Oct 18, 2025
3 min read
The musician, who has died aged 74, formed an influential hard rock band in the early 1970s, which he left a decade later amid drug abuse and a falling out with fame.
'Space ACE' FREEHLEY, the guitarist who defined the early years of Kiss, dies
The musician, who has died aged 74, formed an influential hard rock band in the early 1970s, which he left a decade later after struggling with drugs and conflict with fame.
Guitarist Paul Frehley, who until 1982 gave the light to the Quers' dying and Mornist, his eyes, his eyes on the white things on his face. This this September, canceled a long tour against his will after he fell in his studio and being hospitalized.The cause of death is unknown, but, in a public statement, his statement revealed the event: "Frehley went peacefully surrounded by his family when he collapsed in his home."
Rock and roll had lost its innocence.The schizophrenic mirage of the 60s gave way to a skeptical decade.Music critics of the time buried the counterculture in their columns.And in this landscape, at the opposite end of the genre, they appeared with pyrotechnics and makeup, an artificial and theatrical show, fan guitars and infectious choirs, almost disco, pop, disguised with the necessary distortion to be remembered as hard rock in the music history books.
The story of Kiss begins in the same way that the history of music groups began before the Internet: with an ad in the pages of the local newspaper.In 1973, bassist Gene Simmons, guitarist Paul Stanley and drummer Peter Criss placed an ad in the Village Voice, the influential megaphone of New York's institutional counterculture at the time, seeking a solo guitarist with star power and skill."We are not wasting time," he warned.Frehley did not.At the age of 18, he toured as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix and this experience sparked his interest in evocative solos based on the blues and psychedelia.
A twenty-year-old girl, who was born in 1951 in a working class, could not pay for a taxi because her mother had to bring her.In the next ten years, his mother's car was replaced by ambans, red numbers gave the money and money to the bank after selling millions.The kiss became one of the rock's greatest hits.Foundations of Society As Managers of Work even if they voted for the law of individuals, they could not win the law of grief when it was born to fellow human beings and society.
And it's not like anyone needed criticism.Their gold records led them to represent the first generation of stadium rock.Their influence, if not musical, then at least commercial, can be measured today in the lavish tours of industry giants like Taylor Swift.Their stage performances – made-up faces, flames as props, endless tongues in a sarcastic grin aimed at the public – they marked an era and an aesthetic, an adaptation of the New York Dolls' excessive and corporate transvestism of the 70s.
The dream of rock and roll breeds monsters, and fame soon took the form of cocaine and other hard drugs and excesses.After releasing 11 albums, studio and live, Freeley abruptly left Kiss in 1982 amid rumors of fights and disputes with the rest of the band.“We were a heavy rock band and all of a sudden there were little kids in the front row with lunch boxes and dolls and I had to worry about swearing into the microphone.It was a real circus,” he told Rolling Stone thirty years after his departure.“I thought if I stayed in this group I would kill myself.On my way home from the studio, I wanted to crash my car into a tree.I left a $15 million contract.Today that would be about $100 million.And my lawyer looked at me and said, "Are you out of your mind?"
After they left, Frebley wrote a few text messages that didn't approach the kiss market.In the '90s and '00 he returned with the tour of the bandmic randmic continued to rage and filled the arenas around the world.In 2014, the members of the kissing concept, Simghley, Simmons, Stanley and Crists-received with the stone in stone & rogunde.
En una de sus últimas entrevistas para la revista Creem en 2023, Frehley ya dejó una suerte de epitafio que resumía la trayectoria de la banda: “A pesar de que Paul [Stanley] y yo tuvimos nuestros desacuerdos, todavía le quiero. Juntos fundamos el mayor grupo de rock teatral del mundo. Hoy estaba hablando con Peter [Criss] y me dijo: ‘Ace, la gente va a seguir escuchando nuestros discos dentro de 50 años’. Le he respondido: ‘Lo sé. Después de que estemos muertos y enterrados”.
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