Former KISS producer Eddie Kramer sat down with Jay Jay French Connection podcast and chatted about the former member, Ace Frehley, saying that Ace Frehley was the band’s ‘heart and soul.’
“Ron Johnsen was their producer, and I think at that time he was also managing the Electric Lady studios,” he started explaining. “He called me up after the disaster of the Wicked Lester album, which went straight in the bloody toilet, and he says, ‘Listen, Gene and Paul, they got this idea. They want to do a rock ‘n’ roll band, would you do a demo for me?’”
The producer also added that Frehley was the most underrated member of the band: “So, on the appointed day, Gene, Paul, and Ace… just watching these guys go into the studio was just one of those moments. When Ace walked into the studio, he was so bloody skinny. He was driving a cab in the Bronx. And he was so thin, if he turned sideways, you wouldn’t even see him. But what a sweet… Ace, for me, he was the real heart and soul. A bloody good guitar player, much underrated, I think, by a lot of folks.”
Frehley left KISS permanently back in 2002 and has contributed to eleven studio albums. Even with his contributions, Frehley thinks Simmons and Stanley never really appreciated his work in the studio.
“They would stifle my creativity,” the guitarist earlier told Guitar Tales. “If I did a great guitar solo in the studio, they would never acknowledge it. ‘All right. We got that done. Let’s move on.’ I never got the adulation that I would have given other people. I never felt like they appreciated me and that’s not a good feeling.”
“Paul and Gene put me down so many times. I said to Lara [Frehley’s ex-girlfriend] and she said to me, ‘The best way to get back at them isn’t to have a name-calling thing. Just make a great record. They haven’t done an album in 20 years,’” he added.
The trio has had ongoing feuds and has criticized each other over the years. Even after Frehley shared a public birthday message for his ‘one and only’ former bandmate, Stanley, he later criticized Stanley’s singing and was upset about not getting invited to KISS’s show at Madison Square Garden. He also didn’t like Stanley’s comments on ‘The Howard Stern Show,’ where Paul dismissed the idea of Ace and Peter Criss rejoining the band.
Frehley added that Paul was jealous of his solo success and doubted Stanley’s reaction to his new album, ‘10,000 Volts.’