In 1978, the world saw one of the most extravagant album launch campaigns ever: the simultaneous release of solo albums by all four members of KISS.
KISS were at their commercial peak at the time. Album sales were through the roof and the group had just received their fourth platinum album in just under two years. Their last tour had the highest attendance numbers so far in the group’s history. They were making their first feature film, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (or Attack of the Phantoms in some territories). It may not have turned out a masterpiece, but it shows that at the time, the sky looked like the limit. However, the work load was high and behind the make-up the cracks were beginning to show amongst band members.
The initial contracts with Casablanca included solo albums. This seemed like a good time to give the guys a time-out from each other and from the pressures of being in KISS. It was decided that they would do solo albums, enjoy having creative control over their own end result, and the record company would be getting the new product they always wanted.
In later years, a narrative has formed that the band had an emergency meeting on the set of their movie where Ace and Peter were unhappy, slammed their fists down and demanded to do solo albums due to lack of creative input to KISS. They may well have been unhappy (definitely Peter was), but the timelines don’t add up. The solo albums were already in motion at that point, and Gene was even done with his album earlier that year as the first one.
No matter – the plans moved ahead, and as soon as the band had done their work on the Phantom movie, they went to their separate studios. It is fascinating that they all approached their own project in different ways, and the end results are quite different.
Ace Frehley (lead guitar, vocals) released a guitar-based hard rock album. The heaviest one of the four, the high and consistent quality of song writing and performance surprised a lot of people. It is also refreshingly diverse, primarily because of its willingness to experiment with sounds and styles within the hard rock format. Performed mainly by himself and Anton Fig (drums), and produced by Eddie Kramer, it was a focused and creatively impressive effort. It was also the only solo album to score a hit single with New York Groove.
RELATED ARTICLE: The story behind Ace Frehley’s «New York Groove»
Gene Simmons (bass guitar, vocals) delivered the most diverse album of the four. Several tracks are hard rock, but others embrace funk, Beatles-inspired pop ballads, classic rock, and even a Disney music number. He would use choirs and string arrangements as appropriate and take every song as far as possible. True to form, he also would invite a lot of well-known musicians to play on it, probably knowing it would create a buzz. Gene’s album reached #22 on the US Billboard 200 albums chart, making it the highest charting album of the four.
Paul Stanley (guitar, vocals) probably made the most KISS-like album of the four. He has mentioned that he was perfectly content with his musical input into KISS, which was exactly the kind of music he wanted to make. He was not sitting with surplus material or a desire to branch out, so he just made more material in the style he always felt like making. A couple of numbers are possibly more slow-burning than your average KISS song, and there is an out-and-out ballad which has nothing to do with rock music, but it is a very honest album that wouldn’t challenge KISS fans much either stylistically or quality-wise. For those reasons it is still held in high esteem.
Peter Criss (drums, vocals) was frustrated with his role in KISS. He had brought in Beth – KISS’ biggest hit, but the style (orchestral ballad with no band instruments) was not likely to be repeated. Peter was not a natural songwriter, but he could have ideas that others would help him complete. Unfortunately Peter was involved in a car accident which delayed the solo album work. When he had recovered enough to move on he was short on time, meaning that lot of his material ended up being stuff originally written for Criss’ pre-KISS band Lips.
There are pretty much zero hard rock moments on Peter’s album, but several rock’n’roll numbers, some 1970s soft rock, and even a few disco-rock songs very much of their time. Mostly, though, this album sees Peter as a balladeering crooner, and his desire to replicate the success of Beth is obvious. That did not happen. The album was the least successful of the four. The album have some very dedicated fans, and I quite like some of the material on it, but an album in this style was simply not what KISS fans were looking for. Still – at the very least this was the solo album that had the highest debut on the Billboard Top 200 album charts, at #85 (followed by Ace (#87), Gene (#88) and Paul (#89))! Peter and Ace were surely thrilled that week.
The albums were mostly completed over the summer and early fall of 1978. Their launch would be an exceedingly well-coordinated affair. Not only were they released on the very same day, but they were unified by similar cover art (portrait paintings done in the same style) and by having the KISS logo in one corner and the individual’s name in the other. The same fonts were used throughout, and they all dedicated their albums to each other. They were all released and marketed as KISS albums, and are even listed in the band’s discography.
This would be the first time that all current members of a rock band had released solo albums on the same day. This frightened a lot of the executives at Casablanca (their record label). It was seen as a huge gamble, but KISS manager Bill Aucoin talked them into it.
“It was one of those gut reactions” Aucoin later said. “I told them I wanted to put four albums out at once, and I wanted each of them to turn Platinum. We were going to ship four million albums in one day! Everybody just wiped their brow and told me that nobody would buy them. But it worked because the energy and excitement was there, and the Kiss Meets the Phantom movie came out at the same time. Distributors who would never buy a large quantity of records all of a sudden bought them. One distributor alone bought one million albums – 250,000 of each! It was a scary day when we shipped four million solo albums, it was incredible!”
The albums were shipped from Casablanca’s warehouses on 18 September 1978. For that reason this is often counted as the release date, with local stores possibly being able to put them on display the same day. In general, though, availability would vary and mostly be a few days later.
The solo albums shipped five million copies, guaranteeing platinum status. While the albums actually sold quite well, the manufacturers overshot the initial demand somewhat and several copies would later be sold as cut-outs.
One factor that may have been forgotten is that a lot of the fans were kids and young people on smaller pocket money budgets. Their money could only reach so far, no matter how intensely they wanted all four albums. Four albums in one go would be a huge investment for that customer group.
KISS fans from that time often have stories about spending hours in stores studying the album covers, studying track listings, and maybe even being able to listen to a track or two at the listening posts. They were facing the inhumane task of choosing which one – and only ONE! – they would be able to buy and bring home that day.
Friends would often coordinate who bought what, and borrow or tape off albums from each other. This would of course also impact sales a bit. I remember having to make similar choices too. This was a HUGE and frustrating problem, but ultimately also a great problem to have.
Still, for all the reported returns of the albums, they did not sell that badly. Roughly speaking, each of the 1978 solo albums sold a bit over half of what the last few KISS studio albums did. That’s not exactly a low benchmark. That also means that more than twice the normal KISS-related product was sold overall.
All of the solo albums would prove themselves as long sellers, just like the regular KISS albums. Ace and Paul have particularly done well, with Gene trailing behind, and Peter a bit further behind that.
There are no definite sales numbers from the 1970s and 1980s as reporting could be more random and even false. In the 1990s with stores switching to Soundscan and digital scanning of sold units this got more definite. Since then, all of the KISS solos have been awarded Platinum awards for selling more than 1M copies (in the US alone).
KISS would return to band activities in 1979. Fans were eager for new KISS music, but were not prepared for what came next.
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