On 23. May 1979, Kiss released their seventh studio album “Dynasty”, produced by Vini Poncia and released by Casablanca Records. It was the first time that the four original members of Kiss did not all perform together for the entire album.
The album and the following tour were billed as the “Return of Kiss”, as the band had not released a studio album since “Love Gun” in 1977. Instead, the band released their second live album, “Alive II”, that same year, and each member had recorded eponymous solo albums, which were simultaneously released on September 18, 1978.
Paul Stanley:
“Magic Touch was a great song that unfortunately got mucked up when it was recorded, as did a lot of songs on Dynasty and Unmasked. Magic Touch was a song that was really powerful and really heavy and got kind of wimped out. Just the wrong vocal interpretation, wrong way of singing it. But I like the song a lot. Originally the chords to Magic Touch were much grander. It was ballsier. We were dealing with a more poppy approach to our songs in working with Vini. During Dynasty and Unmasked I was trying to find my voice as a singer. I certainly liked all the early stuff I did, but I wanted to go someplace else. I wanted to be able to sing what was in my head and I wasn’t there yet. To do that song today would be a gas. I would love to sing it. Back then I was on a bike with training wheels.”
– “Kiss Behind The Mask: The Official Authorized Biography” by Ken Sharp & David Leaf.
“It’s a good song and it was fun. Vini and I wrote that and it was just real easy to write. The song is on the unplugged album too. Sure Know Something, in particular was a perfect song to benefit from being stripped down. It’s not unusual for the essence of something to get lost in the trappings and Sure Know Something was always fairly simple. To play it acoustically was only to show it off that much more. I still like it very much.”
– “Kiss Behind The Mask: The Official Authorized Biography” by Ken Sharp & David Leaf.
Peter Criss:
“I hardly contributed to Dynasty at all. We recorded “Dirty Living,” a song that Stan and I wrote about the drug scene in New York in the seventies, and that was the only cut I played drums on. They got Anton Fig to play on the rest of the album, but I didn’t feel betrayed; I was happy they got him. I didn’t really want to play with them anymore.”
– “Makeup to breakup” by Peter Criss
