Kiss Guitarist Ace Frehley Dead at 74
Ace Frehley, the wild Spaceman of Kiss who played guitar in the band throughout their Seventies heyday and again during the reunion period in the Nineties, inspiring an entire generation of musicians to pick up the instrument along the way, died on Thursday in Morristown, New Jersey. He was 74.
Lori Lousararian, Frehley’s rep, attributed his death to a “recent fall at his home,” though a specific cause of death was not immediately available.
“We are completely devastated and heartbroken,” Frehley’s family said in a statement. “In his last moments, we were fortunate enough to have been able to surround him with loving, caring, peaceful words, thoughts, prayers and intentions as he left this earth. We cherish all of his finest memories, his laughter, and celebrate his strengths and kindness that he bestowed upon others. The magnitude of his passing is of epic proportions, and beyond comprehension. Reflecting on all of his incredible life achievements, Ace’s memory will continue to live on forever!”
In late September, Frehley cancelled a concert at the Antelope Valley Fair in Lancaster, California, after suffering a separate fall at his home that required a trip to the hospital. “He is fine,” read a note to fans, “but against his wishes, his doctor insists that he refrain from travel at this time.” On October 11, Frehley pulled the remaining 2025 dates on his calendar due to unspecified “ongoing medical issues.”
Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were the primary songwriters in Kiss, but Frehley’s guitar chops and rock star attitude were key components of the band’s success. As a songwriter, Frehley wrote “Cold Gin,” “Parasite,” “Shock Me,” “Talk to Me,” and other fan favorites. Simmons, Stanley, Frehley and drummer Peter Criss were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.
“We are devastated by the passing of Ace Frehley,” Simmons and Stanley said in a joint statement. “He was an essential and irreplaceable rock soldier during some of the most formative foundational chapters of the band and its history. He is and will always be a part of KISS’s legacy. Our thoughts are with [Frehley’s wife] Jeanette, [his daughter] Monique and all those who loved him, including our fans around the world.”
As a kid growing up in the Bronx, Frehley was torn between athletics and rock music. But after taking a few nasty hits on the football field, he had an epiphany. “This is bullshit,” he later recalled thinking. “My hands are too important. The guitar comes first.”
He became even more certain at age 16 when he saw the Who and Cream at RKO Theater in Manhattan. “The Who really inspired me towards theatrical rock,” he said. “When I saw them, it totally blew me away. I’d never seen anything like it. It was a big turning point.”
Frehley played in a series of unsuccessful bands throughout the late Sixties and early Seventies until he stumbled across a Village Voice ad that forever changed his life: “Lead guitarist wanted with Flash and Ability. Album Out Shortly. No time wasters please.”
Unable to afford cab fare, his mother drove him out to the Kiss rehearsal space in Queens. Simmons, Stanley, and drummer Peter Criss initially laughed at his bell bottom trousers and multi-colored shoes. The laughter stopped once they showed him their new song “Deuce.” “I just soloed through the whole song, “Frehley recalled. “They all smiled. We jammed for a few more songs, and then they said, ‘We like the way you play a lot. We’ll call you.’”
At this point, the group didn’t even have a name. And their early attempts at stage makeup didn’t quite work out. “We put on makeup, but it wasn’t Kiss makeup; it was feminine makeup, like the New York Dolls,” Frehley told Rolling Stone in 1976. “Back then the Dolls were the hottest thing and we always wished we could be the Dolls ‘cause we were nobody at the time. But we weren’t physically like the Dolls, who were small, skinny guys, so we decided to come on real strong in black and silver.”
The band’s distinct stage makeup and bombastic show generated instant attention when they started gigging around New York City in 1973. But they didn’t find mainstream success until their 1975 concert album Alive! took off. To an outspoken segment of young fans, Frehley was the coolest member of the band. “When I play guitar onstage it’s like making love,” he told Rolling Stone in 1976. “If you’re good, you get off every time.”
But it didn’t take long for hard drugs to enter the picture. “There was so much cocaine in the studio with [producer] Bob Ezrin, it was insane,” Frehley recalled to Rolling Stone in 2015. “And I hadn’t even done coke before that. I liked to drink. But once I started doing coke, I really liked to drink more, and longer, without passing out. So I was really off to the races. I made my life difficult because there were so many times I’d walk in with a hangover, or sometimes I wouldn’t even show up.”
In 1978, when every member of Kiss released solo albums on the same day, Frehley’s self-titled LP reportedly sold the most due to his his cover of Russ Ballard’s “New York Groove,” which became his signature song.
And as the group grew more successful in the late Seventies and the band’s audience started skewing younger, Frehley grew uneasy. “We were this heavy rock group,” he told Rolling Stone in 2015, “and now we had little kids with lunchboxes and dolls in the front row, and I had to worry about cursing in the microphone. It became a circus.”
That circus also featured a lot behind-the-scenes battles stemming from Frehley’s drug use, alcohol consumption, and the band’s decision to use session guitarists on some tracks. By 1982, Frehley simply had enough. “I was mixed up,” he later recalled. “I believed that if I stayed in that group I would have committed suicide. I’d be driving home from the studio, and I’d want to drive my car into a tree. I mean, I walked out on a $15 million contract. That would be like $100 million today. And my attorney was looking at me like, ‘What are you, crazy?’”
In the Eighties, he formed the band Frehley’s Comet, and released two under-the-radar albums. But a brief Kiss reunion at the band’s 1995 MTV Unplugged special lead to a massive reunion tour in 1996 where the four original members put the makeup back on, dusted off the old songs, and returned to stadiums and arenas all over the world.
In 1998, they cut the new studio LP Psycho Circus, but Frehley only played on a single track. “I wasn’t invited to the studio,” he told Ultimate Classic Rock in 2014. “When you hear Paul and Gene talk about it, they say I didn’t show up. The reason I’m not on any of the songs is because I wasn’t asked. They tried to make it look like I was absent.”
He once again left the band in 2002 following the conclusion of a farewell tour. He was replaced by Tommy Thayer, who wore his signature Starman makeup and replicated all of his guitar parts. “Tommy played the right notes, but he didn’t have the right swagger,” Frehley told Guitar Player in 2014. “He just doesn’t have my same technique.”
Over the past two decades, Frehley toured heavily as a solo artist and played sets packed with Kiss classics. His most recent show took place last month at Providence, Rhode Island’s Uptown Theater, with Frehley ending, of course, with “Rock and Roll All Nite.”
In a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone, Frehley spoke about the ardent devotion of the band’s fanbase. “I have a lot of diehard fans,” he said. “Ace Frehley fans and Kiss fans are the greatest fans in the world. They’ve always been there for me through ups and downs. My life has been a roller coaster ride, but somehow I’ve always been able to land on my feet and still play the guitar.”
