ENTER GENE SIMMONS
As with anything that pertains to KISS, history, or KISSTORY tends to rewrite itself depending on who’s talking.
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(PAUL STANLEY – From the Book - Eddie Van Halen – Neil Zlozower)
Lita Ford and I went to see Ed play with Van Halen one night at the Starwood in 1977, and I was blown away and brought Gene with me the next night.
Kim Fowley who had put together the Runaways had Gene Simmons ear at the time. Kim was working with band called, “The Boyz” which featured future members of the band Dokken. Gene came to the Starwood to see, “The Boyz.” Van Halen happened to be opening.
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MICHAEL WHITE: Dave Roth and myself at the L.A. Forum in 1976 - I am from LA and you might say I kind of grew up in the same musical neighborhood as Dave Roth and company. This picture was taken by my then girlfriend, Mary Garson. She was an up and coming photographer on the L.A. scene at the time. For a while her sister, Maggie, was dating Eddie Van Halen and we used to 'double date' now and then with Dave in tow. This was one of those occasions. Queen was touring for their 'Day At The Races' album. Eddie was with us although he is not pictured here. This was prior to Van Halen signing a record deal with Warner Bros. A little known fact is that my band inadvertently played a role in helping them get that deal. Here's the story... At that time, I was singing in a band called 'The Boyz' with guitarist George Lynch and drummer Mick Brown, who would eventually form 'Dokken'. In 1976 we played a Halloween show at 'Gazzarris on the Sunset Strip'. The club was packed and most of the kids who came to the show that night were dressed up in 'KISS' makeup.
We played mostly our own tunes, but in order to get gigs we played some 'ZZ Top', 'KISS', etc. We ended our first set with "Firehouse', a KISS song. As we were walking off the stage, I noticed an extremely tall guy approaching me. To make a long story short, the man was Gene Simmons. He was at the club partying with Paul Stanley. They weren't wearing any makeup and really enjoyed seeing all these kids dressed up like them. They really liked our version of their song. Gene said that their label 'Casablanca' was looking to sign some new bands. He asked where we were playing next so he could bring the record company out to see us. I told him that we were playing the following week at the 'Starwood', another infamous club in Hollywood. Van Halen had the good fortune to be on the bill with us (we shared billing with Van Halen at several shows in the mid 70's). Gene showed up with the record company, but our show was really off that night. On the other hand, Van Halen had a great set. They impressed Gene so much that he flew them to NY to record some demos. Casablanca didn't sign Van Halen, but after returning to LA with those tapes, Van Halen shopped them to WB and the rest is history. "The Boyz' would never get another chance like that.
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(GENE SIMMONS) Every once in a while I would see a band that I knew was going to be big. Van Halen was one of them. I saw them in a club, the Starwood, in 1977. I went with Bebe Buell, a model who was friendly with a number of rock stars. (She's perhaps better known today as the mother of actress Liv Tyler). Bebe and I were going to see a band called the Boyz, and opening was a new band called Van Halen.
Within two songs I knew they were going to be huge. Strangely, they did only okay at the club. People liked them, but it wasn't a maniacal response. But I knew. I went backstage, went over to them, and introduced myself. I went right into business mode. I wanted to know their plans. They had a potential backer who was a yogurt manufacturer. I said, "Please do me a favor---don't do that. I'll fly you to New York, I'll produce your demo." I signed them to a contract.
When KISS became a success, I tried producing and managing other acts, including Liza Minnelli. I also started acting in movies (Runaway, Wanted: Dead or Alive) and television series such as Miami Vice.
I even started my own production company, Man of a Thousand Faces, and signed Van Halen as my first act. I flew them to New York and produced a 15-song album at Electric Lady Studios in hopes of getting them a deal. It was slow going. At the same time I had to go on tour with KISS, so I tore up my contract with Van Halen and told them we would resume deal shopping when I got back. In the meantime, if they found a deal, they were free and clear. They signed a deal with Warner Brothers within a month.
@ In some comments, Gene says they killed, in the other he claims they were just okay.
(EVH) A year before Ted Templeman and Mo Ostin saw us at the Starwood. Gene Simmons saw us at the Starwood. I’ll never forget, he was sitting there in his high boots. Gene really dug the band. He liked my playing. He thought I had, “song sense.” I read recently that Gene complimented me by saying that Yngwie couldn’t touch me, because I’m more of a songwriter than just burning all the time. I think that’s what Gene saw in me back then. He wanted to produce us. We went into the Village Recorders in West LA. This was the next day, right after we’d gotten through playing the Starwood at three in the morning.
He said, “Meet me here at six.” It was, “Okay Mom, we’re not coming home tonight. We went straight into the studio and put down four songs. “Running With the Devil” was one of them.
Gene had this master plan that he’d produce us. But the rest of the guys in KISS were getting a little uptight because he was spending time with us instead of them. He had to go back to New York to finish a record of theirs or rehearse for a tour. So he flew us up to New York to finish up this tape, which we never did. His master plan was to produce us, sign us to Bill Aucoin management, and possible even have us go on tour with them.
We weren’t able to finish the tape with Gene, but we did go into Electric Land Studios one evening and I did a couple of solos. It was my first attempt at overdubbing, which was very bizarre. I remember asking Gene before we started, “Can I just play the way I do?” He’s going, “You know, just play rhythm guitar and overdub the solo.” I said, “Hold on guys! Now I have to think of another part to play first.” There’d never been another guitar player playing there. Now I have to think, “What could I play there?” I could hit barre chords?
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(Gene Simmons Eddie Trunk)
GS: Bill Aucoin thought they looked like Black Oak Arkansas. And I told him he was on crack again because nobody knew who that Band was, and so what if that band was there, this is the next big band in America. I really believed it. I couldn't convince anybody, so that band, you know, I said, I've got you signed, go back to LA, after the tour let's see what happens. I've got to go out on tour with kiss... At the end of the tour, they got a deal with Warner's and I tore up the contract. Consider this a gift. In the meantime, the guys and I stayed in touch, and I was in LA, we'd just come back from Japan in 1977 and I wrote new songs. And I needed a bass player, a guitar player, certainly a lead guitar player, so I called Eddie and Alex. They came down and we recorded as a trio. The three songs were Christine Sixteen, tunnel of love, and got love for sale, which was originally called have love will travel. And kept those tracks, we originally recorded those tracks, and of course I have the demos. And then when the box set came out, I tried desperately through management and Warner Bros. to have them let me do it, they wouldn't. That doesn't mean it's not going to appear one day. But uh.. So far they said, we don't think it's a good idea
ET: What songs were on the demo that you produced? For Van Halen? Do you remember?
GS: The entire first record..
ET: Oh! So all The tracks for the record?
GS: every single one. As a matter fact, a lot of the ideas and arrangements were things I suggested that initially were hard to call down including the (ERRRRRRRR) that thing, I basically slowed it down and said, let me show you. Because they had a car horn at the end of uh, "Running With the Devil" I think?
ET: It's the beginning!
GS: Yeah!
ET: that's how it opens.
GS: Except it connected... Uh, that was the end of another song. It was, "House of Pain" and with the car horn, and I connected the car horn to, "Running With the Devil" as one song. In other words, one went right into the other
ET: Right
GS: so the car horns slowed down, and I said, let me show you a trick I learned when we made our first record, when uh Black diamond... by hand you slow the 24 track... you via slow it and then by hand turn it. So they loved the uh, sort of sound effect and it wound up on the first record.
ET: So House of Pain was around the same time as the first record because that didn't show up on a record until much later
GS: That's right. As a matter fact, it was a much more rockier first album sounding version. When I finally heard House of pain, it was uh, sort of more ... Uh.... Arranged. Had more harmonies and so on.
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VAN HALEN GOES TO NEW YORK
@Gene says he saw Van Halen at the Starwood in 1977. He flew them to New York and ripped up their contract because he was going on tour. Paul Stanley says it was 1977. Gene says they were signed a month later by Warner. KISS was free from April to July of 1977, and then took October off, otherwise, they were touring. Ed says it took a year for Warner to sign them. @
(EVH) ‘Eruption,’ like most of the other songs on the first album, was performed pretty much live. We had been in the studio for the first time ever about a year earlier with Gene Simmons of Kiss, and I quickly learned that I didn’t like overdubbing.
"Simmons produced a three-song demo for us that consisted of ‘Runnin’ with the Devil,’ ‘House of Pain’ and a song called ‘Babe, Don’t Leave Me Alone.’ Gene said, ‘Here’s what you do in the studio—you play your rhythm parts on one track, and your solo parts on another.’
“I remember feeling very uncomfortable with separating my lead and fill parts from my rhythm parts. Onstage, I’d gotten used to doing both simultaneously. I’d just noodle in between chord lines. Because it was my first time in a recording studio, it didn’t occur to me to say, ‘Can’t I play just the way I play live?’
“The demo didn’t work out, anyway. When we finished recording with Gene, we met with Kiss’ manager, Bill Aucoin. When we went to his office he was getting a shoeshine and said, “I don’t see any commercial potential. Besides that, I’ve got my hands full because I just signed a band called Piper [featuring a then-unknown Billy Squier].
"It was really depressing—we were totally bummed. Gene gave us a couple hundred bucks to make our way home. We just kept playing the Whisky and the Starwood in Los Angeles, and about a year later Warner Bros. came down and eventually signed us.”
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(DLR - HOWARD STERN 1997)
HS: And what about umm… Did Gene Simmons discover Van Halen? Cuz you..
DLR: We did a demo with Gene once upon a time, and it was our first experience with professional Madison Avenue management.
HS: Yeah.
DLR: Yeah.
HS: And didn’t he try to steal Eddie away from you?
DLR: Turns out that was the whole impotence behind it. Is he was looking to get Van Halen into the band.
HS: Wow.
DLR: And I kinda smelled campfire smoke early in the journey, you know?
HS: Right, so, you bailed out of that one!
DLR: I was always protective of the band. And we came in to New York City and we made like a 4 song CD, uh, you know, a demo rather and we went up to the manager’s office and he sat there and had his shoes shined by a little Italian guy at the big desk while he told us, “Guys, I think the music is stellar but uh, we need to replace the vocalist. Dave, I’m terribly sorry, but we have some other beginning bands like Piper and stuff and such and maybe we can place you there. And I just felt terrible.
HS: Right.
DLR: Oh man, we walked back up the streets, because I had no idea. Are the guys buying into this?
HS: Right.
DLR: This is the first time that any of us had gone into the quote un-quote, “Big time –
RQ: Sure.
HS: And the first thing was they were saying, get rid of the lead singer!
RQ: Break up the band.
DLR: Yes… This is not the first time they said that. Our first bad review came 2 years before our first record from the LA times. Richard Cromlin said the same thing. The music is rocking but they’re going to have to get a whole new singer. You know? The vocal department has to be replaced.
HS: Wow.
DLR: And.. I don’t know? The first album sold 12 million records.
HS: Guess they were all wrong.
RQ: Where’s that guy now?
DLR: Still in his little office.
HS: He’s still getting his shoes shined by a little Italian guy.
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In his out-of-print autobiography, ‘Crazy From The Heat’, David Lee Roth concurs that Gene Simmons tried to recruit Eddie Van Halen for KISS. Here’s what Roth had to say in his book about Simmons and his manager (where he goes into much more detail):
There was a brief interlude in 1977, when Gene Simmons from KISS came to the Starwood and saw us play to a sold-out audience and thought we were absolutely spectacular, and said, “I’d like to make a demo tape.” He was thinking of himself as a producer. He had a couple of artists that he was producing, doing whatever in the studio. KISS was at an all-time high, they were at their zenith. We said, “Sure. Let’s make a demo tape.” We didn’t have a clue. He flew us all to New York City, we made a demo tape, four songs, some of which later wound up on records—“Runnin’ with the Devil,” I believe was on there, “House of Pain” wound up on the 1984 album.
We had a big meeting with his manager, Bill Aucoin (KISS/Billy Idol), who was riding very high on the hog at the time. It was at his Madison Avenue office, high floor of the building. We sat in front of his mahogany desk, and he had his shoes polished by a little Italian man while he spoke to us.
And he said to us, “Guys, I think the music is great but I don’t think the vocals hold up. I just don’t hear the melodies, the hits that are required in this day and age.” He said, “Dave, maybe there are a couple other acts that I can handle that we could get you to work with. Guys, you and the band, maybe another vocalist would work. But otherwise, Gene has his own career, he’s in KISS, and barring any other permutations, I don’t think I can work with you.” Like so.
We walked out of that office, and I felt terrible. Wow—had I let the band down? This was my first experience with somebody getting his shoes polished by an Italian guy on Madison Avenue. I didn’t know what the Van Halen’s were thinking at the time; perhaps they were buying this load of horseshit.
Turns out that Gene Simmons’s true interest was in conscripting Ed Van Halen into their show in some form or another, get him to play on a record, get him to help write guitar solos, get him into the band. So this dismissal was followed up by calls to Edward, “Come on down, we’re recording at Larrabee Studios in Hollywood and we got a new song, we need a guitar solo. Come on down.”
@ On August 26, 27, and 28 1977, Kiss recorded three shows at the LA Forum to be used as live material for their next release Alive II.
I was always very fiercely protective of what we were doing as a group, as a clan, ’cause there’s always going to be pirates, there’s always going to be carpetbaggers, like Simmons. And I would show up with Ed at the studio. Simmons would look at me with horror. Horror. ’Cause I was on to his game way early.
There were scenes like: “Oh, all of you guys are invited to the big KISS show down at the Forum,” and I would show up and there would be no tickets for me. The Van Halen’s would be inside, comfortably ensconced in the back room with Gene and his pals. Of course I knew what was up, and I was super protective of the band at the time, or people like that would have picked us apart right away. In line with that kind of thinking, when we made our first album for Warner Brothers, Ted Templeman, the producer, approached Ed Van Halen and said, “I’d like you to play on the Nicolette Larson album.” I got right between them, I said, “No way! You’re not going to run off with bits and pieces of the scenery before the play starts.” Ed wanted to play on it. I said, “Great. But you got to put a question mark where your name goes [in the album credits]. Got to keep it in one camp.” A theory that has stood Van Halen well to this day.
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BILL AUCOIN
BA: The one I keep getting hammered about is turning down Van Halen. And they desperately wanted to be with us. It wasn’t like I was trying to catch em’. They really wanted to be with us! So, you never know. It’s not that I didn’t like the guys per say. I learned a big lesson there. I flew them to New York instead of going and seeing them in their own element with their own fans. And that was kind of taking them out of their own comfortable environment, putting them in a rehearsal studio just to see what it was like. Well, everyone was nervous, you know? David didn’t sing that well. I wasn’t sure that there was a song that we could get behind. You know, although Eddie was good, you know, it was the band that totaled, so I said no, and of course they remind me every time I see them.
And uh, but, a couple of years later I had lunch with uh Ted Templeman and I said, “You know? You did Van Halen and I… and I turned them down.” He said, “Well I did too.” I said, “What do you mean? You signed them?” He said, “No, no, no, I wanted to sign Eddie.” And then when the band, when the band said, “No, No, we’re a band, I wanted to get rid of Dave and put Sammy Hagar in from the beginning because I knew that Dave didn’t have that good of voice. And I said, “Holy Cow!” You know?
And then of course, you know it was Ted Templeman who did the covers of those great songs and did those great arrangements that broke them. You know?
He did everything. Yeah, he did everything. Yeah, he produced them and did the arrangements. He knew they didn’t have a great song either. He said, I knew they didn’t have a song, that’s why we did those cover tunes. So I felt a little better, but not that much better because I still would have loved to have manage them!
And Ted Templeman is a phenomenal producer. They couldn’t have gotten anyone better and of course he had all of the power at Warner so that made it even stronger for them. They actually wound up in a great position because of Ted, without a doubt. You know? And obviously, you know, I love what they’ve done, and everything, and uh obviously feel bad that I didn’t sign them.
When Gene Simmons supposedly claims he discovered Van Halen. So this is around the same time I’m guessing? Right?
Yeah it is… And uh… No, well, actually a lot of people did. The reason, it wasn’t just Gene. A few people told me about them from the West Coast. That’s why I flew them to New York. That was my big mistake. I should have flown to the West coast and seen them at the Starwood Club where they always played. And, you know? You learn your lessons as you go along. My ego was a little out of place then. I decided, “I’ll fly them to New York and see what happens,” and that was a big lesson to learn believe me.
It was like, “I’ll bring them to me instead of me going to them,” and I really should have gone to them.
The reason Gene waned to work with them was Gene wanted Eddie to take Ace Frehley’s place?
No, no, no, no…
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ED AND ALEX RECORD WITH GENE SIMMONS
In 1977, Gene Simmons cut demos with Alex and Eddie Van Halen at Larrabee Studios in Hollywood, CA. Gene recalled, "I would usually go in and play all the instruments myself, but on this occasion I decided to call up the Van Halen brothers and ask them to come down and play. So both Alex and Eddie came down and played on cut 'Christine Sixteen', 'Got Love For Sale', and 'Tunnel Of Love', which later wound up on my solo record. We cut it live as a trio and Eddie came up with some solos afterwards. I liked his solo for 'Christine Sixteen' so much that when the band recorded it for 'Love Gun', Ace pretty much copied Eddie's solo note-for-note"
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(EVH – Guitar World)
Ted (Nugent) is a nice guy but I don't really like the way he plays too much. He looks at it like Gene Simmons. Gene is a real nice guy, he always writes us. He wanted me and Al to play on his solo album but we couldn't because we were on tour. A couple songs on the record we played on the demo tape and he sounded much better. They sounded real good, I liked em'.
Tunnel of love, but it's done different; it's half-beat on this one but it was more rock when me and Al played it. And the other one was Christine Sixteen. Remember the solo in that? I wrote the solo for that and it sounded so good when we played with him because I double tracked it. It was a double solo, a double lead. It sounded so good and then all of a sudden the record comes out, “Love Gun” and they play the same solo but it sounded like he used some kind of octave box. It didn't sound the same. That guy, he fucked up my solo. It sounded good, it was a good melodic little thing that really fit in. I was surprised with Ace Frehley’s solo album. I liked it. It's just more up. At least he stepped out a little bit. I mean, he's not that great of a guitarist either. The way he plays sounds so uncoordinated. I don't want to sit here and cut all of these people down. I always still look at myself like a kid looking at these guys like they're big. I don't know? I just don't look at myself equal to them. So I find myself cutting them down, but I don't really mean to. Sometimes these guys just play with the weird kind of vibrato and they always seem to miss the note. They go everywhere around it.
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