Gene, Ace, Peter & Paul: A detailed exploration of the 1978 KISS solo albums Kindle Edition

If you cannot get enough info about Kiss (like me), then this is another book you'll want to read. It's not the first and last word on the band's solo albums, however. It's mostly "extra" details. For example, nothing in this book comes from the band itself. But it fills in a lot of gaps.POSITIVES (in no particular order)1. It's rare to hear from all the hired guns involved in music production, so this book is a treat. The solo albums are a peculiar part of Kisstory, where they each assembled bands (so to speak) to showcase themselves individually. Lots of people helped make this happen and their views and experiences are not widely known.2. It's past time to reveal who recorded what on Kiss's albums. I learned plenty about who did what on these and other Kiss albums. Clearly 1978 was a turning point as the band started experimenting not only with the band's sound, but with lineups as well. I understand the band's desire to keep up appearances, but I hate believing band members played parts they didn't play. I had always assumed the members played their own instruments on their solo records, but that's not really the case. Glad to see this get cleared up.3. Aside from the solo albums, this book includes other Kiss related events of 1978 including: the Double Platinum record, the "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park" movie, the Kiss card set, and other things going on at that time.4. It's mostly interviews, so it's a very easy read.NEGATIVES (in no particular order)1. A book this size should have comments from the band members themselves. Either call them up for a 10 minute chat or include interviews from 1978 or quote other books. Something. Their absence stood out.2. As much as 100 pages could be trimmed from this book. So many of the interviewees had the same comments about their recording experience. "It was pleasant/low stress." "I did not meet any of the other band members/I have not spoken to them since." "I just played my part in a day and left." "The songs/albums were great." That kind of stuff. I guess Gill was hammering the point that the solo albums were better than people thought at the time.3. Other trim-worthy content: Too much space given to interview comments that had zero to do with Kiss. Is this book really the best place to hear about a choir director's career? How much do I need to know about a guest musician's other bands? Irrelevant conversation could go on for pages. I ended up skimming to find the Kiss related comments.4. Little or no discussion of why Kiss decided to do solo records. That's covered elsewhere, but needs discussed here. Was it really just to placate Ace? How did this evolve into a band event? What was the fallout? Are these records really the reason the band split up later? This book includes other kinds of context, but not in terms of band politics.5. The book is really just a compilation from other sources, mostly from KissFAQ.com. So you'd think they would have at least EDITED the "cut and paste" production. They didn't. It contains egregious typos--the kind where you scan a page on your computer (using OCR) but don't bother to read it to clean up the errors. I'm not talking the "to/too/two" variety; I'm talking the "mis(ake" variety. It is utterly inexcusable. No way anybody read this thing after it was pasted into Quark or Pagemaker or Word.MY COMMENT ABOUT THE SOLO RECORDSDespite being a major band event (4 simultaneous records from the hottest band in America), sales were lackluster compared to expectations. Each was "shipped platinum" (meaning over one million) but since shops could return unsold copies that doesn't mean much. Many were bought out of loyalty. When word of mouth got out, sales declined. So who is to blame? I blame Casablanca. This was a very confusing event. Gill's interviews show that the band never intended to release four "Kiss" albums. All but Ace Frehley intended to do a non-Kiss side project. So for the interviewees, the albums deserve more appreciation than they got because they were quality albums for what they were. But the fans had no idea this was NOT a "Kiss" project. The albums were marketed as a "Kiss" event, not four unrelated events. They were scheduled to be recorded and released simultaneously, as one event. They used the "Kiss" logo, making it appear to be official "Kiss" music. They even used the bands make-up faces on the covers in identical (color-coded) designs. How were the fans to NOT expect four "Kiss" albums? Ace fans got everything they wanted. But while Paul fans got some rocking tunes, much of it was too soft for "Kiss." Gene's fans expected more Almost Human but got Disney. And Peter's fans got an entire album of their dad's music. It's no wonder the solo albums struggled to meet expectations. The fans were sold one thing and bought another. They should have been told up front (not just in random interviews that most would never read) that these were intentional departures from Kiss--complete with non-Kiss covers. Maybe then we all wouldn't have felt cheated out of our money.Personally, I liked the albums at the time. But they still disappointed me. We all expected Gene's to be wall-to-wall God of Thunder. At a time when rock was getting harder, edgier, grittier....Kiss got softer, more sentimental. When you're a teenager, that's darn hard to defend.GRADESo I give this book 3 stars. I took a point away for redundant and irrelevant content, and I took another point away for very sloppy production. It looks like something assembled in Microsoft Word with no effort to fix the images in Photoshop to make them less bland looking. And, of course, the inexcusable lack of even basic editing.

The amount of info in this book is overwhelming. In a good way

Awesome book for those who want to know more about the Kiss solo albums from 1978

This book will be appreciated by the diehard KISS fans that want to know EVERYTHING about the solo albums. To be honest, the casual fan will be bored with parts of it, because it covers more than he/she would ever care about concerning these records. To rate it according to my personal entertainment, I'd give it 3½ stars, but I gave it five stars because it's researched so well, and for someone that IS interested in every minute detail about that era, this book is a must-have. The first four chapters are brief overviews of each of the solo albums - basics that most KISS fans already know. THEN IT GOES DEEP. This book not only identifies all of the backup and guest musicians, but those musicians' backgrounds as well, such as other bands they've played in, what well-known non-KISS songs they've played on prior to and since then, and their relationships with other musicians that played on the solo albums. It will tell you chart ratings (broken down into weeks) for each album as well as the singles from them. Where it applies, Ace and Paul mention some of the recording and instrumental techniques used, such as Ace recording the backward solo in "Speedin' Back to My Baby" and Paul's use of the e-bow. There are other statistics, even detailing the reasons some people who were asked to perform on or produce the albums and chose not to (or couldn't). It covers contract negotiations behind how the solo albums came to be. Of course, it wouldn't be complete without an extensive rundown of the many alternate and import versions out there, such as misprints, picture discs, and the "Best of Solo Albums" record. If that's not enough, there is a synopsis of each album, listing interesting facts about each track, song-by-song.Some parts seemed like filler, like quotes from magazine reviews of the albums, and a small amount dedicated to other happenings of 1978, like a list of other bands' now-classic albums released that year.It also briefly covers *non-solo album* KISS topics involving everything else they did that year, like KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, details on the Double Platinum album, and a bit about the KISS trading cards. Naturally, there is a list describing what picture is on each card from both sets.The only other negative thing I can say is that the proofreading is awful. Grammatical and spelling errors everywhere. Maybe they happened in transferring this to an e-book, I don't know.In closing, if you want to know everything possible about these albums, then definitely get this book. If you just like KISS but aren't fanatical about them (like me), you may find yourself skimming through parts of this.

Another great KISS book by the author lots of great insight to events leading up to the release of the solo albums.Thing that disappoints me is the Larry Harris interview criticism of the songs there are some great songs on them

This book goes well into detail on the solo albums. So much so, that it is not for the casual fan. Fortunately, I no casual fan. I was particularly happy to read the parts on Ace's album. Anton Fig & especially Eddie Kramer gave some very useful info.The general data on the albums is also very well researched and useful.A highly entertaining read and certainly recommendable for fans of the classic Kiss period!

very pleased

Love KISS and love the format of this book. Learned all sorts of things. I have bought his other book as well, but this is the best one.

Very interesting and detailed review of the solo albums