Makeup to Breakup (20 page)

I
t should have been a tip-off, but I was too stoned on coke to realize
it. Along with two hundred other guests, I was waiting for Deb to come to L’Orange, one of the most exclusive and expensive restaurants in L.A., so we could make our wedding vows and then party all night. I started getting nervous when she was half an hour late.

“Where the fuck is she?” I mumbled to Neil Bogart. “Maybe she’s not gonna come.”

This conversation was taking place in the bathroom.

“Here, this will help you out,” Neil said, and passed me a vial of coke.

That conversation was repeated with Larry Harris, another Casablanca executive, and a few of my other friends. Each time I got the consolation prize of a vial. And each time I had to chase that electric feeling with a nice scotch.

After two hours, Deb finally showed up. By then I was pie-eyed, but so was she. Her pupils were totally dilated and she was half in the bag.

“Where were you?”

“I was with Eileen back at the bungalow,” she said. I had rented a nice bungalow for us at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“We opened a bottle of champagne and we foundI was so in love with Debor2">
I wasn’t going to let a little tardiness spoil my big day. We had gone all-out
for this wedding. Chris Lendt, who loved to do stuff like this, made all the arrangements, including getting a custom-made cake from one of the best patisseries in town. We began the festivities with a black-tie prewedding dinner for two hundred people at Regine’s in New York City. Once we got to L.A., I passed on a bachelor party and instead had a dinner a few nights before the wedding at Chasen’s, the legendary Hollywood restaurant. Chasen’s was my ultimate spot, because Humphrey Bogart used to be a regular there. At one point in the evening I decided to do my Fred Astaire impression, so I took off my jacket and leaped up onto the table and danced. The food went everywhere, but I didn’t care. I was living my Hollywood dream.

The wedding itself was marred by an ugly incident involving my parents. I had seated my parents at a prime table in the front of the room. Deb and I were up on the dais. Between the salad and the main course, Deb’s mother and her aunt, who had married a very prominent Beverly Hills dentist to the stars, came up and sat down with us. They were both pretty bombed and just stayed there drinking and bullshitting. Somehow this bothered my mother.

“How the fuck can they go sit up there and we can’t?” she fumed to my father.

I could see that she was upset, so I went over to their table.

“What’s the matter, Ma?”

“This is bullshit. We’re leaving,” she said.

“Where are you going?” I was in shock.

I’d done everything to make my parents feel proud and special. I had put them up in the Beverly Hills Hotel in a nice suite. I wanted my folks to have fun, but fancy-schmantzy places like L’Orange made my mom nervous. She had bad teeth, so she always covered her mouth when she talked to “important” people. She and my dad were simple Brooklyn people. They felt out of place in this glitzy L.A. world.

“We’re leaving. You’re not going to insult me like this. Come on, Joe,” she said, and got up. My father and grandfather and his wife sheepishly followed her out. My mother didn’t talk to me for a year after that incident.

This was probably my mother’s way of not approving of the marriage.
God knows, many of the people closest to me were horrified that I was marrying Deb. I should have realized that our relationship was incendiary from the start. We fought like cats and dogs. She would pull stunts like hanging naked from the balcony of my suite at L’Ermitage, drunk and coked out of her mind. I told my dad that story. “What are you getting into? A naked woman hanging from a balcony? What’s going to happen in the future?” he warned.

But pussy is like heroin. I couldn’t stop. And the makeup sex was extremely hot.

The more I found out about Deb’s abusive childhood, the more I should have understood. Bill Aucoin used to say to me, “The whole picture is right in front of you. Look at her family. This isn’t Lydia, this is a whole different animal.” Sean was just as dramatic. “Peter, she is a cancer that is going to kill you.”

“Yeah, but what a wonderful way to go,” I’d smile.

Gene and Paul and Ace all attended my breakfast” aylwedding. But when it was time to go back into the studio to record the next KISS album,
Unmasked,
I was absent. I just had no desire to play with them. I was tired of the makeup, tired of playing the same old fucking songs. On top of that, now they were actually telling me how to play the songs. They brought in Anton Fig to drum again. The group was so fractured by then that Ace wouldn’t let Gene play on his songs. He played the bass himself.

Now that my problem couldn’t be contained, it became an issue for the organization. Peter needed help. Where had they been five years earlier? Paul Marshall sent me to see a Dr. Feelgood, a psychiatrist whom his wife was seeing. All I got out of these visits was quaaludes, Valium, chloral hydrate, and Seconal. Not quite a recipe for the road to Wellville.

I did take a first step toward confronting my problem when I was on my honeymoon in Rio. One day I said to Deb, “Maybe they’re right. I was a fucking jerk that last tour. I should get off this shit and straighten up and go back and give those guys another try.” So I stopped doing blow and I cut way back on the pills. I even started taking drum lessons with Jim Chapin, Harry Chapin’s dad. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe things could work out.

A few weeks after I got back from my honeymoon, I got a call to
come to the office because the guys had something important to discuss. I got there and the whole fourteenth floor was empty. It was like a ghost town. That was odd: It was usually a madhouse up there. I walked past the vacant desks and looked into Bill’s office, and it was empty. I got to our conference room, which had a nice bar and a huge round table and all our gold records on the walls. There they were.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

“Ah, this is between us,” one of them said.

They cut to the chase. They didn’t want me in the band anymore. I was too out of control. I had lost my chops.

“So you’re firing me?” Here I was about to tell them that I had cleaned up. I’d been straight for a month. I was taking lessons. I was really motivated. It’s not easy for Mr. Tough Guy to confess his feelings, but I was about to eat crow and ask to come back to the band.

“Yup,” they said.

“Well, I fucking quit!” I yelled. Now I was really hurt. I looked over at Ace, and he couldn’t look me in the face. Paul and Gene actually looked like they were gloating. I was furious. They got up to leave, and Ace was the last to exit.

“Hey, Cat, I’m not happy about this, man, but you were out of control,” Ace said. This was the pot calling the kettle black.

“I’m not crazy now,” I said.

“I get it,” he said, and left.

I was so stunned I couldn’t move. Then I just broke down and cried.

“Where the fuck is Bill?” I said out loud. He was the best man at my wedding. I had saved his ass when he was getting canned. Where was Sean? If anyone loved me and eased any blows, it was them. Now, when I needed them, they weren’t here, and I hated them. They had betrayed me.

I went straight home to the Claridge and I dialed my dealer’s number.

“Bring me a couple of grams,” I said.

Deb looked at me like “Oh, no!”

I hung up, cracked op a picture of my daughterin” aylen a nice bottle of scotch, poured a drink, drained it, and poured another. I was right back in it.

“Hey, you wrote ‘Beth,’ you could get another band together,” Deb said, trying to cheer me up. “You’re still a star, it shouldn’t be difficult.”
She was clueless how hard it was to make it to the top of the ladder. But I knew. With each sip and each snort, I felt my world collapsing around me. Then I just started crying again. I had never felt so hurt in my whole life.

A few weeks after that, Ace came by my penthouse.

“Cat, I really can’t go on without you, it’s going to be a nightmare with these two guys,” he began. “Look, they’re willing to give you another rehearsal. If it goes great, you’re back in the band.”

I knew that Bill had been pressuring them to give me another chance. The
Unmasked
tour was about to begin, and the last thing they needed was to find a new drummer.

“Ace, I don’t want to play with the band no more,” I said. “I’m burnt out. I love you, but I can’t be with them anymore. I’m going to get my own band. You should do the same, you’re miserable.”

“I’m telling you, Cat, I can talk them into it.”

“Don’t talk them into anything. I don’t want to have anything to do with them anymore.”

But I had to admit I kind of liked the idea of going to rehearse with them again. I really wanted to get back at them for all the times that they’d put me and my music down. I had learned some new stuff from Chapin and I wanted to shove it down their throats.

The day of the rehearsal, I arrived at the SIR studio carrying an attaché case and a music stand. I was going to play this out to the max. Instead of the fun-loving, clothes-shedding Catman, they were going to see a new, improved, serious Peter Criss. I set down the attaché case, opened it up, and took out some pieces of sheet music. Then I set up the stand and put the sheets on it.

Before I left my house, I decided that I wouldn’t show any emotion, any vulnerability to them again. I wouldn’t lose my temper, I wouldn’t scream, I wouldn’t crack jokes. I had never been so serious my whole life, and it really freaked them out. I was extremely locked into myself from the blow. They didn’t know what to make of me.

“Okay, should we proceed?” I said, and I began to sabotage that rehearsal for spite. I really think that they were sincere about giving me another chance. If I would have played well, I’m sure they would have said, “Let’s go for it again.” They didn’t really want to lose me and all that
money that was lined up. Maybe they thought by firing me, they were scaring me straight. I don’t know. But I did know that I hated them even more after they fired me.

The music stand and the sheet music were props to bust their balls. I couldn’t read music that well yet. I had only been studying for three months. But Chapin had taught me how to play some really hard beats that were jazz-oriented, so I broke them out. They tried to join in but they were lost.

“Can’t you follow me, you assholes?” I said.

I’m surprised that they played with me as long as they did. I was expecting them to say, “Hey, you fucking bastard. You want to be crazy, we’re leaving.” But they stayed thereem 0em #888888 inset;
padding: would ever for an hour or so, until they were finally fed up and left. At the time it felt like I was throwing my life out the window, but who’s kidding who? It really had been over for a long time already.

So I was out of the band. We began a series of negotiations, and I wound up retaining my 25 percent interest in the band. It was a really great deal for me, and I imagine it must have driven Gene and Paul crazy to have to share that money with me. Although I was no longer officially in the band, we kept up the pretense that I was still a member and I was listed on
Unmasked
as the drummer. I remember that Chris also had me come to a big meeting with PolyGram, the company that had acquired Casablanca, where I had to pretend that I was still the drummer for KISS.

The reality of my departure finally hit me the day that we shot a video for “Shandi,” a song on the new album. When I sat down at that mirror and started applying the makeup, it struck me that it would be the last time that I would be the Catman. Even though I had prayed to get out of that situation, it still hurt. There’s a scene in that video where we’re walking with our heads down and it reminded me of the Beatles during
Let It Be
. They knew it was over when they were filming that, and so did we. There was a really strange vibe on the set that day. Everyone seemed so down. When we finished, they rushed to the dressing room and took their makeup off in record time. Ace and Paul walked out without even saying good-bye to me. Gene was still in the room when I sat down in front of the mirror.

As Gene was getting ready to leave, I saw that his bass guitar was propped up against the wall.

“Hey, Gene, can I have your bass? I’d like to have something to remember the band with,” I said.

“You really want it?” he said.

I nodded yes.

“Yeah, you can have it,” he said softly.

After he left, I sat alone in front of my mirror. Random thoughts started racing through my head. Where did all the years go? Am I making the right decision? Can I ever make it big again like this? And then I just felt so bad that they had left me sitting here alone, like a piece of dirt. My three brothers in arms. I cried so hard that all my makeup washed off my face. For the last time.

When the organization finally acknowledged that I was no longer a member of the group, they used the stock excuses: creative differences, desire for a solo career, et cetera. You never read, “We threw Peter out of the band because he was a mad drug addict and he fucked up.” That would come later.

But at the time, PolyGram was fine with me leaving the group, and they gave me a contract for a solo album. They had also bought out Neil and owned Casablanca, so Marks was able to negotiate a very lucrative new contract for KISS. All this meant that I wasn’t hurting for money. I had no idea how much I was worth, but it was more than $10 million for sure. I remember that Deb and I went out to the Four Seasons with Marks one night and he made the huge mistake of bragging to her about how well-off we were.

“Your husband is richer than God,” he told her. “You guys will never be broke.” He was drunk.

This was not the right thing to tell a woman who spent money like she could. I never had the head for business and money management, and Lydia had taken care of our finances since we’d first been together. So I made the mistake of putting a twenty-year-old girl who graduated from the Hugh Hefner School for breakfast” ayl Wayward Women in charge of our fortune. And Deb had graduated with honors. This was a woman who was into Charles Jourdan shoes. I never imagined that there were women paying
$2,000 and up for a pair of shoes that consisted of a piece of lace and a heel. Deb introduced me to the world of Rolex and Cartier and Halston couture. I spent a ton of money on a custom-made white lynx coat for her. I would never do that now, because I’m not into hurting animals, but I thought it was cool at the time. I had her wear it to visit my parents in Brooklyn on Christmas Eve one year, and my mother hated it.