On 30. October 1979, Kiss taped the Tomorrow Show on NBC with Tom Snyder at the RCA Building, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City. The show was aired the next night on Halloween. It would be the most loved and also the last interview of all four original members of Kiss on TV. The chemistry between the members is “strained”, to say the least. Who doesn’t remember Ace saying “No, actually I’m a plumber!”
On October 31, 1979 the band made an appearance on THE TOMORROW SHOW with host Tom Snyder. The program was a late-night offering on NBC and appeared after THE TONIGHT SHOW on most NBC stations. Snyder, who rarely seemed to bother researching his guests before they appeared, was in his usual form and proceeded to refer to Gene as the “bass [as in the fish] player.” The interview went downhill from there, with Peter egging a rather tipsy Ace into taking over the conversation from Gene and Paul who usually ran the show when it came to interviews. In viewing the program, one can see that Gene was upset with the handling of the interview just as clearly as one can see that Ace and Peter did not care about Gene’s feelings at all at the time.
– “Black Diamond: The unauthorized biography of Kiss” by Dale Sherman
Ace Frehley:
Sometimes, though, being loaded worked to my advantage, as it did on October 31, 1979, when Kiss made a memorable Halloween night appearance on NBC’s Tomorrow show.
Hosted by the friendly and sometimes confrontational Tom Snyder, Tomorrow was a popular and successful late-night talk show that attracted some of the biggest names in politics and show business. Hey – John Lennon did Tomorrow. How could Kiss turn it down? Well, we couldn’t, and our appearance was one for the ages.
I was nervous as hell about going on network TV –live!– in front of millions of people. So I started pounding some Stoli in the back of my limo as soon as it passed through my gates on the way to the city. Now, I might have been a formidable drinker in those days, but I wasn’t really a vodka drinker. The bottle was nestled in the door of the limo and I reached for it to escape the anxiety I was feeling. By the time we arrived at the NBC studios in Rockefeller Center, I had a pretty good buzz on and all my nervousness had subsided.
When I got into the dressing room, Bill Aucoin showed up with a bottle of champagne, and I had a glass with him and Jeanette. Just before I left the dressing room I snorted a few lines of blow to balance off all the alcohol and give me a little edge. By the time we took our places opposite Tom, on the set, in full Kiss costume and makeup, I was feeling no pain. And I was ready for anything.
My amusement began with an introductory voice-over, during which Snyder described our act, and in the process referred to Gene as the “bass player.” As in, small-mouthed, large-mouthed, striped or Chilean sea…
By the time he got around to me I could barely contain my amusement. So, when Tom said, “This is Ace Frehley, lead guitarist,” I responded with, “I’m not the lead guitarist, I’m the trout player!”
And then I cracked up, and so did Tom, much to the chagrin of Paul and, especially, Gene.
Hey, Gene be would the first to admit that he is a control freak. So is Paul. They always wanted to control Kiss, and they wanted to control me. But I had talent and a mind of my own, and had different ideas about the direction of Kiss. Gene and Paul were caught in this dichotomy: Oh, fuckin’ Ace. We love him, we hate him. We don’t wanna put up with his bullshit anymore, and he doesn’t wanna put up with ours. But we can’t get rid of him because the fans love him! “You’re supposed to be some sort of spaceman, right?” Tom asked me at one point, while gesturing to my costume. “No, actually I’m a plumber!”
Snyder laughed from the gut, and fired right back, “Oh, well I’ve got a piece of pipe backstage I’d like to have you work on.”
A hanging curveball if I ever saw one! Regardless, I completed the R-rated joke with the delivery of a major-league all-star.
“Tell me about it!”
There was no live audience in the studio, but just about everyone there, including the crew, doubled over with laughter.
If you watch the video you can actually see me turning to Gene and putting my hands up at one point and quietly saying, “What?” like a child who’s misbehaving at a family function and wants his dad to loosen up and join in the fun. Gene was sometimes incapable of that, even in a setting that clearly called for some spontaneity and horsing around. It was all so ridiculous. How seriously can you take yourself when you’re sitting there in a superhero costume and full face makeup? Gene missed the whole thing. If he would have allowed himself to be just a little more lighthearted about everything, and stopped fuckin’ thinking about money all the time, things might have turned out differently. I love the guy, but he never, ever got it.
You could have cut the air in that studio with a knife. Tom picked up on Gene’s negativity, and you could tell he wasn’t digging it. At one point Gene tried to make a joke about selling Tom some swampland in New Jersey, and Snyder completely ignored him and turned his attention back to me. It was like Gene didn’t exist. Tom Snyder may have been a newsman, but he realized very quickly that it was more entertaining to let me laugh and tell jokes than it was to allow Gene to bore everyone with his uptight humor.
Afterward, I got tons of phone calls congratulating me on my “performance.”
“You were a fucking riot, Ace! You stole the show!”
Yeah, that was a classic performance, and it might have been the first time that a single appearance so clearly delineated the diverse personalities of Kiss. The show speaks for itself and that’s all I’m going to say about it. Everyone should judge for themselves what really happened. I enjoyed myself on the show and really wasn’t trying to piss off anyone. I was just being the Space Ace. After the interview, Tom came back to my dressing room and we shook hands and had another good laugh. I thought he was very genuine, and he seemed to really enjoy the experience.
– “No regrets” by Ace Frehley
Peter Criss:
We took a break from the tour to fly to New York to tape The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder. Doing shows like this usually intimidated Ace, so he started drinking champagne hours before the show.
“Hey, Cat, you want a little champagnio?” He had his own name for everything. So we both started drinking water glasses full of bubbly. We emptied a bottle and Ace opened another one.
Meanwhile, we were putting on our makeup. Paul was in front of his mirror, fluffing up his hair. He must have used at least five cans of Aqua Net, the cheapest hair spray, before every show. I’m convinced that Paul alone is responsible for global warming.
On the other side of the room, Gene was finishing his makeup and starting to make monster noises. He’d stare at himself in the mirror and Ace and I would look at each other and say, “Gene’s going away.” That’s what we called his transformation.
In the middle of this madness, Bill came in with a bottle of vodka. So Ace started gulping vodka along with the champagne. You can’t mix vodka and champagne. By the time we walked out on that set, we were wobbly as hell.
But we loved Tom Snyder. We felt like this was the ultimate — he was even cooler than Carson. So he started to ask us questions, and Ace all of a sudden picked up Tom’s teddy bear that he kept on the set and started customizing it with his wristbands.
“What are you doing to that teddy bear?” Tom asked.
“It’s a space bear now!” Ace proclaimed.
Tom was astonished that Ace was so lively: His producer had told him that he’d be lucky to get Ace to open his even mouth once. But Ace was drunk off his ass and he was hilarious, and Gene was getting more and more pissed off. At one point Tom asked us who our audience was, and Paul answered that he once looked out his hotel window and saw parents with kids and twenty-year-olds and older people, all in line for our show.
“And if you saw our show in Bombay, youd see cows in line too,” Ace cracked.
The more Ace and I cut up, the more Gene was fuming. Every time Ace mentioned drugs, Gene quickly cut in, “He’s kidding.” Paul seemed really pissed off too.
When Tom asked me what my hobbies were, I said that I had a gun collection.
“Toy guns,” Gene interjected.
“No, I collect guns. I shoot them at a range, I’d never shoot an animal,” I said.
Then I said that gangsters fascinated me, and if I could go back in time I’d love to be Dillinger or Baby Face Nelson.
“In the movies,” Gene cut in. He was so concerned about one of us saying something real, something he couldn’t control.
Even Tom picked up on it. He turned to Gene.
“So you’re the guy who keeps it all straight?”
“He’s the mother,” I said.
“He’s the mother superior,” Ace added, and we all cracked up. Except for Gene and Paul, who were fuming.
“Everybody’s got a fantasy and we’re all good guys. You know what I mean?” Gene had to have the last word.
“Tell me what you were doing at four this morning,” Tom suddenly asked Ace.
“No. I don’t want to be arrested,” he said, and we all cracked up. Except for Gene and Paul, of course.
For the first time in Kisstory, Ace and I had hijacked an interview from Gene and Paul, and the result was hilarious. When the show was over, Tom came back to our dressing room, but Ace had passed out on the couch.
“Great show, guys,” he said. “Everybody on the staff is still laughing.” He shook our hands. “And tell Ace when he wakes up that I love him. He was great.”
– “Make up to breakup: My life in and out of Kiss” by Peter Criss
