On 14. October 1977, Kiss released their second live album, “Alive II”, containing live performances of songs from their preceding three albums (“Destroyer”, “Rock and Roll Over”, and “Love Gun”) as well as four new studio tracks and a cover version of “Any Way You Want It” by Dave Clark.
The band had released three albums since the previous live outing, the 1975 release “Alive!”, so they drew upon the variety of new tracks, with Eddie Kramer producing. The album is one of the best selling in the Kiss discography, being the band’s first to be certified double platinum in February 1996, the same month the Kiss reunion was announced. It has remained a solid seller in the US in the Soundscan era, selling over 300,000 copies from 1991 and to March 2012.
Most of the live tracks on “Alive II” were recorded during the band’s August 26–28 shows at the Forum while on their Love Gun Tour. The 3 p.m. soundchecks at the August 26 and 27 shows were recorded and later used on the album (i.e. “I Stole Your Love” with crowd noise being dubbed in later). “Beth” and “I Want You” were lifted from the aborted Japanese live album and used on the finished “Alive II”. As the band did not want to duplicate songs included on Alive!, the songs chosen for the three live sides of the album were all drawn from Kiss’ three preceding studio albums: Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over and Love Gun.
On the original double album, the songs on side 4 (tracks 6–10 on the second CD) are tracks recorded live without the audience at Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, and overdubbed and mixed at Electric Lady Studios in New York City in September 13–16, 1977. Although Ace Frehley was originally credited for lead guitar on the studio tracks, the remastered version released in 1997 confirmed what had been speculated by Kiss fans for years: Bob Kulick played lead guitar on the tracks “All American Man”, “Rockin’ in the U.S.A.” and “Larger Than Life”. Frehley’s sole involvement for the studio songs was Rocket Ride (originally written for a solo album), on which he sang lead vocals and played both guitar and bass guitar.
Coming off of a period of extensive touring, “Alive II” received a huge fan response and critical acclaim, reaching the No. 7 spot on the Billboard 200 chart.
