. On the show yesterday, I noted that Ace lost his battle with gravity, and that almost seemed flippant, yet ironically, in the back of my head I heard his cackle going into a laugh loop. It's just so tremendously sad at seventy four years old.

Now we think of that as not being old. The work that people do into their eighties and longer, especially artists, writers, unfortunately politicians means that old starts much later than it did when we were kids. No everyone was old when you're a kid. So my immediate thoughts are like, wow, one of the founding members of KISS is now gone at a time when the Candy Center was going to honor that group and that lineup specifically in a meaningful manner.

And regardless of what anyone thinks about that honor, I know that it meant a lot to Ace. I'm sitting here just thinking about how I try and frame my thoughts, and again they're whirling around, like like I'm lost in the void still. But it's so sad to think that in the autumn of twenty twenty five, KISS is essentially back to what it was us in the autumn of nineteen seventy two prior to Ace joining the group. They're a trio again.

I would hope in the years that come that there can be more celebration of KISS and its members, not the sniping, not the negativity, and not lingering on the past. What we're left with is a vivid catalog of music, his exceptional playing and his infectious laugh. And I think, as always happens with anyone's notable passing, lost interviews come to surface things that have been hidden in the midst of time, suddenly they jog someone's memory and they decide that now is an appropriate time to share. So I think Pandora's box has indeed been opened in a way that we're going to learn quite a bit more about Ace.

Failely, my interactions with Ace weren't done, and they're left incomplete, which is very sad. But the ones that were complete, notably the interview I did with him for the liner notes for the Argents one in Argents two releases in twenty twenty. It was a reissue for Origins one on Picture Disc leave a very fond memory of the whole process involved of doing those liner notes and interviewing him and reminding him that this wasn't a fan interview or a podcast, that this was an interview for his product, which was strictly related to his product. And I sure got quite a few laughs.

I just hearing Ace talk in the Ace voice, just hearing Ace laugh at some of his own stories, but also hearing him be very serious about the music that he was talking about. To hear the passion of what I assumed was a very similar teen Ace in the nineteen sixties when he was learning his craft and learning his trade and he remained a music fan. He remained a fan of a lot of the same music as we all do that when we were growing up, So that passion still burned fiercely for him even into you know, these latter years of creativity. And what a great thing for Ace in a way that he put out a very well received studio album, ten thousand Vaults, that he had kept working in the post KISSperiod after two thousand and two, that he had continued to tour probably too much, well into his seventies.

And I'm just very grateful that I was able to see him during this final run of shows that he ultimately ended up doing. And that's a reminder to all of us to never put off doing something today, because tomorrow isn't guaranteed. What should be remembered for the most, I mean, his place in rock history is secure. He's part of an iconic group.

He wrote riffs that told stories that required feel over technical expertise. He was a blue collar player. He was someone who spoke very well within a limited musical vocabulary, and he was someone who continued to speak through that vocabulary throughout his whole career. So there's a lot of consistency between his first release material and his final release material.

When you go back to a live obviously that's going to be you know, the cornerstone of his memory, for his memorial is just that sonic masterpiece of KISSlive in concert at the start of their heyday. If you listen to a live too, Yeah, you listen to Frelie's comments, you listen to anomaly, go back and listen again. Ace has left the planet, but his music has not. And as I always say, when anyone of note in the music industry departs, don't be too sad.

Be happy that you are here at the same time as they, and remember that their music is just push play away. Thank you. One more tribute from Darren Paltrowitz. He's the host of The Paltrow Cast.

He's got some thoughts on the passing of Ace Frehley as well. Hey Eric, it is your friend Darren Paltwittz and the Paltrow Cast of Darren Paltrowitz, the DLR Cast and DLR book How Daily Roth Changed the World. Thank you for letting me get those plugs in. So, the loss of Ace Frehley huge impact on multiple levels.

The first thing is that KISS is and has been such a mainstream thing. I can't think of a lot of artists who would get a crossover movie with Scooby Doo for example, Hello Kitty, Merchandise, etc. So we're talking about a band and a brand that had a global impact and has had a global impact for fifty eighth years. But a lot of people.

Considered the decline of KISS the departure of Ace in the early eighties. After Ace left the band, the band wasn't able to really tour the US and most international markets anymore, wasn't having the hits that it used to have. People didn't want the merchandise until Ace came back into the band in the mid nineties. So the revitalization of Kiss was largely about Ace now putting that commercialism into great guitar player influenced generations.

Of guitar players. When you see Rivers Cuomo from Weeza wearing that lightning bulk guitar strap which they mentioned in the song Back to the Shack, which Ace is mentioned in the song in the Garage, clearly an impact of Weezer, and Weezer itself was an influential band, but a lot of the grunge bands of the bands we call grunge, Nirvana, Pearl, Jam Allison, Chains, Soundgarden. They've all talked about Ace being an influence and KISS being an early influence. If you think about a generation before that, Slash Zack Wilde, John five, who even though he's originally a hairband guy, he's now at his commercial peak now.

Either way, Big Ace fan played on some Ace records and so forth, So his guitar playing mattered the visuals of what he did. There was no guitar player who looked like him before that, and definitely a lot of people wanted to play guitar based on just how he looked. In the a lot gatefold vinyl release his solo album, I believe the nineteen seventy eight one was the most successful KISS solo album by far, and ten thousand vaults which came out within the past few years. That was sort of a revitalization of his solo career.

Curious to see what happens with the sessions of the album that he was making at the time of his death. But a couple of other things about Ace that strike me first. I think that he was the funniest member of KISS. His interviews were great, The Tom Snyder nineteen seventy nine episode never gets old for me.

Watch that on YouTube if you've never seen that. As great as Ace was as a guitar player, I don't think the majority of people realize what a talented graphic artist and graphic designer he was. And he was up on computers way before a lot of his peers did. There's a commercial endorsement that he did in the nineteen eighties.

I forget the brand of computer, but that kind of kicked off decades of him loving computers and being up on that kind of thing. And another thing to speak of with regard to Ace is I had the pleasure of interviewing him three times. The third time was zoom based. It was on video, and I didn't put out the whole interview.

There are certain things he said that were off the record before we went on the record, and I'm going to keep those close. But the reason I mentioned that is because he's very honest. I think that Ace was tired of answering questions along the lines of when did you start playing guitar, why did you start playing guitar, who were your influences, why did you leave KISS those kinds of things. Bored him to tears, but I think that he was up on new bands, new technology.

He was up on things, and people didn't always ask him about those things. So I really enjoy talking to him all three of those times. I found it to be very pleasant, more pleasant than the majority of people at his level. When I speak with him, he didn't seem like he was phoning it in.

So if I recap everything, he influenced generations of people, I love the music. All these years later. He was really nice to me, and I look forward to what comes out from the sessions of that last album that he was making at the time of his passing. Condolences to his friends and family, and thank you for fiftyish years of great art.

Ace. So those are some of the thoughts from some authors, journalists, people in the business who worked with Ace, knew him, wrote about him, and the guy was one of a kind. You know, when they say they broke the mold, these are the types of people that they're referring to when they came up with that phrase. They broke the mold when they made Ace Frehley.

Ace is going to be around forever, through his music, through the videos, to all the funny moments that he had when the guy was one of a kind, no doubt. So if you want to honor Ace, just remember the laughs, Remember the great music that he created. Kick ass guitarist, play KISS the fans, celebrate the music, celebrate the man, the hilarious stories, you know, all the great guitar work that he's done over the years with KISS solo. Thoughts going out to his family.

He has a daughter. I believe her name is Monique, So thoughts going out to her. And also make sure you pick up a copy of Ace's book. I almost forgot to mention this book.

He put out No Regrets, and it's got some great stories in there. And he did talk about he wanted to put out another book because he had more stories to tell. Maybe somebody else will be able to do it on his behalf. We'll see, but that's one worth getting.

So Ace, God bless you man. I hope you're rocking in heaven. You were the shit. Like I said, you had that rock and roll, cool, funny as hell.

There will be no one like you, no one before you, and nobody will be like you from this point on. Ace Frehley, rest in peace. See you guys.