Makeup to Breakup (31 page)

I looked around the room in Gene’s house and I saw Gene—I mean, the Demon—again, darting his tongue in and out of his mouth. Ace stood up and he had the same weird walk. It was creepy. It was as if nothing had changed in seventeen years. And now that we had donned our costumes and our makeup, we could announce to the world that KISS was back for an epic reunion.

It hadn’t gone smoothly, though. Months earlier, George Sewitt brought us to a meeting in the offices of KISS’s new lawyer, Bill Randolph. One
look at that guy and I hated him. He was the most pompous, arrogant piece of shit I’d ever met, one of those guys who wears a three-thousand-dollar suit and thinks he’s God. Yet whenever Gene or Paul ordered him to do something, he got it done like he was a robot. I guess he had to: They were his only client. Gene and Paul were in L.A., so the office rigged up a huge video screen and conferenced them in.

Gene and Paul went into their rap about how they had kept the brand going for years and that Ace and I were coming back again basically as employees. It was like they had practiced their lines for years—they had it down. “We’re going to get this, you’re going to get that . . .” I’m listening and it boiled down to Gene and Paul dividing 70 percent of the proceeds while Ace would get 20 percent and I would get 10 percent. One of their justifications was that Ace had been named guitarist of the year in
Guitar
magazine. I’m thinking, So what? He didn’t write an award-winning song like “Beth.”

“You’re all out of your fucking minds, I’m not doing this,” I finally said. “Over my dead body is Ace getting more money than me. There would be no KISS without us. I was the third member of the band. You forget that? You’re telling me you’re going to give this fucking guy more money than me?”

Ace and I started bickering, and Randolph tried to calm us down.

“You give me and Ace an even split and I’m aboard,” I said.

“Well, this is what we talked about with George,” they said. For the first time, I realized that Sewitt was ready to throw me under the bus in a second. Tall Man had warned me that he was a piece of shit. How right he was!

“I’m out of here,” I said, and started packing my stuff up.

Randolph was in shock.

“You’re going to walk away from a million dollars?” he asked incredulously.

“A million? It better be a fucking hell of a lot more than a million dollars we’re talking about, because a million is shit. I can only imagine what your clients are going to make.”

“Let’s stop this,” Ace interjected. “Can I talk to Peter in private?”

Ace, George, and I went into a private room.

“We have to make this work,” Ace said. “We can make the same money.” So we whittled down George’s commission and agreed to make the same percentage. We should have dumped George and taken all the money for ourselves, but we were stupid. We thought we needed him.

We went back into the meeting and announced our decision and everyone was ha,” Ace said. “ pd ever ppy. Then George mentioned that Ace had a record deal that was worth a hundred grand, so he wanted that amount from them because he wouldn’t be able to do his album. So right away, he was making more money than me anyway. There was no record deal. It was all bullshit.

Gene told us the next step was to come out to L.A. and talk about rehearsals. Then they disappeared from the screen. I left without even shaking Randolph’s hand.

We met again a few months later at Gene’s house in L.A. Gene and Paul wanted to introduce us to Doc McGhee, KISS’s new manager. They made it clear that Doc was managing Gene and Paul, but he would also be doing things that would benefit Ace and me, and we could always go to him if we had any problems.

With that, Doc made his grand entrance into the room. It was like watching Michael Jackson walk in—he was that much of a showman. Doc was a small man, maybe five foot six, but he was built like an ox. You didn’t want to fuck with him. He had been a wrestler in school and he could throw you through the fucking wall. He was a nice-looking man and he dressed impeccably and wore a twenty-five-thousand-dollar watch. He looked the part.

He had the stories, the dance, the pizzazz. He had made Jon Bon Jovi huge. He created Motley Crue and put the Scorpions on the map. Now he had a dream for us. Next thing we knew, Ace and I were falling in love with this guy: He was such a great con artist. Of course, he neglected to mention that all those other groups had fired his ass.

“We’re going to make a lot more money than you think,” Doc said. “I have great ideas. When Gene and Paul came to me with this, I told them I would not touch you guys unless Peter and Ace were on board and you all put the makeup back on. That is the only way we’re going to make millions of dollars. We’re going to make enough so we can all retire.”

That was nice to hear. Gene took the floor again and pulled out a list of
conditions: If they weren’t met, he could pull the plug on the tour at any time. All band members had to be on time, we had to do interviews, we had to work out to get back in shape. There were to be no drugs, no heavy boozing. I was willing to do all of this anyway, without Hitler’s prodding.

By January of 1996, rumors of our reunion began to surface. Gene was doing a radio interview in Chicago when the announcer asked him if a KISS reunion was possible. “Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you,” Gene coyly sang.

We made our first public appearance in makeup at the Grammy Awards on February 28. We were backstage in full makeup and costume, and most of the stars thought that we were a KISS cover band about to perform. In actuality we were going to present a Grammy with Tupac Shakur, the rap artist. Right before we went on, we convened in a little room and Gene and Paul started lecturing me condescendingly on how to speak to Tupac. “Peter, you know that Tupac Shakur is a real gangster. He’s been shot a number of times and he’s the real deal, so don’t rub him the wrong way, don’t call him names.”

Of course, there was no drama. Tupac was wearing an expensive Versace suit and was a perfect gentleman.

“Let’s shock the people,” he said, and we ambled out onto the stage. The audience went berserk and gave us a standing ovation, led by Eddie Vedder.

Backstage afterward, all the stars had finally realized that we were the real KISS, and they all applauded us. We were on our way.

Now the hard work began. We each got a personal train,” Ace said. “ab” ayiser. Mine was named Gregory and he was a weirdo. He had been Paul’s trainer and he belonged to the Hare Krishna cult so he had a shaved head. He took me to his temple one night and we did some chanting together.

Gregory just kicked my ass. He had me drinking power drinks, distilled water, cleaning out my whole system. I’d meet him at Gold’s Gym in Venice at nine in the morning and we’d train for two hours straight. We did the treadmill for a half hour and then stretched and lifted weights. He taught me yoga positions. He was literally chiseling my body. I lost more than twenty-five pounds. I was in the best shape of my life.

After the gym session, I’d drive to my drum tutor and drum for an
hour. I had to relearn all the old KISS songs. It was humiliating to go meet some punk drummer and copy him playing my old shit because I had forgotten how to do it. At night I would watch VHS after VHS of KISS concerts. My tech and I would study them like football coaches. I had to relearn my body movements, the way I moved my head, the way I spun my sticks. I hated myself because some of that early drumming was pretty intricate.

After working with the drum tutor, I’d spend an hour or two playing with Tommy Thayer, just guitar and drums. He was Gene and Paul’s butt boy for everything, but he was a KISS historian who knew the most minute details of every show we ever did. We’d play “Deuce” and “Strutter” and “Detroit Rock City,” and it wasn’t easy to relearn all these songs I hadn’t played for almost twenty years. Then I’d go downtown and rehearse with the band. They rented some cheap crammed little studio. That’s the way they wanted it, so no one could fuck up and make a mistake and get away with it. Gene and Paul were right on top of my drums, so I was lucky to be able to breathe. We worked like dogs in that place.

But I didn’t mind working hard. I was fifty years old, older than the other guys, but I just thought of it as training for Tyson. You better be in great shape to get in the ring with him. Gene and Paul were workaholics to begin with, so they worked their asses off. But Ace was Ace: He was always lazy. He didn’t take too kindly to all this regimentation.

When we thought we had gotten better, we went into a larger rehearsal space, SIR. We set up on a stage with a sound system and we’d mike my drums. Gene and Paul would get there early, just to try to catch us if we were late. I was always on time but Ace never was, and Gene would sit there and look at his watch. I’d get upset with Ace, too, because I was ready to go. So Gene sent a fax to the effect of “If you don’t get your shit together, I’m going to pull the plug.” It infuriated me. I hadn’t missed one second of rehearsal but already he was asserting his power. Gene loved that fax machine. Sometimes he’d send a fax of three words. I went over to his house one time and he had ten broken fax machines lying around. He had worn them all out.

By April we were rehearsing in New York at SIR. And because New York is the media capital of the world, we were forced to go to great lengths
not to be seen together. Despite the Grammy appearance, there had been no announcement of a tour yet. That happened on April 16 at a monumental press conference on the USS
Intrepid,
a museum docked on the Hudson River. We got dressed up at our hotel and then drove over to the ship in a van. Every now and then we’d stop at a light and people would see us, go crazy, and charge the van. When we got to the ship, there were hundreds and hundreds of press people there. Doc had the room completely darkened, and then a huge KISS ,” Ace said. “ pd ever sign lit up and we each walked out with a spotlight on us. It was like the scene from
Close Encounters
when the aliens walk into the light.

The cameras clicked away like crazy. After we posed, we sat down at a table and the questions came from reporters from all over the world. I was so proud to be part of something that was the biggest story on the planet at the time.

The tour dates were announced, and tickets went on sale shortly after that. I was back in L.A., asleep at six in the morning one day, when the phone rang. Groggy, I picked it up.

“Peter, are you sitting, standing, or lying down?” Gene said in his monotone.

“I’m fucking sleeping,” I said. “The sun is just coming up.”

“We just sold out Tiger Stadium in forty-seven minutes. Forty thousand seats.” No enthusiasm, no excitement, no emotion. He was just Joe the Robot. But I jumped out of bed, screaming. And that was the way it went for venue after venue. Two straight years of touring, all around the world, sold out.

Once the tour had been announced, I got paranoid that the IRS was going to garnish my wages. By then my tax bill had mounted to $3 million and I had finally hired Carol White, a tax specialist, to help me. She had me file for bankruptcy, which Ace also did. That was a heavy day for me. Going from millions and millions to filing
Chapter 13
. By then both Gene and Paul had paid a million each to the IRS. Gene told me that he was sick and throwing up every day for a year after he signed over that million-dollar check to them.

Carol worked it out so that after a certain number of days of my bankruptcy filing, my IRS debt would get wiped out and everything I made
after that was mine. My biggest fear was the IRS would get wind of the KISS tour and that I’d be working for them. Those days went by so slow. Every day I dreaded getting that letter in the mail from the IRS. But despite all the publicity, even being on the cover of
Forbes
magazine with an article about how much money this tour would gross, somehow they never came after me. I sweated out the days, and my IRS debt went away.

After a warm-up gig in California, the tour started at Tiger Stadium in Detroit on June 28, 1996. We were all nervous wrecks that day, but we were flying on adrenaline. Everybody got up early and we were in and out of each other’s rooms at the hotel. At one point, some groupies had come to my room while I was getting my hair colored. I wound up making out with one of them, but they were kind of funky, so I settled for watching the two of them get it on.

Then I got the call to come down, so I threw them out. And I had a panic attack. I momentarily forgot all the songs, all the arrangements: I didn’t even remember the opening song. Everything went blank. But once we got in the car with Doc to go to the stadium, I calmed down. Doc told a million jokes and then regaled us with all these funny backstage rock ’n’ roll stories. Gene and Paul were calm and Ace was quiet. I was my usual physical self, talkative, very up. I still had that crazy energy.

When we got to the gig, Gene and I shared one room and Paul and Ace had the other.

“Wow, we’re gonna play for forty thousand people,” I said in awe. “That’s freaking me out.”

“I knew this would happen,” Gene said coolly. He wouldn’t even admit that he was excited. After we all went into the makeup room and put a picture of my daughter people” on our faces, we got dressed and they brought us up to the stage in golf carts, two to a cart. My heart started exploding in my chest. I was sitting next to Gene and I started beating out a fill on my leg and then I started playing his leg, just like I used to do for our big shows twenty years earlier.

I finally broke him. He started laughing.

“You Italians, nothing changes, huh?” he said.

“Man, this is going to be good,” I said.

“Let’s just stick to what we rehearsed. Don’t change anything,” Gene said.

I agreed. Gene had spent a lot of time helping me with my drum solo. At first I just couldn’t get it again, and he stayed late after rehearsals and helped me with it and then it was like riding a bike. I could close my eyes and it would be the same solo I did in 1975.

The cart came up the ramp and the roar got louder and louder and suddenly we were in the stadium and the huge lights illuminated the field and the stands. It was an incredible feeling, like going to a giant church.