9/21/2023 0 Comments Kiss mtv unplugged![]() ![]() And as he said: “ Tomorrow is really a great song.” More than that, it’s one of the greatest power-pop songs of all time. Best of all is the one song from the album that even Paul still loves. It’s full of great songs: Is That You, Talk To Me, Shandi, Naked City, and a borderline-insane track from Ace Frehley, Torpedo Girl. What Kiss delivered with Unmasked is a brilliant pop rock record. “I think Unmasked is a pretty crappy album,” he said. And it’s not just fans that have dissed it. No Kiss album is as underrated as 1980’s Unmasked. And it was the big hit from the Rock And Roll Over album, making US number 15. “I’ll sing the shit out of it.” Criss did exactly that – albeit with the subtlety the song called for. But when Peter Criss heard Hard Luck Woman, he felt that he could do a better job than Rod The Mod, as he explained to Paul in typically blunt manner. In fact, he wanted Rod Stewart to record it. When Paul Stanley wrote this pretty love song on acoustic guitar, he wasn’t thinking of it as a Kiss track. It’s Kiss – but not as the world knows them. The result was A World Without Heroes, a delicate ballad with a mystical quality and a beautiful guitar solo from Paul. Based on something Paul had written, called Every Little Bit Of Your Heart, the song was then reworked by Gene and producer Bob Ezrin, with lyrics supplied by one of Ezrin’s former clients – rock’n’roll legend Lou Reed. And while Gene remains embarrassed by it, The Elder is an astonishing piece of work that features one of the best songs he has ever sung. But for a small and devoted number of Kiss fans, this weird and wonderful album is something to be cherished. Music From “The Elder” was the soundtrack to a movie that was never made an art rock statement that, in commercial terms, died on its arse. If Gene Simmons could turn back time, as his former squeeze Cher once mused, he would forget all about the crazy idea he had in the early 80s about Kiss making a concept album. Paul Stanley revived it on his solo tour in 2006, recorded for the 2008 live album and DVD One Live Kiss – from which this clip is taken. Dynasty is a great record, among the best that Kiss have ever made, and Magic Touch is one of the standout tracks. Worse, the whole of Dynasty had a lightweight pop sound. For the kind of diehard rockers that got behind the ‘Disco Sucks’ protest campaign, I Was Made For Lovin’ You was viewed as an act of betrayal. With the 1979 album Dynasty, Kiss alienated a huge number of fans with the disco-influenced hit I Was Made For Lovin’ You. And all around him is a sound like thunder. I Still Love You has huge emotional power, with Stanley digging as deep as he’s ever done. And that balls-out attacked extended to the ballad that Paul Stanley brought to the album. It had the biggest drum sound heard since the heyday of John Bonham. In reaction to the pasting that Kiss took from fans and critics alike for their artsy-fartsy concept album Music From “The Elder”, the band delivered in the follow-up Creatures Of The Night, the heaviest record of their career. If ever a song put the ‘power’ into ‘power ballad’, it’s this one. “I was in my element getting room service in any way, shape or form it came.” “I lived on the road at that point,” he explained. It has a frantic energy matched by the sexual charge in Paul’s lyrics. Third album Dressed To Kill, released in 1975, is the band’s most pure and stripped-down rock ’n’ roll record, its tone set by opening track Room Service. And really, get a load of Paul in the video – sporting the gloves of shame… The riff was heavy and dramatic, but in the vocal melody and the big chorus was a finely tuned AOR sensibility. And one of his best from those years was Tears Are Falling, from the 1985 album Asylum. He wrote all the hits from that decade: Lick It Up, Heaven’s On Fire, Crazy Crazy Nights. It was Paul Stanley who carried Kiss in this time. But when the band performed on MTV Unplugged in 1995, they picked this song as the opening number, and in the acoustic format it sounded better than ever before.įor much of the 80s, Gene Simmons was on autopilot, too busy with other projects – acting, producing other bands, and launching his own record label – to bother writing any decent songs. It was just an album track, buried on side two. Comin’ Home was written by Paul Stanley in a hotel room when he was homesick for New York. The second Kiss album Hotter Than Hell is arguably their most influential record – its raw, garage-rock feel an inspiration to grunge bands, and its heaviest song, Parasite, covered by Anthrax. Written and sung by Ace, it’s heavy and trippy, like Kiss on drugs. Always a loose cannon, Ace Frehley appeared on only one of five studio tracks included on Alive II, but on that one track, Rocket Ride, he was smoking. ![]()
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