59. KISS / Alive! 1975. 4/5.

From this far in the future – fifty years in fact as I prepare this episode – it is often difficult to believe that after three studio albums Kiss was still struggling to sell albums, that their live shows were well populated but not to the point of overcrowding, and that the future was not set in stone. The cult like following the band had built up through their live shows, with makeup and pyrotechnics and spitting blood and great light extravaganzas, was not transforming itself into album sales. Their self titled debut had reached just #87 on the US charts, the follow up “Hotter Than Hell” to #100, and their last album “Dressed to Kill” up to #32. None had set the world on fire, and it was becoming a commercial problem for the band. Their record label Casablanca Records was on the brink of extinction, and Kiss had received no royalties from their album sales to that point in time. As a result they and their manager Bill Aucoin had taken out a lawsuit against the record label begun to look around for other labels in which to defect to. What to do? What could possibly be a solution that would work for all parties involved?
As a last ditch effort in order to save his record label, CEO Neil Bogart came up with the idea of utilising the obvious popularity of Kiss on stage, and record a live album, hoping that this would be a way to spark some album sales for the band. At the time, live records weren’t considered a a normal album release - bands generally recorded them fulfill their contracts. But Bogart didn’t care. He knew this was his last chance. Aucoin apparently was happy with this idea, firstly because it would hopefully be able to capture the essence of the band that they played with in the live environment, finally showcasing what they believed were the best elements of the band, and secondly because it would in theory be cheaper than recording a studio album. The band too liked the idea. Within days, Bogart had arranged to record a multicity tour, with stops in Detroit; Wildwood, New Jersey; Cleveland; and Wyoming. The one stumbling block was that Bogart couldn’t finance the tour himself. Instead Aucoin put $300,000 of his own money into costumes, expenses, and effects. To oversee the recordings, Bogart roped in Eddie Kramer, a star audio engineer who’d produced albums for Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. With four gigs recorded between May and July of 1975, the album was packaged and released in September, and led to the band Kiss finally becoming Alive!

So the aim of this album was to not only save the record label, but act as a showcase for the live sound that Kiss had been producing on stage in order to promote the band to a wider audience, obviously in the hope of creating bigger album sales. And while it is certain that “Alive!” succeeded in this, looking back now it is also possible to say that it was under differing circumstances than was advertised at the time.
Released as a double live album, it contains almost all of the band’s best songs from those first three albums. It is an interesting thing to release a live album after just three studio albums as it does restrict the number of songs to choose from. However, in this case the platform was simple – show how these songs sound when they are performed live, and to be able to show that even though the songs sound flat and unexciting on those studio albums, that doesn’t represent what the band is capable of.
And – there is no doubt that it succeeds in this to the utmost degree. From the very start the songs on show sound immensely better, fuller and rounder, with greater energy and power than their studio versions do. In particular the album opener “Deuce” that rocks straight into “Strutter”. Both are fan favourites, perhaps more from the versions contained on this album that from their original outing. On both of these songs, Peter Criss’s drums sound fantastic and Ace Frehley’s guitar is outstanding, powerfully both in the front of the mix and pounding away, and the vocal mix sounds brilliant. Both of these tracks are fully enhanced on this album. “Firehouse” has far more oomph here than on other versions. Add to this list the stomping versions of “C’mon and Love Me” and “Parasite”. The studio version of “C’mon and Love Me” is such a huge disappointment, a song that has fabulous structure and bones but sounds wimpy and shallow on the album. Here it comes to life in surely the way it was always meant to, and it is arguably the best song on the album. “Parasite” too has Ace’s guitar and Gene’s booming bass and vocal that really accentuates all of the positives about the track. Even the average tracks here, the ones that struggle to make the grade, at least fare better on this album. “Got to Choose”, “Hotter Than Hell”, “Nothin’ to Lose” and “She” all come up bigger and better on this first LP.
The second LP carries on in the same tradition with some epic highlights amongst the average fodder than still climbs a rung up the ladder by the performance on this album. Songs like “Watchin’ You”, “Rock Bottom” and “Let Me Go Rock n Roll” are only average Kiss songs at best, that have better versions here than their originally released studio versions. “100,000 Years” however is drab, dull and frankly ends up as being dead boring. This version stretches out to 12 minutes courtesy of Peter Criss and his overstayed welcome of a drum solo through the middle. They are a bug bear. Some are great, others are rubbish. And in the main, they should not appear on live albums. Just cut them out. Anyway... when you come to the classics, the great stuff such as “Black Diamond”, “Cold Gin” and “Rock and Roll All Nite” this environment brings out the best in them.
But herein lies the quandary. The concerts themselves were a great success, but the recordings of them were not. Mediocre at best is how they have been described in the years since. In the main, while the energy was present, the actual musicianship was not, with many noticeable mistakes and errors. Certain elements from those recordings remain in the final mix – all of Peter Criss’s drum tracks are said to be original, and the first two tracks “Deuce” and “Strutter” remain intact. Beyond that – well, for years rumours swirled that most of the album had been touched up, and the band categorically denied them. These rumours would never go away however, and slowly over the years the resistance to them began to dissipate. In his 2001 autobiography, Gene Simmons said "There have always been rumours that the Alive! record was substantially reworked in the studio. It's not true. We did touch up the vocal parts and fix some of the guitar solos, but we didn't have the time or money to completely rework the recordings. What we wanted, and what we got, was proof of the band's rawness and power”.
On the 2003 episode of “Ultimate Albums”, the band members finally agreed that the album had been overdubbed. It was eventually revealed that the live recordings were so heavily altered, only Criss' drum tracks remained untouched. Even the audience noise was cut and pasted to keep the best parts. Speaking about the heavy studio redubs years later, producer Eddie Kramer said: "Who cares if it was overdubbed? The energy still comes through”, while Paul Stanley was quoted in 2014 as saying “People have argued whether Alive! is a purely live recording or somehow enhanced. The answer is: yes, we enhanced it. Not to hide anything, not to fool anyone. But who wanted to hear a mistake repeated endlessly? Who wanted to hear an out-of-tune guitar? For what? Authenticity?” Well, maybe we wanted authenticity, but perhaps what we also wanted was the truth at the time it was released.

For those of you who have been here for a while, you will know that I first heard Kiss through the then-obsession with my older cousin, that I then won a primary school dance contest in 1980 while tripping the light fantastic to “I Was Made for Loving You”, and that I truly began to notice the band through my heavy metal music dealer and my acquisition of the album “Crazy Nights”. If you would like to know more, you should go back and check out the episodes I have done here on Kiss albums on this podcast. Those stories are revealed in more depth there.
Even with having been exposed to Kiss during those time frames as explained here, I didn’t begin my love of Kiss until I had finished high school and moved on to a fractured university ‘career’ and life on the outside. Having had “Crazy Nights” taped for me, it was a slow growing enjoyment of the band as a whole. I picked up “Hot in the Shade” on its release and at moments found the chance to buy other Kiss albums until I eventually had the collection. And for that reason, “Alive!” was never the huge moment in time when it came to Kiss as it was for those that found the band in the 1970’s when all of this was going on. I enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong, but as a groundbreaking album for the band and the genre and all of those tings? No, I never experienced it that way. I can see and hear why it must have been so influential when it was released, but for me it was just a compilation of the best tracks off their first three albums recorded live. Which, of course, I eventually found out was a half truth. In a similar way as Judas Priest had done for their “Unleashed in the East “ live album, there had been modifications done. And, as with that album, I have never been overly concerned about that. I love an album such as Slayer’s “Decade of Aggression” which is the band warts and all, mistakes in lyrics being sung and chords being played all a part of the experience. It is in fact in its own way charming because of that. But on “Alive!” I have never been concerned about the construction of this album. But...
Because the band went about this, essentially re-recording large portions of the album in order to make it sound perfect in guitars and vocals, doesn’t this seriously begs the question – why couldn't they just have recorded their first three albums in this same way? If this is all it takes, then why did it take the average sounding original recordings of a live recording to have to make the band come in and reproduce them as if they are a live setting? Why didn't someone just suggest they do this in the first place earlier? Record the debut album in the studio, but record it together, as if they were playing it live? Do two takes, review the tapes, and if they need touching up do it! Would this not have given them the same live sound they were looking for? And perhaps have taken less time and cost less in studio time? I mean – what the hell would I know, and retrospect is a wonderful thing – but come on, this seems like an easy solution. Bob Ezrin coming in as producer for the next album helped with that enormously. The sound he got from the band for that album is where it all really began to cook for Kiss. So was it the producer all along? Perhaps. But again – what would I know?
People still rave about this album, about how important it is and was for Kiss and for live albums going forward. That it was a standard bearer of the artform. The reveal about touch ups puts a bit of an asterisk against that. But like I said, that shouldn’t be an issue when it comes to enjoying the album, and discussing its legacy. If the album proved to be the catalyst for Kiss’s emergence as one of the biggest band of the 1970’s, then it doesn’t matter how it was recorded.
I’ve had this out again both at work and in the Metal Cavern for the last few days, and it has been as enjoyable as it always is. There are a number of standout songs on it, and they are still the ones that draw all of my attention. There is also the odd dud song, the result perhaps of only having three albums worth of songs to choose from. In the long run, I do choose to listen to a selection of the studio albums rather than head straight for this live album when I come to desire a bit of Kiss. This week has not changed my mind in that respect.