This is my (and this blogs) New Year tradition, revisiting Kiss legendary concert at the Academy of Music on New Years eve 1973. Kiss was the band that got me into everything hard rock and metal when I was 9 years old in 1982, and holds a special place in my heart.
Setlist: Deuce/Cold Gin/Nothin’ To Lose/Firehouse/Let Me Know/100,000 Years/Black Diamond
The below text is an article from the best KISS site on the entire net, Axeology. Be sure to visit them and enjoy their in-depth look at everything KISS.
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| Fillmore East rehearsal, late December 1973. Photo by Rik Fox |
KISS has played quite a few shows on New Years Eve through the years but I would argue that none have been more important, or mythical, than their first professional performance at the Academy of Music in 1973. It was their coming-out party, the first time they performed for a sizeable audiance (even if we can’t say for sure how many were in attendance) and we need to give this occcasion its due. So, put your two lips together, and KISS!
Prelude
From the very start, when Gene, Paul, and Peter started out as a trio, they attacked it like it was a job. Once they had gotten signed to Rock Steady the band essentially became their job. (In No Regrets Ace remembers that they got ”paid” $75 per week and member during this time.) During almost four months—a veritable eternity for a band who had found their final incarnation just eight months earlier—the four members locked themselves in at various locations and worked on perfecting their craft. First they spent the first few weeks of September at their rehearsal space on 10 East 23rd Street working on their material for an upcoming demo recording at Bell Sound on September 24-25.
After that they spent almost all of October in a cellar at 257 Church Street called The Basement while Sean Delaney slowly formed them into one of the most professional-looking club band of all time. (The space was the regular playhouse of a theatre company called The Other Side of Silence of which Delaney was a part.) Many of the choreographed moves we’ve seen on stage over the past 40-plus years originated here, in this space. During this time they also worked hard on the new song arrangements suggested by the producer duo Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise in preparation for recording their eponymous first album. On November 15 they entered Bell Sound again and spent two weeks recording.
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| Fillmore East rehearsal, late December 1973. Photo by Rik Fox |
With the material for an album completed—mixing took roughly a month and documents suggest that the album’s final mix was completed on Christmas Eve—plans were made for a showcase to precede the release of the album. For that event Aucoin rented the former Fillmore East and the band spent the waning days of 1973 rehearsing on the Fillmore stage. As seen above, a photo from these days between Christmas and New Years Eve show the band in street clothes and with some of their new costume parts. And about those costumes…
Presentation
Even if it wasn’t the most obvious change compared to the club days, the band’s new costumes was the last puzzle piece in creating a unified look. The black and white of the makeup was mirrored in the new black (leather) and silver of the outfits, outfits that were professionally made. I know that regular readers will probably think that I sound like a broken record but there was nothing ”home-made” about these outfits, the attention to detail was remarkable. Unfortunately all the pieces weren’t ready for the New Years show—for instance, Ace still hadn’t gotten his lightning bolts top yet—but the overall look truly was professional. Now I know that a lot of fans feel that the first ”real” costumes were the ones that debuted in late April 1974 (you know who you are) but we actually have some documentation that reveal how much was spent on these earlier costumes.
There is a Casablanca document called ”Kiss Expenses” which has a list of monies paid to Rock Steady up until December 27, 1973. Most of these are just bulk deposit sums but thankfully there are some handwritten notes and one of them relates to a duplicate entry of $7,000 on Christmas Eve. The entry is crossed out and in the margin the cost breakdown has been written. This is where we learn the true extent of the money that was backing up KISS: the costumes cost $3,000. That’s roughly equivalent to $18,500 (!) in 2021 dollars. (I don’t know about you but there is no possible universe where I would consider paying that kind of money for something ”home-made”.) The majority of the remainder of that $7,000 was for another big piece in the presentation puzzle.
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| Academy of Music December 31, 1973. Photo by Bob Gruen |
Unbeknownst to the band Aucoin had contracted Mark Ravitz to design a stage logo: ”They needed us to build it so it could be premiered at that show. At the time they were into sequins and glitter. They showed me a photo of their logo made out of sequins, so our objective was to build a stage sign that lit up and looked like their sequined logo.” (Mark Ravitz in Nothin’ to Lose, eBook p. 147) The sign had letters 4 feet high and was composed out of four individual letters, probably to allow for easier handling. For this particular show the letters were secured using a crossbeam and the spacing between them was a little wide. Regardless, it made a serious impression on most in attendance on New Years Eve. This logo, which would stay with the band for almost two years of non-stop touring, cost $3,750. Did I mention that KISS had a lot of money behind them?
The photos below show Ravitz’s original blueprint for the logo complete with estimated weight off the ”large letters”; a shot of the logo showing its luminary power; and a close-up showing the crossbeam that the individual letters were attached to for this show. Don’t worry, we’ll return to Gene’s makeup shortly.
Another thing that the band’s management had invested in were amplifiers. If you go back to the very start of this post and look at the rehearsal photos there, you’ll notice that the Marshall stacks on Ace’s side has an ”odd man out”. Come New Years Eve the three full Marshall stacks on Ace’s side were matching and on Gene’s side there were two Ampeg heads and no less than three (!) 8×10 cabinets with what looks like an additional 4×12 on top. It was a massive setup. Also interesting to note is that the guitars Ace and Paul used to record the first album—an Ovation Breadwinner and a Les Paul Custom ’54 Reissue—were no longer their live instruments. As soon as the advance money from Casablanca came in they both got new instruments. Ace found his 1973 Les Paul Deluxe which would be his no. 1 until late 1976, and Paul got his second custom LoBue which was later stolen during the Hotter Than Hell sessions.
Lastly, and mainly to give me a reason to add this absolutely wondeful photo, this is one of three shows where Paul used the infamous ”bandit” makeup.
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| Academy of Music December 31, 1973. Photo by Chuck Pulin |
Promotion
Promotor Howard Stein was planning this show well in advance. The first ad showed up in The Vilage Voice on October 18 (p. 52) and mentioned only Blue Oyster Cult and Iggy Pop. (I have a feeling that the deal with Blue Oyster Cult was made around the time they played another show promoted by Stein on October 8.) Two weeks later, in the November 1 issue of The Village Voice (p. 42), Isis had been added to the bill but they were gone from the ad the next week. By November 15 Teenage Lust had been added which solidified the lineup. By December 20 the late show starting at 11:30 PM was added due to heavy demand for tickets for the planned 8 PM show.
From L-R: Ad from the New York Times 73-12-16 (p. D-6) & Ad from the New York Times 73-12-23 (p. D-4)
After the addition of the late show there were also two separate ads in The Village Voice and the New York Times devoted solely to the New Years show. The smaller one in the New York Times didn’t feature an image of Blue Oyster Cult.
As we all know KISS never featured in these ads so we can’t say for sure when they were contracted to peform. It has been suggested that they were added on the day of the show but this was probably a misreading of an item in Variety relating to the cancellation of the late show. (That small item is about several different cancellations and in that context the words ”that night” could simply serve to define which of these shows Kiss had been on rather than suggesting they were added to the bill on December 31.) It may also have been inferred from the fact that they weren’t on the billboard at the Academy of Music.
I would like the reader to do a simple thought experiment. If KISS indeed had gotten the chance to play this concert on the very day it was scheduled, don’t we think Gene and Paul would have mentioned that time and again? It would have been perfect for the story they were building for themselves, the start of the legend. All the members remember this show—or think they do—because it was their first real show in front of a sizeable crowd. If it had truly been a last-second opportunity they would all have told that story. That’s just not something you forget. But they don’t, at most they’ve mentioned that they were added at the last minute.
Keeping in mind that nobody cared about KISS in December 1973 it would actually make perfect sense not to add them to the ads, but if they had been contracted before December 20 it doesn’t seem outlandish that they would have been in the ads. After all, with tickets costing $6 or $7 people would want to know they were getting their money’s worth. Adding another band to the bill, even if they were unknowns, would serve that purpose. This is pure speculation but my guess is that KISS got added to the bill between December 20 and December 28.
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| Academy of Music December 31, 1973. Photo by Chuck Pulin |
Performance
Let’s get the fire-breathing mishap and its effect on Gene’s makeup out of the way since it has become the lasting impression of this show. For a long time everyone thought that December 31, 1973, was the first time Gene breathed fire and we have Gene to blame for that. In the September 1974 issue of Circus he claimed that ”when I first did the stunt, it was at our New Year’s Eve show at the Academy of Music in New York City.” (p. 29) He even repeated it in his autobiography. Now we have video evidence that he did it during the December shows at the Coventry a little over a week earlier.
So what happened on New Years Eve? Depends on who you ask. As I’ve stated more than once I prefer my sources as close to the event as possible but, oddly enough, only one of the available reviews of the show even mention the fact that Gene’s hair caught fire: ”The [fire] almost proved disastrous as the hair of bass guitarist-lead vocalist Gene Simmons, wierdist [sic.] in makeup, caught fire. A roadie quickly smothered it without a note being missed”. (Variety 74-01-02) The other reviews, if they write much about KISS, focus on other aspects of the performance (see below). In the aforementioned issue of Circus Gene doesn’t go into specifics, he simply notes that ”as I did it, my hair caught fire”.
In his autobiography Gene suggests that he had sprayed his hair a little extra for this night and that it caught fire as he held out the torch and basked in the stunned adulation from the crowd. As with just about everything in that particular book I’m a little skeptical. I prefer, instead, to believe the accounts as presented in Kiss Alive Forever (p. 29) because both Eddie Solan and original crew member Peter Oreckinto tell the same basic story. Gene did his trick and then went to stick the sword into the stage. Solan mentions that the foam block that Gene was supposed to stick it into was missing and Oreckinto claims that Gene tried to jam it into the stage floor which, being solid hardwood, took some effort. As he tried to stick the sword, the hair caught fire. (Bonus detail, the sword used for the fire-breathing trick cost $75.)
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| A man and his ruined bat makeup. Photos by Chuck Pulin (left) and Dagmar (right) |
Everyone agrees on one thing though: it was Sean Delaney who put out the fire. Ace mentions in his autobiography that watching was a surreal experience but that might be a false memory formed from several other occasions that Gene managed to set himself on fire. Based on the available recording it doesn’t seem as if Paul, who launches into the next song almost immediately, noticed what had happened but maybe Ace had a better view of the proceedings.
As for the rest off the show it (mostly) went off without a hitch (see below). Even though just about everything we’ve later come to associate with KISS in terms of choreographed moves was present at the previous week’s Coventry shows, the combination of the moves, the costumes, and the lighted logo means that this really is the first instance of KISS as we’ve known it. As far as the majority of fans and innocent bystanders in attendance were concerned, KISS just appeared fully formed and blasted them to oblivion. Unfortunately there is no footage from this night but thanks to Andrew Doback we have audio of just about the whole set from that night.
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| Academy of Music December 31, 1973. Photo by Bob Gruen |
Press
Plenty of outlets printed reviews of the show and KISS got varying amounts of coverage. Rolling Stone (74-01-31, p. 62) simply mentioned that the band played ”a fiery opening set” before moving on to the other acts on the bill. Fred Kirby—who had sung the band’s praises a few months earlier—spent the majority of his brief review in Variety (74-01-02) on KISS: ”Although only on for about 30 minutes, Kiss, the opening act, made a strong impression with ghoulish appearance, shattering clean sound, and theatrics, including red dome lights and fire.”
Performance (74-01-11) called KISS ”a local glitter band” and made a comparison that was popular at the time: ”A huge neon sign of their logo served as a backdrop for their set, which most closely approximated the style of Black Sabbath of several years ago with litte of the style, imagination, or volume of that group”. The lengthiest account of the night came from Melody Maker (74-01-12, p. 29):
”[W]hat arrives on stage five minutes later is anything but four nice Jewish lads from the Bronx. Kiss dress in costumes from the classic American comicbooks [sic.]; bat uniforms to be precise. The bass player wears bats’ wings and all four are caked in make-up; to say they were disciples of the devil would not be an understatement. The music is both loud and heavy; pretty simple, riff based rock and roll with a very steady funky beat to it. Variation of mood is not their forte, although what they play is effective enough”.
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| The front cover of the bootleg vinyl of the event. |
Postscript
One thing that wasn’t mentioned in most of the reviews was the second accident during KISS’s set, the burn caused to one of the audience members. Only Melody Maker‘s Chris Charlesworth remarked upon it: ”He [Gene] even chucks a few loose flames out in the general direction of the audience and one fiery mass appears to land on the unfortunate youth’s head. He’s carried out holding his face in his hands but few seem to notice”. (Melody Maker 74-01-12, p. 29) Interestingly, Charlesworth doesn’t mention Gene’s hair catching on fire. The effect was simple magician’s flash paper that Gene was supposed to throw over the heads of the audience but now he had potentially scarred a person for life. This was something that had the potential to literally end the band’s career. As Eddie Solan remember thinking: ”This is the beginning, and now this is the end of KISS.” (Nothin’ to Lose, eBook p. 145)
Reading through the accounts of this unfortunate event in various books, everyone seems to remember the event as having been settled that day. Paul, Gene, and Bob Gruen all tell the same type of story of how the ”kid” was a fan of the band who wasn’t upset about what had happened despite needing medical attention. Gruen remembers him being carted off in an ambulance while saying KISS was his favorite band. Paul doesn’t mention the incident in his autobiography but has stated that ”Through the blisters on his face he said, ‘You guys are awesome!'” (Nothin’ to Lose, eBook p. 145) Peter remembers that ”Bill ushered the kid backstage after the show and we had him pose with us for a photo and then Bill gave him a lifetime pass to the Academy of Music”. (Makeup to Breakup – My Life In and Out of Kiss, eBook p. 67)
Some of the more business-minded in attendance remembers differently, but the basic story is the same: ”I’m trying to keep things light and said to the kid, “Come and sit here, let me put something on your face. Maybe we should take you to a doctor.” I’m doing all of this while Bill is getting a release form dictated to him by our attorney so this kid could sign it, and he did.” (Joyce Bogart-Trabulus in Nothin’ to Lose, eBook p. 145)
Neither of these recollections are true. The matter was actually settled two days later on January 2, 1974, when ”the kid”, whose name was James Douglas Welling, signed away all rights to any claims, damages, and/or demands (and a whole lot more in stunningly opaque legalese) for himself or any of his heirs or executors for the princely sum of $1. This wasn’t a hastily dictated release form produced on the night in question, it was a proper legal document drawn up two days later, a document that was notarized. (Fun fact, Ace’s name was misspelled as ”Paul Frenley” throughout this document.) A possible future disaster had been averted and KISS could go on their merry way. But they would do so without the flash paper effect.