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.”