KISS co-founder Ace Frehley was buried in the Bronx on Wednesday following a private memorial Tuesday, with both events being attended by his former bandmates.

Rock-and-roll historian Eddie Trunk said he was a part of the “small group of family and close friends” — including original KISS members Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss — who bid farewell to Frehley with the two separate services this week.

The 74-year-old guitarist died last Thursday in New Jersey after suffering a recent fall that reportedly led to a brain bleed.

“Ace Frehley was laid to rest in a cemetery in the Bronx, New York — of course, where he grew up, very close to where his parents were buried, which were his wishes,” Trunk said in a video posted to Instagram Wednesday.

Trunk didn’t name the specific location, though the Tampa Bay Music News reported he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery.

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When Ace Frehley played what would be his final concert last month, he took the stage with a rhythm guitar player who had been by his side longer than any other in his solo bands: Nashville shredder Jeremy Asbrock. Together, they tore through Kiss classics like “Deuce” and “Cold Gin,” Frehley solo staples like “New York Groove,” and Frehley’s Comet’s enduring battle cry “Rock Soldiers.”

Asbrock, who played in bands like the Shazam and with John Corabi before joining up with Kiss’ Spaceman guitarist in 2018, was the ultimate rock soldier. He calls playing with Frehley, who died Oct. 16 at 74, a dream gig for a Kiss superfan like himself.

“Ace isn’t just an influence of mine. This is the person that laid the path before me when I was four years old. I’ve never wanted to do anything else, and he was the guy that brought it all to me,” Asbrock tells Rolling Stone. “Some nights onstage, it was extremely surreal, especially when he was having a really great show, and he’d get in that stance and start doing his thing. It was like, ‘Man, there it is. That’s it right there, and it’s standing right beside me.’”

Along with Asbrock, Frehley’s final solo band included fellow Nashville player Ryan Spencer Cook on bass and Scot Coogan on drums. Ironically, perhaps, the group was born out of Gene Simmons’ band. Asbrock says they were playing with the Kiss bassist on a tour of Australia that Frehley was booked to open when Frehley asked Simmons if he could borrow his players.

“Gene said, ‘If it’s OK with them, it’s OK with me,’” Asbrock recalls. “Later on, Gene pulled me into his dressing room, and the Kiss cruise was coming up, and he told us that Ace was going to ask us to do the cruise. Then we went to Japan from there with Ace and he asked us to be the band. I joined in September of 2018, so I’ve held the guitar-player position longer than any musician he’s had, consecutively.”

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Longtime E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt and Kiss frontman Gene Simmons found themselves recently talking Jewish heritage to a group of 120 people at angel investor Richard Clareman’s house in Brentwood. The event was part of a moderated conversation for TeachRock, Van Zandt’s education nonprofit, aimed at raising funds for Jewish history education in public schools.

Moderated by film financier and producer Gary Gilbert, the event marked the first installment of TeachRock’s “Amplifying Jewish Heritage” series that aims to develop curriculum resources to highlight the role Jewish musicians have played in key moments throughout U.S. history.

In an interview prior to the event, Van Zandt and Simmons were quick to speak of the fierce urgency of the current moment — as cases of antisemitism have surged in the U.S. in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack in Israel.

TeachRock “tries to cover the waterfront” when it comes to education, Van Zandt said, grabbing students’ limited attention bandwidth with whatever means possible. “We try and offer anything educators may need,” he said. “The vast contribution to our culture from the Jewish people — from Broadway to songwriting to the music industry at large — is enormously significant, so this fits in with our goal of expanding access to education across verticals.”

“The timing (of a program like this) is not accidental. I’ve never seen antisemitism like this in my lifetime,” Van Zandt continued. “It’s horrifying what’s going on. We can talk about the fact that people are being manipulated right now very badly, in a way we never thought would happen in our lifetimes, and if we don’t do something about it, history repeats itself. It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

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