On 31. January 1974, Kiss did the debut album photo session, Brodsky Studio, 57th Street, New York City with photographer Joel Brodsky.
Joel Brodsky:
“I shot between 500 and 1000 album covers including The Doors’ Strange Days and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. I was given the assignment to shoot the Kiss album cover by Casablanca. I had done a lot of stuff for Buddah Records and Neil Bogart. The shoot was done at my studio in New York City on 57th Street. They had a guy who helped them with their makeup, a painter named Mario Rivoli. The makeup was unique at the time, it was the beginning of glitter. It was a basic four heads on a square picture, a little like the Meet The Beatles cover. I’ve done that cover a number of times with other people like Nazz, Todd Rundgren’s band. My philosophy of album covers is if people knew the music they were going to buy it in a brown paper bag. If you were brand new like Kiss, and you needed to attract attention, the cover did it. And that’s a cover that attracted attention. The photo session lasted a little less than an hour, but the makeup session probably lasted three hours. They were draped in black velvet with a black background. It was really Simmons and Stanley who were most concerned with the visuals of the shoot. Kiss were reasonably cooperative. I remember the other guys were all on the set waiting for Gene to come out. I couldn’t get Gene out of the dressing room, I was getting aggravated. He wanted his makeup to be perfect. I told him, “If you’re not out in 15 minutes, there’s not going to be anyone here to take the picture!” The story about me wanting to put balloons behind them, thinking they were circus clowns, is not true. That’s someone’s imagination. Years later, I’m still proud of that Kiss album cover.”
– “Kiss Behind The Mask: The Official Authorized Biography” by Ken Sharp & David Leaf.
David Edward Byrd/Graphic Artist, Designer & Illustrator:
“I remember there was a big party the night before and we all got very drunk, so everyone at the photo session had hangovers, except Gene and Paul, who didn’t drink. I was there to help them refine their makeup and make it look better. Mostly I remember working with Peter Criss. I didn’t think his makeup looked terribly catlike at first. We talked about it and I made some suggestions to make it more catlike and it ended up looking good. The other guys’ makeup was more stylized. I didn’t have anything to do with their makeup.”
– “Nothin’ To Lose/The Making of Kiss 1972-1975” by Ken Sharp, Gene Simmons & Paul Stanley/It Books 2013
