Early KISS producer Eddie Kramer has revealed that plans are afoot for the band to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its 1975 “Alive!” album with an expanded version, tentatively due before the end of the year.
During last month’s appearance on TWISTED SISTER guitarist Jay Jay French‘s podcast “The Jay Jay French Connection: Beyond The Music”, Kramer — who produced the original “Alive!” LP — stated about the new collection: “It’s a project I spent 46 days mixing. It’s called ‘Kiss Alive! 50’, which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ‘Alive!’ album, the first ‘Alive!’ album, which was mixed at Electric Lady [studios in New York City] in 1975, 50 years ago. And, fortunately, they found all the bloody tapes — thank God. It was incredible. Jeff Fura at Universal — big shoutout to him — he came up with the tapes; he found them. And so we spent all this time restoring them, transferring them, and then I mixed every single show that actually contributed to the final one, plus all the rehearsals that Gene [Simmons, KISS bassist/vocalist] and Paul [Stanley, KISS guitarist/vocalist] said, ‘We’ve gotta record in the afternoon,’ which they did, thank God, because we were able to capture some fantastic performances.”
Kramer added: “What you hear during this period is that those guys were serious about getting this record out and making it sound fantastic. And then I mixed the final album in Dolby Atmos. So it’s a beautiful package that’s coming out, I think, late fall.”
Last year, Eddie told Guitar World magazine about his work on the original “Alive!” album: “The thing with KISS was we knew we had to get everything down on tape no matter what it took. It was hard because they were always jumping around, and we had to do a bunch of work on the album after the fact, but that’s how it was. The band may deny it, but the fact remains that on ‘Alive!’, we had to fix a bunch of stuff.”
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