Urban Looks At The Kiss Solo Albums
For a long time I have wanted to do something with Kiss's solo albums but never really thought much about it and as a result I been holding this off for ages.
Last Christmas my sister bought me Larry Harris's book '...And Party Every Day' which is about his time being 2nd in command at Casablanca Records in the 70s. With Kiss being Casablanca's main act and a large portion of the book being dedicated to them I found out quite a lot about the behind the scenes workings as to how the 4 solo albums came about now with that extra info at my disposal I feel motivated enough to give this a shot and to look at all four of those Kiss solo albums released all on the same day on September 18th 1978.
The allowance of solo albums had been a part of Kiss's contract with Casablanca but it wasn't until late 1977 after 6 straight albums & tours in 4 years that the label began hearing mutterings of certain members of the band wanting to do other things.
Peter Criss & Ace Frehley were the most vocal about this feeling that they were secondary to Gene & Paul. They because less involved with the band and more interested in various substances and all the other trappings that fame & fortune gives you.
Both Gene & Paul were against the idea at first, wanting to carry on releasing Kiss albums but when things started fall apart badly during the filming of Phantom Of The Park with Ace Frehley going AWOL during filming and Peter Criss getting into a serious car accident while drunk they decided that some time apart would do the band more good than harm.
The band reached a compromise that they would all release solo albums, all on the same day, all under the Kiss banner and all dedicated to the other 3 members of the band.
Casablanca Records were against the idea, they had already been bailed out of debt and just been taken over by Polygram Records. This kind of stunt was just the sort of thing that put them in debt in the first place, plus solo albums never sold well and were worth half an album on Kiss's contract. Meaning that 4 solo albums would mean that Kiss would have to deliver Casablanca 2 less albums to fulfil their contract. The label told Kiss manager Bill Aucoin they wouldn't do it, Aucoin told them that things had fallen apart in the band so badly if they didn't allow it to happen by the following year there wouldn't be a Kiss.
On the run up to the albums releases both the band & the record company got together to discuss the details. The record company wanted to press 500,000 copies of each album thus certifying them gold. Kiss wanted one million copies of each album pressed meaning they could say each album had gone platinum. As Kiss's last release had sold around the 5 million mark up to that point the record company relented and in total around 4.3 million copies of the albums were pressed.
It was a total disaster, each album barely scraped around 500,000 sales meaning that Casablanca were looking at over 2 million albums being unsold & thrown into bargain bins across the world. The company lost millions on both getting the albums out & promoting them heavily, Polygram were furious, Other record were furious as well because all their top stars would now want to know why their record companies wouldn't give them the same kind of deal that Casablanca gave Kiss.
Despite all the predictions that Gene & Paul's albums who would sell the most it was actually Ace Frehley who sold the most copies of his album (Just a few thousand more than Paul Stanley's) off the back of his minor hit single 'New York Groove'. Even more amazing when you consider that up till that point the only song Frehley had sung on with Kiss was 'Shock Me' on the Love Gun album.
Although the albums were a total failure I think you have to admire the balls to do something different. Despite what some people thing there is some great stuff on these albums. so I think I shall dig a little deeper into them.........