Makeup to Breakup (32 page)

They stopped us at the ramp to the stage, and we walked up the steps to our positions. There was a huge black curtain obscuring the stage, but the fans on the sides could see us and they went crazy and then everybody started roaring. By now the house lights had been dimmed and it was pitch-black in the stadium. All you could hear was the enormous hum from the amplifiers, and then purple searchlights started cascading around the stadium.

We looked at each other and gave each other the thumbs-up sign.

“You wanted the best, you got the best . . .” The old familiar intro was back, and then, with the curtain still lowered, we went into the first few bars of “Deuce.” Then there was a loud explosion, the curtain dropped, and there we were. It was like going to heaven. I felt like I could do no wrong, we were such a well-oiled machine. We played for over two hours in the sweltering heat but I didn’t feel a thing. This was why we had put in all those grueling hours of training. At that moment, every second of that agony was worth it.

When it came time to do “Beth,” the next-to-last encore, I walked around from behind the drums and sat on that stool again and I started crying. We always had a special bond with the Detroit fans: They were the ones who embraced us first and put us on the map. I was overwhelmed by the love that was coming toward me, people calling my name and saying they loved me. I hadn’t heard that for seventeen years. How could I not cry?

We had a spectacular show, combining elements of all our previous shows. Gene was spitting blood and spewing fire again. During “God of Thunder,” he would fly up into the air to a platform where he sang the song. Ace’s guitar would shoot rockets that would hit the stage lights and cause them to explode or dangle from a wire. Of course my drum kit
levitated high into the air. Doc felt that Paul needed a grand moment too, so later into the tour they devised a rig that enabled Paul to fly over the audience. One night it malfunctioned and people actually hung on Paul’s leg as he cruised over the audience. He was really pissed off. But he loved flying. When we played venues where it was impossible to set it up, he’d get furious.

One of the major changes on this tour was the addition of a huge, high-tech video screen.

“Everything you do will be visible to the audience,” Doc lectured us. “There isn’t anything the fans will miss,” Ace said. “, which ed him now.”

“Remember to smile, Peter,” Doc constantly reminded me.

“Wait a minute, KISS never smiled. Now all of a sudden we’re smiling? What’s so funny now? We’re smiling because we’re going to the bank?” I’d ask.

The truth was that just a smile on that big screen would make the audience go bonkers. It was that powerful a tool. A few nights I’d be nursing some wounds from something Gene or Paul might have done and I’d have my head down and be cursing, and the camera would catch me mouthing the words with that nasty face. So I quickly learned to grin and bear it.

But at first everything was wonderful. We were all getting along, and the good vibes were infectious. Paul brought a ghetto blaster into the makeup room and we chose our favorite music to play while we put on our faces. Sometimes we would play golden oldies like the Four Seasons, and Ace would go ballistic. He hated that music. He wanted to hear Hendrix.

There were still women around, but the Chicken Coop had been replaced by the hotel bar. We were staying at Four Seasons hotels and they all had high-class bars, but on the nights we were there, the room was crawling with women, from teenagers to retirees, all wanting us. The guys invited me down a few times, but I was turned off by the scene. I’d be chatting up girls who were barely a few years older than my sixteen-year-old daughter, and I felt like a pervert.

Plus the old gray mare wasn’t what she used to be. Those young girls were probably used to guys from the football team who would bang the shit out of them from sunup to sundown. Now, there had been a time
when I could’ve killed them one by one. They could come and go and everybody would get their pants fucked off. But the Spoiler wasn’t the Spoiler anymore. I could imagine what they’d say: “What’s the whole thing about the Spoiler? Peter fucked me once and fell asleep, whoop-de-do.” I just didn’t want to put myself in that kind of situation.

Frankly, I didn’t want women around at all at that point. Playing drums for KISS was incredibly hard work. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I had been up all night boning a groupie. No band on the planet worked as hard as we did. Mick Jagger can wear some jeans and throw a scarf on, Tyler puts some tight pants and a chick shirt on, but we had the boots and the heavy costumes. Even wearing that makeup for two hours was no picnic. When you started sweating, the sweat had to break through that powder, so you were sweating under the makeup. Then you took it all off and showered and had to get ready to do it all again the next night. So I put the girls on hold, for the most part. I was fifty, not twenty-six. Forget about it.

Gene was the only one of us who still had the roadies or the bodyguards out scouring the audience for chicks. Sometimes he’d fool around with them during the show. He had a little station that was curtained off to the side of the stage where he could grab a coffee or some water. I’d be in the middle of my drum solo and I’d look over and he’d have two girls at the station. One of them would be flashing me, and he’d bend the other one over and grope her. I couldn’t believe it. He just couldn’t get enough sex.

Gene was in the dressing room one day getting dressed and he had a herpes outbreak so bad that it was all over his neck, his chest, down his stomach, down his legs. They had to bring a doctor in to give him an injection. I heard that Shannon got wind of it and Doc had to go out and get her a very expensive rock to calm her down.

Gene was truly a,” Ace said. “ab” ayis pig when it came to sex. I remember one day early in our career when we were rehearsing and Gene and Paul had to share a microphone and Paul suddenly recoiled as if he had been shot.

“Holy shit, what the fuck did you eat?” Paul said.

“You know what I ate,” Gene said. Then he smiled and you could still see the menstrual blood on his teeth.

“I didn’t brush my teeth this morning. I want to savor the taste of it all day,” Gene said. Paul refused to continue the rehearsal until somebody found a breath mint.

Sometimes on the reunion tour I’d be in my room at night and there’d be a knock at the door. I’d open the door and there would be a chick with fucking gazombas out to here standing there.

“Hi, Mr. Criss.”

“What can I do for you?” I’d say.

“Well, there’s a lot of things you can do for me.”

“Do me a favor. Go over to Gene’s room,” I’d say, and just then Gene would stick his head out into the hall.

“I just wanted to see if you would take the bait,” he’d smile. It was a constant battle between good and evil with Gene.

For the most part, Ace didn’t partake of the groupies, because most of the time he brought a mistress on the road with him. All of them were drug addicts or drunks or perverts. All Ace would do was stay in his hotel room, take drugs, and have sex. He’d set up a bunch of computers and there’d be cords and hard drives and outlets all over the place. Ace was not allowed to have a key to the minibar, but he was usually able to sneak some alcohol in.

One time Valerie, one of these girls, knocked on my door.

“What do you want, Valerie,” I said with disgust. I just didn’t like this chick. She was really crazy and the worst influence on Ace.

“Ace wants a bottle of wine. Actually, two would be good. He’ll pay you for them,” she said.

“No. Ace is cut off. He can’t drink,” I said. I was specifically told by Doc not to sell Ace any booze. I was breaking her balls.

“What?” she said. “Ace said I could depend on you, that you’re cool.”

“I am cool. But I can’t sell you the alcohol.”

She was dumbfounded.

“But I could give it you. And I don’t want to hear a word about this,” I said, and handed her a bottle of red and a bottle of white. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

Whenever Ace did get a new girl on the road, he’d go into his whole doctor routine with them.

I’d be sitting in the dressing room after a show and I’d hear him talking to our wardrobe girl, whom I had nicknamed Baby Beth.

“Hey, Baby Beth, put some rubber gloves in my bag and make sure there’s a big jar of K-Y.”

I knew right then it was going to be a sick night.

“You in tonight?” I’d ask him.

“Oh, yeah, I got to operate on a few patients later. Rubber gloves tonight, baby. We’re going in deep.”

One night I actually heard them from all the way down the hall. His current girlfriend,” Ace said. “Is” loved anal sex and I heard her screaming like a banshee, “FUCK ME LIKE A TRUCK DRIVER! FUCK ME LIKE A TRUCK DRIVER!” as he banged her in the ass. I could only imagine what the businessman in the room below him was thinking.

We were the hottest act in show business during the reunion tour and, of course, all that attention and adulation just magnified Gene’s already Godlike ego. The crew was so pissed at Gene that they made a loop of the scene in one of Gene’s movies where Gene’s character had a grenade shoved into his mouth and his head got blown off. When they wanted to have fun, they’d smoke a joint, pop open a beer, and watch Gene’s head explode over and over and over again.

Gene even tortured poor little Baby Beth. She broke her hump for us night in and night out, but Gene just kept demanding shit from her and heaping abuse on her when she wasn’t waiting on him hand and foot. One night she went crying in Doc’s arms and told him she wanted to quit. Doc consoled her and then went to see Gene.

“You fucking asshole,” Doc reamed him. “We got a long tour ahead of us and nobody can dress you guys like her. Nobody else would put up with your imbecilic shit and your filthy body. Now, I’m going to bring her in here, and you’re going to apologize to her and give her a raise.”

So Beth came in and Gene said, “Come here, Beth.” And he sat her down on his lap.

“You know I’m sorry, Baby Beth. When I put that makeup on I’m just not myself—something happens to me and I become that monster.” She was getting a speech instead of an apology. But he gave her a raise and she stayed.

In fact, she turned the tables on him. Doc had instituted a little preshow ceremony that he had done with some of his other bands. We used to form a circle right before we went on and he’d give us a pep talk like a football coach.

“All right, you fuckers, there’s seventeen thousand people out there that paid their hard-earned cash to see you guys because they love you and you’re the best band in the world . . .”

After a while we alternated. Me, Tim Rozner, our tour manager, or someone else would give the little speech, and we’d try to crack everybody up and lighten the mood. One night we asked Baby Beth to do the speech and this little four-foot-nine firecracker got in the circle.

“All right, you four lame, old, fat, wig-wearing clowns. Get out there and earn your money! If you can make it up the stairs,” she said. We cracked up so hard we could barely get on the stage.

Berating the crew was one thing. But shortly after the tour was underway, Gene and Paul began to direct their wrath toward me and Ace. They had always wanted the power when we were coming up, but Aucoin had always been there to check their darkest impulses.

I went into the reunion with a positive vibe. I wanted it to work; I wanted to make amends. But every step of the way, they would wield their power. Ace and I were instrumental in creating KISS, and now we were being treated like replaceable sidemen. And the same forces—greed and power—that years earlier had conspired to destroy the band were coming into play again, only now they were magnified because we were playing on such a greater stage.

The way that Gene and Paul would address us was beyond belief. If anyone would ever talk to you with such condescension and contempt, you’d have every right to break their nose.

I lost interest in fighting with them._ w” ayis I was like George Harrison in
Let It Be
: “I’ll play whatever you want.” Paul was never happy. Was I playing too fast? Too slow? Not slow enough? You couldn’t please him. Everything had to be perfect for him, yet here’s a guy who was imperfect in his own head. He couldn’t even be happy in his own skin, so he strikes out and hurts other people to get his rocks off.

Now that the two of them controlled the band, they could have their
way on everything. Ace and I had no votes anymore. Gene was the more vocal of the two with all his dictums. Forget about spontaneity and the joy of creation. We had become a big machine, lumbering our way from city to city. Gene’s conception was that the band should be like the Japanese restaurant chain Benihana. “You go to chef school at Benihana and you learn exactly how many peppers to put on the grill, how many shrimp, how much sauce. And it never varies from restaurant to restaurant.” Great, now we’re the greatest Japanese restaurant chain in the land.

It was disheartening, but I could take the abuse when it hit me directly. When the abuse was being published in articles that my daughter could read, I drew the line. When Ace and I left the band originally, there was no mention at all in the press about drug problems or alcohol abuse. We were leaving because of “creative differences,” and we were all still one big happy family. But now Gene and Paul had control and they could redefine the terms.

Now that we were back on top, the press was crazy to get any new angles on us, so they began asking why we had broken up in the first place. Gene had a mouth that matched the size of his fucking ego, so he was only happy to oblige them.

We used to get a folder every morning with clips of all the news articles written about us. One morning I was thumbing through it and I started reading an interview Gene had done with some big-city newspaper. He was quoted talking about my extensive drug use and Ace’s alcoholism and how they impaired our ability at the time. I went crazy. I thought, “My daughter is going to read about all my past drug use? She doesn’t know anything about this stuff.” In fact, hardly anyone knew about it, but now it was in black and white in the Seattle paper and the Washington paper and the Detroit paper and the New York paper that I was a crazed drug addict in the ’70s. But this was the ’90s.