Alternative Kiss history: 1978-1981

Somewhere after Alive II, KISS lost its way. For their first eight albums, six in the studio and two live releases, the band had captured a perfect blend of street-tough rock, glam, and power pop that proved to be lightning in a bottle.

But then, in very short order, they popped the cork and it all got lost in a haze of internal bickering, outsized egos, and cartoonish kitsch that sent the band spiraling downward for the next four years or so.

You can argue that it all started with the ill-conceived movie of the week, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, or with the four bloated solo albums, only two of which (Paul’s and Ace’s) were really worth the cover price. Or maybe it was their misstep into disco on “I Was Made for Loving You” and “Sure Know Something” on Dynasty, or the overly slick and stupidly named follow-up, Unmasked.

Wherever you think it started, it didn’t have to be that way.

In an alternate universe, KISS could have maintained their momentum.

They could have started by making Alive II an all-live album like Alive! was. They’d recorded enough material for a fourth live side if they’d included “Take Me,” “Do You Love Me,” and “Hooligan,” all of which were listed on early pressings of the album cover but didn’t make it only vinyl. They also had new versions of “Cold Gin” and “Rock and Roll All Nite” in the can they could have used.

While they wanted to restrict themselves to material from their fourth through sixth albums, spicing things up with a couple of classics wouldn’t have hurt . (They were willing to recycle twice as many old cuts on Alive III, even though they had a lot more new material to draw upon by then.)

What’s more, the fourth side of “bonus” studio material on Alive II came across as jarring after straight-ahead bombast of three live (and live-sounding) sides. They didn’t need it to sell the record at that point, either, so they could have saved some of it and packaged it with the best material from their four solo albums to release a pair of high-quality albums as a full band in 1978 and 1979.

It could have looked something like this:

1978 album: Radioactive

Side One

Radioactive (Gene Simmons)

Speedin’ Back to My Baby (Ace Frehley)

Tonight You Belong to Me (Paul Stanley)

That’s the Kind of Sugar Papa Likes (Peter Criss)

Rockin’ in the USA (Alive II)

Side Two

Wouldn’t You Like to Know Me (Paul Stanley)

See You In Your Dreams (Gene Simmons)

What’s on Your Mind (Ace Frehley)

Hold Me, Touch Me (Paul Stanley)

Fractured Mirror (Ace Frehley)

1979 album: Rocket Ride

Side One

Rocket Ride (Alive II)

Larger Than Life (Alive II)

It’s Alright (Paul Stanley)

Mr. Make Believe (Gene Simmons)

Take Me Away (Paul Stanley)

Side Two

All-American Man (Alive II)

New York Groove (Ace Frehley)

See You Tonite (Gene Simmons)

Rip It Out (Ace Frehley)

I Can’t Stop the Rain (Peter Criss)

That leads us to the next two albums, which really had only enough good material for one good one. Part of the problem was the production. I doubt you’ll find many fans who will argue against the fact that KISS made a huge mistake by ditching the harder-edged production work of someone like Eddie Kramer for syrupy-slick Vini Poncia.

Poncia had produced the worst of the four solo albums, Peter Criss’, which should have been a red flag right there. Plus it didn’t make much sense to bring him in for Criss’ sake, since the drummer was mostly absent for both records: Anton Fig was the unacknowledged fourth member, the way guitarist Bob Kulick had been on three Alive II studio tracks.

If the band had used a heavier production approach, it would have solved half the problem right there. The “Charisma” demo had a lot harder edge than what appeared on Dynasty. And anyone who’s listened to KISS’ concert version of “I Was Made for Loving You” knows it doesn’t sound like disco anymore: It rocks. If they’d taken the same approach of creating a live album in the studio that they used on Rock and Roll Over, imagine the results.

While the material on Dynasty overall is thin, there are some deceptively strong cuts on Unmasked, if you strip away the glossy veneer — which is what they should have done.

As you might have guessed, I’d keep the Dynasty title (and album cover) and ditch the kitsch of Unmasked. Change up the production and combine the two albums into one, and you’d get a killer record that might look something like this, with five cuts from Dynasty and seven from Unmasked:

1980 album: Dynasty

Side One

I Was Made for Loving You-rock version (Dynasty/in concert)

2,000 Man (Dynasty)

Tomorrow (Unmasked)

X-Ray Eyes (Dynasty)

Talk To Me (Unmasked)

You’re All That I Want (Unmasked)

Side Two

Is That You? (Unmasked)

Charisma (Dynasty)

Shandi (Unmasked)

Two Sides of the Coin (Unmasked)

Magic Touch (Dynasty)

What Makes the World Go Round (Unmasked)

Assuming KISS released one album a year, that would take us through 1980. They could then have taken a one-year break and released Double Platinum — with more material to choose from — as they worked on the epic two-disc concept album that Music from the Elder should have been. You can see my alternative vision for that project here.

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Pop Goes the Metal, a history of pop, glam, and hair metal from its roots in the late 1960s through its heyday in the 1980s and beyond. It’s available on Amazon.