If rock ‘n’ roll had a security handbook, Ace Frehley clearly by no means learn it.

From rocket-firing guitars that just about roasted Gene Simmons to electrocution incidents that got here dangerously near catastrophe, the previous Kiss guitarist’s onstage antics typically felt extra like scenes from an motion film than moments from a rock live performance.

Chatting with MusicRadar, Frehley begins by sharing a extra grounded (actually) hazard of the job: performing in platform boots.

“I used to fall quite a bit in these boots,” says the guitarist. “Lots of occasions. Paul [Stanley] would cowl for me by strolling over to me prefer it was a part of the present. He made it appear like it was choreography or one thing.”

“If no one realised I’d fallen, I play on my knees and get again up. It was simply a part of the present!”

Within the ’70s – and once more when Kiss’s authentic lineup reunited within the ’90s – Frehley would deliberately drop to his knees in the course of the outro solo of Black Diamond. Whereas deliberate, it was no much less painful: “I screwed my knees up doing that,” he says. “I might drop to my knees, and the load of the Les Paul actually killed them.”

“Through the Reunion Tour, I ended up chipping a bone in my knee, and the physician stated, ‘Pay attention, you gotta cease doing that, otherwise you’ll find yourself in a wheelchair.’”

“We ended up placing a pad underneath the carpet the place I’d fall. I attempted to hit it—and in the event you have a look at outdated movies, you possibly can see that I’d go down one knee at a time.”

However Ace’s legendary mishaps weren’t restricted to his knees. His well-known rocket-firing guitar additionally had an inclination to go off-script.

“I fired a type of rockets at Gene and it virtually fucking hit him,” the musician remembers with amusing. “It flew proper by his head. It could have burned him fairly dangerous.”

Sadly for Frehley, his trusty prop wasn’t all the time so forgiving: “I burned my leg actual dangerous as soon as again within the ‘70s, man. A smoke bomb ignited too early contained in the cavity of the guitar, and it melted the asbestos—which our fucking costumes have been produced from—to my thigh.”

That stated, nothing topped the night time in 1976 when the guitarist was electrocuted mid-show in Lakeland, Florida. A grounding problem left a staircase rail stay with electrical energy, and the incident almost killed him.
“I ought to have been lifeless that night time,” he admits. “The truth that I bought electrocuted and didn’t fall ahead was a godsend. There should have been angels pushing me again. I used to be standing on high of 4 Marshall cupboards on a staircase once I bought shocked. I had a heavy Les Paul round my neck, and my physique ought to have fallen ahead—however I didn’t.”

“If I fell ahead, I might have damaged my fucking neck,” Frehley says. “However I fell again, and the street crew dragged me again off of the staircase. I had no feeling in my arms for 5 to 10 minutes.”

Extremely, he powered by way of and completed the present. “However I perhaps had feeling in half of my fingers by the point it was performed. It was loopy shit, man, however I did get Shock Me [the song Frehley made his lead vocal debut with on 1977’s Love Gun] out of it. So, I suppose it wasn’t all for nothing.”