Notes from NE Lincs

‘I’m still alive…’, that’s what Pearl Jam once sang, and no, I am not typing that just because I haven’t posted much later – rather because this week marked 50 years since the release of KISS’ career-changing double live album Alive.

Anyone who knows me, knows I am a huge KISS fan, but it wasn’t always that way. Early teenage me only knew KISS for their big UK hits, ‘Crazy Crazy Nights’ and ‘God Gave Rock n’ Roll to You II’ – great songs in their own right but KISS didn’t bother the UK charts enough for me to really get a handle on them, let alone find out about their entirely different face-painted past.

But my KISS journey doesn’t really start with those two songs. If you had a pulse in the early-90s, chances are you were into Nirvana and the grunge movement. I was fully on board the Seattle train and, when it comes to music, if I like it, I have to immerse myself in it. So it wasn’t unusual to take a trip down the road to Wonderland’s Indoor Sunday Market, where there was a tape and CD stall tucked away in the corner. Beyond the racks of the latest chart toppers, and the swathes of greatest hits compilations from the stars of yesteryear was a bootleg section. 

Hey Bootlegger

I guess the closest we would get to bootlegs nowadays is rare footage on YouTube, but for many decades they were a treasure trove of music goodness for fans across the globe. Nirvana were particular beneficiaries of this. To my ears, a lot of their best tracks never made it to album – they were either unreleased (later to be included on the ‘With the Lights Out’ boxset), played for radio sessions, or released on B-sides that weren’t that easy to find. This coupled with the fact that their live shows weren’t particularly regimental in their set list, meant that Nirvana bootlegs were chock full of great songs, live rarities, and TV appearances that would largely go unheard until the internet took over our lives.

One such cassette (long since consigned to the dustbin) had a catchy little number on it called ‘Do You Love Me?’ – a perfect two-and-a-half minute pop rock song that I constantly kept rewinding to for another listen. A look at the hastily photocopied insert showed in very small writing that this was ‘A cover of a KISS song’. Even at 13, I understood that KISS and Nirvana didn’t quite meet in the same circles, one sang about teenage angst and sleeping underneath bridges, the other sang about playing loud guitar and having a good time. Little did I know that practically the entire grunge movement called upon the fearsome foursome from New York as an influence.

Dial N for Nervous

Fast forward a couple of months and I stood in my local record store, which was then called Nervous Records on Hainton Avenue in Grimsby. I’ve gone on a grey, overcast Saturday morning with a couple of friends from school to get some cheap albums to add to our ever-growing collections. Top of the agenda is Nirvana of course, but whilst the others perused the N section, I was drawn down the row to K – seeing the word KISS emblazoned in permanent marker along the top. “KISS,” I exclaimed louder than I intended, “one of their songs is on a Nirvana bootleg that I have at home” – even back then I was always looking for an opportunity to exert my musical knowledge superiority. 

“KISS?”, replied the man behind the counter, “have you got any of their records?”

“Erm, no,” came my cautious reply.

“Well come over here and have a look at this…”.

I eagerly bounded over to said counter as the man reached onto the shelves behind him, pulling down a record I had never seen before.

“If you’re going to get into KISS, then you need to start here,” he exclaimed.

The question wasn’t whether I was going to get into KISS – it was how much was I going to get into KISS, and the answer is ‘a lot’. For on the desk in front of me, in its plastic sleeve, was an album I was unprepared for. The cover was dark and on it were four mysterious figures in facepaint, pulling the most amazing shapes known to man, smoke billowing from behind them like the stage was ablaze (it was…with the ferocity of rock n’ roll) – this looked (and believe me is) like the greatest rock show the world had ever seen.

I hesitated: “That doesn’t look like KISS,” I asked curiously.

“Ah, that’s because this is from before they took their makeup off”, the man replied confidently. “Want to give it a spin?”

“Yeah, go on then,” I replied. And thus a 30-plus year love affair began with my very first KISS in a dark, dingy shop down the backstreets of Grimsby. Sounds like something out of a Grange Hill knock-off but this was KISS Alive!, astonishingly already coming up to its 20th anniversary, even at that point.

It’s Alive!

Out came the first record from the sleeve. The needle hit the groove and the hiss was soon punctuated by the cry of: “You Wanted the Best, and you got it – the hottest band in the land…KISS”. Yes, I did want the best, and now I’ve got them. The opening riff of ‘Deuce’ kicked out, with enough pyro to mark Guy Fawkes Night, before Gene Simmons growled “Get up, and get your grandma out of here.” – it sounded like the greatest experience on earth, the imagination ran wild at what it would have looked like in person.

By the time Paul Stanley squealed “I know a thing or two about her” on second track Strutter, I was hooked for life. Riffs to melt your face, melodies that you could dance to, bass so low in the mix that it had its own postcode, a drum beat that pounded your heart, and guitar solos that could generate enough electricity to power a small city – and everyone sang. And all I could do was stare agog at the cover. Who were they? What were they? This is KISS?! These were songs to wash away the teenage angst and the small town blues, this was about rocking and rolling all night and then partying every day.

“Want it?”, asked the man behind the counter. At the princely sum of £9.99, I could hardly say ‘no’. “Yes”, I blurted out, again a little too loudly and with perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm, before gathering my thoughts. “Does it have all their best songs on it?”, I queried.

“You’re going to want this one,” replied the shop owner, running around to his CD racks and pulling out an already well-worn version of Double Platinum – one of the many KISS greatest hits selections. 

“Do you have anything else?”, I eagerly exclaimed. 

“What about a poster?”, came the reply. And out came a door-sized image of Gene Simmons from the inside of the Alive II cover – you know the one. For the princely investment of £15, I was now enrolled in the KISS Army – a loyal footsoldier to the very end.

Reporting for duty

For the next month, Alive wasn’t off my turntable, Double Platinum not out of the Discman. Indeed, I am listening to Alive right now as I type this, resisting the urge to get up and air guitar to C’Mon and Love Me. But the 50th Anniversary of Alive isn’t just about an album, it’s about that KISS Army movement, and the realisation that we came precariously close to having none of it all.

Unbeknown to me at the time, Alive was KISS’ first live album and fourth overall – their first three studio albums had flopped like a fish on Grimsby Docks frantically trying to work its way back into the sea. I still don’t know why they flopped. The self-titled debut is still one of my favourite debut albums of all-time. I would put it up there with The Doors, Kill ‘Em All, and Appetite for Destruction – a stone cold classic from start to finish – the uptempo rock opening of Strutter, through the wall of sound that is Firehouse, the rumbling bass of 100,000 years, and the bombastic climax of Black Diamond – you’ll work hard to find a better set of songs on a debut set.

Granted Hotter Than Hell has its production issues. But it’s grittier, heavier, and really gives KISS their glitz and grime street cred. Whilst on the short side, Dressed to Kill is packed with what should be sure-fire hits, the aforementioned C’Mon and Love Me, the juxtaposition of Rock Bottom, and the studio version of Rock n’ Roll All Nite. Perhaps it was the facepaint, but the American record buying audience didn’t share the same love for the Starchild, Demon, Spaceman, and Cat that I eventually would – stranger still when those same songs go onto become live staples of the band over their 50-year career.

The gamble that paid off

So, Alive was really the last throw of the dice from the band’s record company Casablanca. One thing KISS had done was develop a loyal and rabid live fan base. Translate that onto a record and you could be onto a winner. If not, then it’s time to wipe off the face paint and hang up the platform boots.

Was it ever a winner; top 10, multiplatinum, with a top 10 single in the live version of Rock n’ Roll All Nite to boot. The KISS phenomenon was now in full swing, with no looking back. I own more copies of Alive than any other in my record collection, and hopefully that will grow by the year’s end! I’ve worn the t-shirt, owned the action figures, watched the concert video – Alive didn’t just change the lives of the four men under the facepaint but to the millions around the world who would go on to enjoy KISS’ music.

And this is something that doesn’t get discussed enough in my eyes. Alive’s influential impact on music and wider pop culture. Talk about influential albums and the same old ones are trotted out; Dylan, the Beatles, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Never Mind the Bollocks, but never Alive. But ask a generation of musicians which album made them want to pick up a guitar or front a band, and the majority of them will say ‘Alive by KISS’. Who wouldn’t be? Just as I was captivated by the cover, the sounds, and presentation on a back street in Grimsby in the nineties, then so were countless others in towns and cities across America in the seventies – those people grew up to be in your favourite bands of the late-eighties and nineties.

Cultural significance

Hence, the opening line to this article. Pearl Jam are huge KISS fans. Kurt Cobain sampled the opening of Alive on Montage of Heck. The KISS My Ass tribute album of the early-nineties contained a smorgasbord of talent from Lenny Kravitz to Anthrax, Garth Brooks to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Tom Morello’s induction speech from KISS’ long-awaited enshrining to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame sends shivers down the spine. Stone Temple Pilots did a Halloween show in KISS makeup, and a plethora of hard rock and heavy metal live albums followed the Alive blueprint, from Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous through Judas Priest’s Unleashed in the East. Sebastian Bach, John 5, and Chris Jericho are bigger fans than I am – the latter’s anecdotes about Paul Stanley’s stage raps between songs are hilarious. Alive leaves a huge footprint on the music landscape.

But it’s cool to hate KISS. Even 50 years on. Was the album touched up in the studio? Of course it was. Dare I say that the majority of live albums were. But it did everything that it was meant to – take the ‘in-your-face’ nature of a KISS concert and transport it into bedrooms and eardrums across the world. 

“We’re gonna have a rock n’ roll party tonight”. That we did…and then some.