KISS - DESTROYER @ 45

 

Released on March 15th, 1976, KISS Destroyer is celebrating 45 years on the shelves. It was the first LP I bought with my own money by my own choice. Well, technically it was the second. The first was More More More by the Andrea True Connection, but I took that back to Zellers the next day for an exchange. Its booming disco kick drum couldn’t track on my shit-box of a record player and I hadn’t discovered the ol’ “tape a penny to the tone arm” trick yet, so I ended up with the KISS record instead.

After the breakout success of KISS Alive, the band were desperate to get it together to do a studio album that could properly capture the intensity of the band. Their previous three attempts had only middling sales, belying their impact as a live band. They simply sounded flat and listless and lacked the dynamics and spectacle they were getting across on stage. To help them with this objective, the band’s label, Casablanca, brought in Bob Ezrin, who’d had major success working with Alice Cooper. Ezrin brought along the same sense of discipline he’d used to whip the Cooper band into shape and applied it to KISS, pushing them with near militant determination to get their shit together as musicians. He even insisted on them taking lessons in music theory to help their song writing chops. He flat-out rejected most of the demos they originally brought to the table and even took to sporting a coach’s whistle he’d blow whenever he wanted to rally the band for recording sessions & rehearsals.

In addition to instilling a more rigid work ethic in the band, he brought a lot of color to their sound in the form of elaborate production techniques and embellishments, which included adding things like strings, choirs, sound FX and even brought his own kids into the studio to get the sounds of them playing around to use as disturbing atmosphere on God of Thunder. Initially, critics and fans were taken aback by all this excess and they felt it detracted from their raw intensity, but over the years, most people have tended to look back on Destroyer as the pinnacle of KISS’ studio output. It was a gamble that, while it may have initially alienated some, worked in the bands favor with the LP becoming their first platinum seller, mostly thanks to the unexpected success of the Peter Chris sung B-side, Beth, an acoustic ballad!

I’d be the first in line to dismiss KISS as opportunistic hucksters as far as a band willing to sell its soul for the all-mighty dollar. Gene Simmons has long been well known for his unapologetic capitalistic values and willingness to slap his brand on anything that’ll sell. I was 12 years old when I first heard them. My cousin had Alive and the whole shtick instantly appealed to my tween brain. They were the first band that seemed “dangerous” and there was a brief moment in their early career where they did carve out a unique niche for themselves that deserves some acknowledgement for its innovation. However, it didn’t take long for them to bankrupt their credibility by indulging in a long series of increasingly crass commercial gambits which only served the purpose of lining their pockets in a way that was obvious to even a naive teenager. After a couple of years, I’d moved on to far more substantial artistic territory as the late 1970s exploded with new and dynamic artists who left bands like KISS in the dust. But there’s always going to be that part of my inner child that looks back on those early days as a moment of wonder and fascination and I have to give credit where its due to a band that understood how to take spectacle to a new level. Destroyer, as an album, captures the best of that effort at its peak and still has the ability to conjure up some satisfying nostalgia for that strange era of mythological rock.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - KISS, DESTROYER

I know they've become the poster boys for cultural capitalism and I suppose they always were, but I do have to still acknowledge their influence on my musical journey considering Kiss' 1976 LP, Destroyer, was the foundation stone of my record collection. Not that I didn't have a couple of records in my possession before this, but this was the first one I bought with my own money of my own volition. The few I had prior to this were childhood gifts of one sort or another and were mostly novelty records like Super Bloopers or Goofy Greats.

It was pretty hard not to be exposed to Kiss in 1975/1976 as they had become THEE teen band of the era thanks to their Alive double live album from 1975. My cousin had that album, which I thought was great. My record collection began after a somewhat tense negotiation with my parents to get a raise in the monthly allowance my brother and I were granted. It started as a mere pittance and barely enough to buy some candy and a pop or two. I was desperate to start buying records and you needed at least $7 for one of those back in those days. Dad was incensed that we wanted more money and put up a tough resistance towards any increase, but we finally managed to get an agreement to something like, I think, $20 a month, enough to buy 2 or 3 records at least. It was my first experience with collective bargaining.

With that in place, the next order of business was to put that hard won chore money down on some vinyl. Weirdly enough, my first choice was not this record, but the LP, More More More, by The Andrea True Connection. I just liked that song and went to Zellers to buy it and brought it home to give it a spin on my shit box record player. It was just one of those things that was a box with a turntable and speakers built into the back. Total garbage. So much so that the heavy thump of the disco beat was too much for it and, when I went to play the record, it just skipped all over the place. Infuriated by this skipping damn record, I figured it was defective and took it back the next day for an exchange. I wasn't going to take a chance on another copy of the disco record, so my backup choice was the Kiss album.

Back then, Kiss seemed like a dangerous band. Reading the letters to the fans on the inside gate-fold off the Alive album, Gene's letter came off real evil and demonic, so he was pretty cool for us kids. It all felt like something we should not be listening to. Putting on the Destroyer album, that sense was reinforced by songs like God of Thunder. For a 12-13 year old, just discovering the world of adult preoccupations, it was very alluring and definitely gave you some street-cred in the playground at junior high.

Of course, it wasn't long until I started to pick up on the commercialization going on with it and how it was getting more and more "kid friendly" as time went on. By the time Love Gun and the comic came out, my suspicions of the latent "uncoolness" of Kiss started to mount. Then that horrible movie, Kiss Meets the Phantom, hit the TV screen and it was game over for my interest in the band. There was also the emergence of the punk & new wave scenes starting in 1978 which soon knocked my attention completely off mainstream bands like Kiss and onto far more interesting paths. I should also say that Queen came along in 1977 and blew Kiss off the map in terms of style, versatility, talent and sophistication.

I should conclude, however, by saying that Kiss did, ultimately, leave a key impression which informed my own musical path going forward. If there's one thing I took away from them, it was the importance of showmanship! The idea that a band should put on a bit of a show if they're going to be on stage remained with me from then on. I never liked going on stage in street clothes. I never liked a lot of bands that did that either. I always appreciated a band who gave me something to look at while they were up there, whether it was in the staging, visuals or simply having personality and attitude enough to be interesting to watch. This, I have to put down to Kiss setting the standard in terms of offering some stagecraft while playing music.