MAKING OF THE ALBUM: Kiss – Destroyer

Following the release of their third album, Dressed to Kill, in 1975 Kiss enjoyed major acclaim with their first live record, Alive, several months later. Despite their prior success, the band were untrusting of allowing outsiders play a significant role in either their style or sound and had been unable to form a strong relationship with any of their producers. Soon after the release of Alive they began discussing concepts for their follow-up to Dressed to Kill and, impressed with his work on five of Alice Cooper’s classic records (including Billion Dollar Babies and Welcome to My Nightmare), they approached Bob Ezrin to produce. Unlike his predecessors, Ezrin’s involvement would not merely be limited to basic production, assisting in the writing or re-writing of several of the songs that would ultimately make their way onto the subsequent album – Destroyer – including the classic Detroit Rock City, whilst he also perfected the arrangements for the ballad Beth.

Ezrin also taught the guitarists how to tune their instruments, something they were previously unfamiliar with having taught themselves how to play. Despite his positive influence, guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss both took issue with an outsider instructing them on how they should make a Kiss album. Frehley’s poor timekeeping would constantly come under question, whilst both Frehley and Criss would prove to be as difficult as possible for Ezrin, even though frontmen Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons were open to suggestions. The latter two had an image of what they felt Kiss should be but felt they were not experienced or focused enough to do their concepts justice, thus turning to Ezrin, who had proved several times already that he was able to extract the best elements from an artist (as he would later do with Pink Floyd‘s The Wall). Ezrin’s gift was that he was able to create an epic sound and would help transform Kiss from a popular rock band to the biggest stadium group in the world.

Whilst Stanley and Simmons were determined to surpass their previous albums both Frehley and Criss would become troublesome. Frehley, annoyed with Ezrin’s interference, often would fail to show up for recording sessions, resulting in Ezrin instead drafting in the services of Dick Wagner (who had previously worked with the producer on Lou Reed’s Berlin and Alice Cooper’s School’s Out and Welcome to My Nightmare), who would perform the majority of the lead guitar on the album. Criss’ key songwriting contribution to the sessions was a track entitled Beck that he had written with his friend Stan Penridge, a ballad based around a piano riff that Simmons had suggested he renamed Beth, to avoid any unintentional references to Jeff Beck. The majority of the song had been composed by Penridge but Ezrin, upon hearing the tune, would begin to arrange the structure of the song, resulting in one of the band’s most popular songs (despite being the b-side to Detroit Rock City).

Released on March 15th 1976, Destroyer initially sold just 890,000 copies before sales began to slip, even whilst the band were travelling American in support of the album. Although the opening track, Detroit Rock City, was released as the first single and intended as their breakthrough it would be Beth that would ultimately draw attention to the album and help increase sales, resulting in various television appearances which helped create further exposure. Suddenly Kiss surpassed the likes of Aerosmith to become one of the biggest heavy metal bands in the world, whilst their shameless marketing (coinciding with the rise of the Kiss Army) turned them into icons of popular culture.