Ace Frehley Says It’s Easy to Get Kiss Alumni Together
Ace Frehley said it was easier than people might believe to reconnect with Kiss, as he explained how he arranged recent studio collaborations with former colleagues Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, and with current Kiss drummer Eric Singer.
His latest solo album, Spaceman, features a bass track by Simmons, who has two co-writing credits on the LP, while the pair recently toured together. Stanley appeared on 2016’s Origins, Vol. 1. A track recorded with Singer was held over from the new release.
Asked about reconnecting, Frehley told Guitar World that “it was really easy. Really simple. I’ve known Gene for 45 years, He’s one of my rock ’n’ roll brothers. He came over, sat down, started playing and I joined in. It was pretty matter-of-fact.”
He said he called Simmons and asked, "You wanna write a couple of songs with me?" "Everybody thinks there’s this mysterious thing you gotta do to get two Kiss guys together, you know?" he explained. "But we all have the others’ cell phone numbers and we just call each other. The same thing happened when I asked Paul to do the video and sing ‘Fire and Water.’ … It just happened. It was, ‘Yeah, I’d love to do it!’ ‘Okay, great. Let’s do it.’”
Frehley explained the decision to leave the blues-based track featuring Singer off Spaceman. “When I was picking songs, I’m kind of superstitious, and 40 years ago my 1978 solo album came out and that had nine songs, so I wanted to limit this one to nine songs too," he said. "So it came down to the instrumental [‘Quantum Flux’] or the blues song, and I ended up dropping the blues song. Because every album I’ve ever released has had an instrumental on it. So that was the thinking behind that. But you know, the blues track may end up on a bonus edition.”