If rock ‘n’ roll had a safety manual, Ace Frehley clearly never read it.

From rocket-firing guitars that nearly roasted Gene Simmons to electrocution incidents that came dangerously close to disaster, the former Kiss guitarist’s onstage antics often felt more like scenes from an action movie than moments from a rock concert.

Speaking to MusicRadar, Frehley begins by sharing a more grounded (literally) hazard of the job: performing in platform boots.

“I used to fall a lot in those boots,” says the guitarist. “A lot of times. Paul [Stanley] would cover for me by walking over to me like it was part of the show. He made it look like it was choreography or something.”

“If nobody realised I’d fallen, I play on my knees and get back up. It was just part of the show!”

In the ’70s – and again when Kiss’s original lineup reunited in the ’90s – Frehley would intentionally drop to his knees during the outro solo of Black Diamond. While planned, it was no less painful: “I screwed my knees up doing that,” he says. “I would drop to my knees, and the weight of the Les Paul really killed them.”

“During the Reunion Tour, I ended up chipping a bone in my knee, and the doctor said, ‘Listen, you gotta stop doing that, or you’ll end up in a wheelchair.’”

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.And he nearly took out Gene Simmons with his rocket-firing guitar!

Former Kiss star Ace Frehley has told MusicRadar that he was lucky to survive an onstage accident in the ’70s – and says that his brush with death inspired him to write one of the band’s classic songs.

Ace had two periods in Kiss – from 1973 to 1982, and then from 1996 to 2002. He was a founding member of the band alongside guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley, bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons and drummer Peter Criss.

Speaking to MusicRadar, Ace begins by admitting that wearing platform boots on stage was always problematic for him.

“I used to fall a lot in those boots,” he says. “A lot of times. Paul would cover for me by walking over to me like it was part of the show. He made it look like it was choreography or something.

“If nobody realised I’d fallen, I play on my knees and get back up. It was just part of the show!”

In the ’70s and also after the band’s original line-up reunited in the ’90s, Ace would drop to his knees during the outro solo of the song Black Diamond. This was planned… and painful.

“I screwed my knees up doing that,” he says. “I would drop to my knees, and the weight of the Les Paul really killed them.

“During the Reunion Tour, I ended up chipping a bone in my knee, and the doctor said, ‘Listen, you gotta stop doing that, or you’ll end up in a wheelchair.’

“We ended up putting a pad under the carpet where I’d fall. I tried to hit it—and if you look at old videos, you can see that I’d go down one knee at a time.”

Ace’s famous stage prop was his rocket-firing guitar, which almost led to disaster.

“I fired one of those rockets at Gene and it almost f**king hit him,” he laughs. “It flew right by his head. It would have burned him pretty bad.”

Ace himself wasn’t always so lucky. The rocket-firing guitar was also fitted with smoke bombs, of which Ace says: “I burned my leg real bad once back in the ‘70s, man. A smoke bomb ignited too early inside the cavity of the guitar, and it melted the asbestos—which our f**king costumes were made from—to my thigh.”

But the closest shave for Ace came during a show in Lakeland, Florida in 1976, when he was electrocuted due to a grounding issue, which left a staircase rail electrically charged. It nearly killed him.

“I should have been dead that night,” he says. “The fact that I got electrocuted and didn’t fall forward was a godsend. There must have been angels pushing me back.

“I was standing on top of four Marshall cabinets on a staircase when I got shocked. I had a heavy Les Paul around my neck, and my body should have fallen forward—but I didn’t.”

Remarkably, Ace not only survived to tell the tale, but he finished the show.

“If I fell forward, I would have broken my f**king neck,” he says. “But I fell back, and the road crew dragged me back off of the staircase. I had no feeling in my hands for five to ten minutes.

“I went on to finish the show,” he says proudly. “But I maybe had feeling in half of my fingers by the time it was done. It was crazy shit, man, but I did get Shock Me out of it. So, I guess it wasn’t all for nothing.”

The song Shock Me was included on the band’s 1977 album Love Gun, and was the first Kiss track to feature Ace on lead vocals.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio – Gene Simmons — bassist-singer-songwriter for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees Kiss — is coming to the MGM Northfield Park on Wednesday, May 14.

Tickets for the show go on sale at 10 a.m. on Friday, January 17, at ticketmaster.com. Presale tickets will be available at 10 a.m. on Thursday, January 17 via the code “OCTAVE.”

Simmons was inducted into the Rock Hall alongside his Kiss bandmates, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss in 2014. The band spent more than two years on its farewell “End of the Road Tour” which included two stops at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in 2019 and finally in October of 2023.

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Very cool item! These were signed by Ace Frehley at a private signing in Nashville, IN in January 2024. Signed in black Sharpie. Eric Singer signed these in Sarasota, FL December 2024. He signed in green paint pen. Includes our Certificate of Authenticity for both signatures.

This was technically Ace’s last show with the band before leaving for the last time. These press kits were on the seats of the venue before the show started. Very rare item! Do not miss out! Includes two press releases, several photos and of course the signed folder. Definitely a piece of KISStory!

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In a recent interview on the Adam Carolla Show, KISS bassist Gene Simmons shared a story about the night he stumbled upon Van Halen back in 1976, with the actual intention of checking another band out.

Simmons helped Van Halen land their first recording contract, and even bought DLR his first heels and leather pants. “I buy Dave [Lee Roth] his first, I don’t know, high heels or whatever, leather pants and all that. Because I want them to audition for Aucoin, our manager and all that. But before then, decide to go into Electric Lady and do 15 songs, a 24-track demo using a guy named Dave Whitman who mixed Humble Pie and all that legitimate, y’know, stuff,” he explained.

“And one of the 15 songs was a song called ‘House of Pain.’ Now, for all you Van Halen fans, this is not the ‘House of Pain’ that they eventually wound up recording. This is the original version, which bears no resemblance,” Simmons revealed. “In fact, that song under the name ‘House of Pain’ was never recorded, and it’s a steamroller. I can’t believe that the band never used that. So that’s the version we do live. And I’m telling you, as soon as it starts, it’s like zero to 60.”

In Simmons’ words, Eddie Van Halen had a reputation for keeping some of his playing techniques secret during the band’s earlier days. Recognizing the band’s potential, Simmons took action and signed Van Halen to his production company, ‘Man of 1,000 Faces,’ and arranged for the band to fly to New York to record a demo at the famous Electric Lady Studios. Simmons was proud of the track ‘House of Pain,’ and even considered it Eddie’s defining moment.

“The version of House Of Pain they recorded with me is the most powerful thing they ever did. It erupts from zero to 60mph in a second. Play it loud; it’s like a steamroller over your face and the band performed it completely live in the studio,” he said previously on Classic Rock.

However, even the ‘quality of those tracks’ wasn’t enough to convince Bill Aucoin, his manager at the time, or his bandmate Paul Stanley. “And of course Ace Frehley and Peter Criss had bigger things on their minds, they were too busy making bad decisions about life,” he added.

While Simmons claimed that the demo was the band’s best work, the song was re-recorded years later for their 1984 album. The music in the 1984 version is quite similar to Simmons’ demo, but the lyrics are different.

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