Kiss may have been one of the biggest-selling acts of the '70s, but it will always be known, above all else, as the band without a face. Until 1983, when the group removed its distinctive comic-book makeup, the four members' faces supposedly had never been photographed (although pictures of them applying their makeup for an early photo session ran in Creem magazine in the early '80s). Theatrics and basic hard rock have been Kiss' main calling card. The quartet formed in the heyday of glitter and rock theater, and it set out to define, at first, evil cartoon-character personas, highlighted by
Gene Simmons' bass-plying, fire-breathing, (stage) blood-spewing ghoul.
The group was founded by Simmons and
Stanley, who met in a band in 1970. They found
Criss through his ad in Rolling Stone. After rehearsing as a trio, the group took out an ad in the Village Voice for a guitarist with "flash and balls" and discovered
Ace Frehley. At the time, they were all working dead-end jobs, with the exception of Simmons, who taught school at P.S. 75 in Manhattan. Their visual image and game plan were in place from the start. After a few New York shows, Kiss met independent television director Bill Aucoin, who helped the group get a deal with Casablanca Records.
The critics hissed at the anonymous heavy-metal thud rock on the band's first three albums and howled at its mock-threatening image. Nonetheless, Kiss hit it off with its fans (the Kiss Army) from the very start. After some hard financial times (an entire 1975 tour was reportedly financed on Aucoin's American Express card), the band took off with Alive (#9, 1975), which contained the Top 20 hit "Rock and Roll All Nite."
In 1976 the band's sound and image shifted toward not necessarily softer but certainly more commercial fare, beginning with Criss' ballad "Beth" (#7, 1976), a million-seller that he wrote for his wife, Lydia. Accordingly, Kiss' audience grew from mostly male adolescent heavy-metal fans to include more teenyboppers. As the group racked up more and more platinum records - six between 1976 and 1979 - it became increasingly less threatening. Young fans were frequently photographed wearing the makeup of their favorite Kiss member.
On June 28, 1977, Marvel Comics published a Kiss comic book. The red ink used supposedly contained a small amount of blood from the band members themselves. It sold over 400,000 copies. In the fall of 1978 NBC broadcast a feature-length animated cartoon entitled Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, and Marvel issued a second Kiss comic. But the group's popularity was beginning to wane. Four simultaneously released solo LPs sold poorly - Frehley's was most popular - although the group had several hit singles, including the disco-metal oddity "I Was Made for Loving You" (#16, 1979). In 1980 Criss left for a solo career. He was replaced by Eric Carr, who drummed into the '90s but died of cancer at age 41. The group then briefly changed its image, abandoning the comic-book characters for a New Romantic-influenced look. Music From "The Elder," an overambitious concept album, featured songs cowritten by Lou Reed and was the group's first album not to go gold. Kiss quickly reverted to its ghoul makeup and primitive hard-rock music, and Creatures of the Night eventually sold 500,000 copies and was certified gold.
What to do? Change image again. LickIt Up (#24, 1983) depicted the group (now with Vinnie Vincent in place of Frehley) without its makeup and sparked a commercial resurgence. By the early '90s, Kiss had sold more than 70 million albums. And as proof that in rock & roll anyone can become a legend if he sticks around long enough, 1994 saw the release of Kiss My Ass, on which artists as diverse as
Garth Brooks, Lenny Kravitz, and
Anthrax recorded their favorite Kiss songs as a tribute to the band critics loved to hate.
The success of the album anticipated the 1996 reunion of the original Kiss for the taping of MTV's Unplugged (#15, 1996), which in turn led to a full-on reunion tour - the year's highest-grossing concert attraction - complete with makeup, stage blood, and pyrotechnics. With Carnival of Souls (#27, 1997) already recorded, Kulick and Singer left and the recombinant Kiss released Psycho-Circus (#3, 1998), feeding interest in what the band claimed was a 2000 farewell tour. Whether or not Kiss is kaput, the band's legacy is ensured by the savvy merchandising of its instantly recognizable, cartoonish image, which has inspired pinball games, plastic action figures and comic book spinoffs. Meanwhile, Simmons has enjoyed a long-term second career playing movie villains. He appeared, with the original band, in the 1999 film Detroit Rock City, a teen comedy about the misadventures of a Kiss fan (Edward Furlong) en route to a big Detroit show.
