KISS at 50: The band's 25 most remarkable moments

Hot on the heels of the twin successes of KISS Alive and Destroyer, KISS accepted an appearance on The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, which was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, the masterminds of mind-bending ’70s kids entertainment. The Kroffts enlisted their creation Witchypoo to appear alongside Tim Conway, Betty Conway, Billy Barty, and Margaret Hamilton, who revived her role as the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard Of Oz. In this context, KISS playing “Beth” and “Detroit Rock City” seemed relatively normal.

Right in the thick of KISS mania, Bally introduced a KISS pinball machine in 1979—further proof of the band’s monumental reach in pop culture. The machine kicked around into the 1980s, popping up in such films as Psycho III and Friday The 13th Part 2, building a legacy that laid the groundwork for a new KISS pinball machine to appear in 2015.

The band’s eponymous 1974 debut album, KISS, may be a bit slick and stiff in parts, but it established the group’s basic template of spirited sleaze with the occasional glimpse of reflection. The latter came in the form of “Black Diamond,” a sketch of sex workers walking the streets of New York City which the Replacements later covered on Let It Be, one of the seminal records of 1980s underground rock. Still, what really resonated were “Strutter” and “Deuce,” unabashed rockers that captured the band’s eager hunger.

KISS deliberately styled themselves as comic book heroes, so perhaps it was inevitable that the group would become action figures themselves. That’s what happened in 1978, when Mego marketed giant dolls of Paul, Gene, Peter, and Ace, promoting the figures with a breathless ad that played nonstop on Saturday morning TV.

Sensing a brewing rebellion from hardcore fans unhappy with the band’s brazen embrace of bubblegum pop and disco in the late 1970s, KISS reunited with Destroyer producer Bob Ezrin to get back to basics. That’s not where they wound up with Music From The Elder. Shortly into the project, the group conceived a concept album set in mystical elden times, a theme that quickly got garbled.

Unlike many elements in the KISS expanded universe, The Kiss Army had organic beginnings. A pair of fans from Terre Haute, Indiana, started the fan club in 1975, but the band soon took over the organization, turning it into a long-running official club with the Destroyer album. At its peak, the club had around 100,000 members, and while it dwindled away sometime in the 1980s, the band relaunched the fan club in the late 2000s, recruiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a notable new member.

KISS’s only Billboard Top Ten hit, the deliberately sappy “Beth,” was the brainchild of drummer Peter Criss, who sang the song as a tentative, tender plea. His quivering delivery was overwhelmed by the symphonic pomp orchestrated by producer Bob Ezrin, who turned this sweet, simple number into a bombastic power ballad.

Bedecked in the KISS logo and portraits of the group, the KISS Kasket was designed for the hardcore fan who wanted to take their favorite band with them into the great beyond. One of those fans was Pantera guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, who requested to be buried in a KISS Kasket in his will. After his 2004 murder, Gene Simmons donated his personal casket to Abbott’s family. Not everybody who purchased the Kiss Kasket had such immediate needs for the item, so the band made sure that it was waterproof, so it could double as a massive cooler for your next beer bash.

Coming within spitting distance of Billboard’s Top Ten, “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” found KISS shamelessly riding the disco bandwagon of the late 1970s. KISS was hardly the first to fuse rock and disco—Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones both got there first—but the group’s zeal at co-opting the fashion of the time gave “I Wade Made for Lovin’ You” a trashy kick that made it one of the group’s very best singles.

The KISS Army lobbied for the band’s inclusion into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for years, forcing the institution to launch the fan ballot in 2012. Two years later, the Hall succumbed to fan pressure and accepted KISS into the institution, a testament to the enduring connection between the group and its audience.

KISS faced an uphill battle in 1983. Not even a decade into their career, the group was seen as has-beens, hobbled by their hubris and wounded further by shifting styles—disco and punk had passed, New Wave was on the rise—they had one card left to play: they took off their makeup. Promoted with an interview on MTV, the great unmasking was accompanied by the video to “Lick It Up” which featured their faces sans kabuki makeup.

Riding high on their stardom, KISS teamed with Hanna-Barbera to make the TV movie KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park, an absurd tale of the band battling a fiend intent on sabotaging an amusement park. Culminating in a ludicrous sequence where the band battles robotic incarnations of themselves, the film was immediately regarded as a mistake by the band—legend has it, they forbid its mention for years—but fans flocked to its sheer lunacy, cherishing the band’s awkward performances.

KISS wasn’t the only rock band to be granted a special issue by Marvel—the Beatles would make an appearance later in this line—but they were a natural fit for a comic book since they intentionally styled themselves as heightened personas. The 1977 comic found the band triumphing over Doctor Doom and Mephisto, setting the stage for their real-life Hanna-Barbera film KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park. But KISS found a way to retain an appearance of danger in these kiddie-friendly surroundings: they had their own blood mixed into the red ink used in the comics.

The peak of KISS madness is also when they decided to go solo. All four members released self-titled records in September 1978, a tactic that they later claimed was due to rising tensions in the band, but is likely the result of the band’s biggest desire: they wanted to conquer the marketplace by any means necessary. That didn’t quite pan out, as the four simultaneously released records diluted the band’s mystique. Best among these was either Gene Simmons’ ambitious effort with its oddly sincere version of “When You Wish Upon A Star” or Ace Frehley’s straight-ahead rock record, highlighted by the stomping “New York Groove.”

Written as a response to Neil Bogart telling the group they needed “an anthem” for their third album Dressed To Kill, “Rock And Roll All Nite” fulfilled the wishes of the band’s label head. A rallying call for non-stop partying, “Rock And Roll All Nite” wasn’t just a rousing arena-rocker, it was a manifesto, distilling the band’s gleeful hedonism into a supersonic blast.

Appearing at the end of 1975, Alive! crystalized the appeal of KISS, cherry-picking the best songs from their first few albums and giving them sinewy renditions that easily eclipsed the frequently stilted original studio versions. Here, KISS sounded as if they couldn’t be contained on a stage: they were larger than life, happily offering their rock & roll thrills with lurid theatricality—a combination that was simultaneously dangerous and silly, a blend that became their enduring signature.