They pulled on their platform boots and slapped on the makeup when everybody else was discarding theirs. Their albums were subject to poor production, scathing reviews, and commercial indifference. Other bands refused to have them as their opening act. Their record company was up against the wall. By all reasoning, they should have become one of the ‘lost’ bands of the 1970s, like the Harlots of 42nd Street or the Hollywood Stars. Yet in 1975 Kiss unexpectedly came Alive! and by the following year, they were the biggest rock and roll band
and brand
in America. This is a journey through Kiss’s first and most storied decade. It is the story of the four men behind the masks, and the music they made, the studio albums, the legendary live albums, and of one of the greatest rock follies in music history, the four simultaneously released solo album. Along the way, it tells of the costumes and the concerts, the merchandise and the Marvel comic books, the television appearances and the disastrous 1978 movie, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. And having bestrode the 1970s like an unstoppable colossus, it ends with Kiss under siege, beset by changing public taste without, and combustible personalities within. AUTHOR: Peter Gallagher is a regular contributor to the British music magazine Shindig!, and the author of two previous books for Sonicbond, Marc Bolan, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and T. Rex: Every Album, Every Song, and Warren Zevon: Every Album, Every Song. His fiction has been published in Writing Magazine and The London Reader, and he is currently working on a novel set in the Weimar Republic, which he hopes will see publication sometime before the cows come home. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.