Check out the new book from former EW editor Doug Brod.
Doug Brodwas around 11 when he first sawKISSperforming on the television.
“They had all of that.
Credit: Hachette Books
I was totally in love with the visual aspect.
In the book, Brod details problems between the road crews of KISS andAerosmith.
“KISS and Aerosmith played shows together.
I heard stories about knives coming out.
No one got stabbed, but there were threats.”
“It was like, ‘You’re gonna put all that shit in front of our shit?
You want bombs and fire?Wedon’t have any bombs and fire.’
You had to fight for what you got a lot of times.”
Needless to say, they weren’t unplugged.”
“It wasn’t about the music at all.”
After Aerosmith finished their set and left the stage to modest applause, the guitarist became enraged.
“We’re busting our asses trying to write great songs and play them right,” he fumed.
Was his band now going to have to dress up like clowns to get a reaction?
Tom Hamilton, likewise, wasn’t keen on having to follow that spectacle.
“It felt like we were going out with our pants down,” the bassist has said.
We had a rivalry from then on."
Whatever animosity may have been shooting off of Aerosmith was not felt by KISS.
“It was very comfortable for them.
They were much better than their first album.”
Stanley did, however, see the other contenders for America’s hard-rock throne as competition.
“That’s the nature of the beast,” he says.
“It doesn’t make necessarily for uncomfortable rivalry, but you ultimately are rooting for your team.
We tried to be friends with every band because we were fans of a lot of the bands.
But we drew the line when we went up the steps to the stage.
That’s when we were there to kick ass and knock everyone else out.
That was not personal.
That was about guardianship of the mantle.”
And KISS had foot soldiers ready to die, figuratively or otherwise, defending the band’s honor.
And no way was KISS tour manager Sean Delaney going to take no for an answer.
“They wanted him to set up on the floor, which we never did.”
“We had a fight” is how Kelleher characterizes the altercation in Maryland.
“We had a knock-down, drag-out brawl.”
And from his perspective, the fight was hardly fair.
We’ll deal with this.'
" Perry shared Kelleher’s estimation of KISS’s road crew.
“They had a cutthroat scene going,” he said of the band.
“They were good people surrounded by shit.”
“It’d shut itself down,” he says of the temperamental gear.
It was a really powerful show."
“KISS was in the same place as us,” Perry has said.
“I always looked at it as us having a friendly competition.”
Tyler, however, did not agree with this perspective.
From that show on, the Aerosmith frontman saw KISS as nothing less than an existential threat.
So, I hated them ever since."
For the headliner, it was a different story.
“Aerosmith were repaying favors,” he says.
“At one time playing Aerosmith wasn’t making us any friends.
And we did for at least a year or two before they broke nationally.”
The night before the show, Kelleher was called into a meeting with some of the WABX jocks.
He immediately thought,I’m being ambushed.
Harris made it clear he wanted KISS to have access to whatever lights and sound they required.
“They bitched and moaned,” he says.
It was our special effect."
His move incensed the Casablanca executive.
Kelleher called David Krebs from the lobby to communicate the threat.
“What should I do?”
he asked the band’s comanager.
Being part of a road crew in the ’70s typically involved all manner of strategic brinksmanship.
“When Aerosmith opened for Mott the Hoople, they didn’t get backlighting either,” Kelleher says.
“It’s part of the game.”
That was my logic.
That’s it.'
“Not that we would ever hurt anybody.”
“So, when push came to shove, push came to shove,” says Stanley.
“KISS wanted to dominate the stage,” says Steve Leber.
“It was much easier to work with AC/DC, who also blew Aerosmith off the stage.
KISS was a show, Aerosmith wasn’t.
It was something new and different.
We should have said, ‘If you want to open for Aerosmith, we want half the management.’
We should have made Bill Aucoin give us a piece.”
That afternoon, he and his group found themselves sitting in the auditorium waiting to do their soundcheck.
And then waiting some more.
And then some more.
It was a soundcheck they never got to do because of KISS.
“We watched their rehearsal and they weren’t in all their regalia,” he says.
“They were just guys running through some songs.
We were surprised at how terrible they were, that they were playing out of tune.”
“Not carrying it off and working on it,” says Fennelly.
“They just set it in front of the drum kit.
We thought that was pretty fucking rude.”
While all of this drama played out backstage and onstage, outside had the makings of a disaster movie.
“Right away, we weren’t in control of the situation.”
The role of de facto stage manager fell to this station veteran.
We’re trying to set this thing up,' " he says.
“It was a free-for-all.
We were lucky nobody was killed.”
As for Larry Harris and Mark Parenteau’s purported deal, “that’s bullshit,” Carlisle says.
“We were already playing KISS.
Harris wanted the band to be seen, and this was a good way to achieve that.”
Donald Handy was a sixteenyear- old high school student when he dropped acid before attending the concert.
I then felt everyone turn around and stare at me, along with the band members.
They did come back out for one more encore."
“KISS were playing two nights before,” he says.
They were like runners in a race, and KISS were a little behind until their fourth record."
But the batwinged freaks remained close behind, nipping at their Cuban heels.
Soon, Detroit would be theirs.
Available from Hachette Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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