Of all the famous musicians who paid their respects following the death of legendary Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley on 16 October, nobody said their piece as succinctly as Bruce Springsteen’s guitar-playing sidekick Steven Van Zandt.
“Just as Kiss has been underrated as a band all these years, so was Ace underrated as a guitar player,” Van Zandt stated. “The original band had that magical undefinable chemistry that all great bands have, and his writing also contributed to their success.”
Frehley was never a virtuoso. As he told MusicRadar in early 2025: “I have no idea how I do anything! I’m not a schooled musician.”
He said of his loose, spontaneous approach to playing guitar and writing songs: “All I did was crank it up to 10 and start to rock and roll. When you stand in front of a Marshall stack and crank it, nothing sounds better!”
Frehley was a hero and an influence to numerous guitar players.
Dimebag Darrell Abbott even had Frehley’s image tattooed on his chest.
Here, MusicRadar salutes the Space Ace with a celebration of the 10 greatest songs he wrote and recorded during his best years with Kiss…
1. Cold Gin
Released on 18 February 1974, the self-titled first album by Kiss is one of the all-time great hard rock debuts.
Most of the songs on the album were written by rhythm guitarist/lead vocalist Paul Stanley or bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons.
But it was Frehley who wrote Cold Gin, and it became one of the bands best-loved tracks, built around a heavy riff played straight on a Les Paul through a Marshall.
Ace lacked the confidence to sing any of his songs at this early stage of the band’s career. Instead, it was Simmons who sang Cold Gin – and who also contributed to the writing of the song but refused to take credit.
As Ace explained to MusicRadar: “I’ll be honest with you: Gene never took credit for it, but he wrote the bridge for Cold Gin. In those days, it was all for one and one for all, you know? We didn’t really think about publishing for this, that, and the other thing.
“I hadn’t written a lot of songs at that juncture in the band, so Gene said, ‘You take all the writing credit for this,’ which was very nice of him.”
The teetotal Simmons sang the words to Ace’s drinking song with real conviction, but at the end of the day, it was Ace’s balls-to-the-wall approach that defined Cold Gin.
2. Parasite
The second Kiss album, Hotter Than Hell, had a lo-fi production that made it a favourite among grunge bands – including Kurt Cobain’s buddies the Melvins, who covered the sleazy Gene Simmons song Goin’ Blind.
Ace Frehley’s song Parasite was sung by Simmons, like Cold Gin before it.
Parasite is one of the heaviest songs that Kiss ever recorded, and its fast pace made it a natural fit for a cover by thrash metal stars Anthrax.
3. Shock Me
From the album Love Gun, released in 1977, Shock Me was the first Kiss track to feature Ace on lead vocals. In that sense, a pivotal moment for him.
He told MusicRadar what inspired the riff in Shock Me. “A couple of Free songs,” he said. “Fire And Water and All Right Now. It was a combination of those things.”
He also recalled the incident that inspired the song’s lyrics.
During a show in Lakeland, Florida in 1976, Ace was electrocuted due to a grounding issue, which left a staircase rail electrically charged. It nearly killed him.
“I should have been dead that night,” he said. “The fact that I got electrocuted and didn’t fall forward was a godsend. There must have been angels pushing me back.
“I was standing on top of four Marshall cabinets on a staircase when I got shocked. I had a heavy Les Paul around my neck, and my body should have fallen forward – but I didn’t.”
Remarkably, Ace not only survived to tell the tale, but he finished the show.
“If I fell forward, I would have broken my fucking neck,” he said. “But I fell back, and the road crew dragged me back off of the staircase. I had no feeling in my hands for five to ten minutes.
“I went on to finish the show. But I maybe had feeling in half of my fingers by the time it was done.
“It was crazy shit, man, but I did get Shock Me out of it. So, I guess it wasn’t all for nothing!”
4. Rocket Ride
It was arguably the best song that Frehley ever wrote and sang with Kiss. And in a strange twist, it was a studio cut featured on a live album. Its name: Rocket Ride.
The band’s second double-live album, Alive II, was released in 1977. On vinyl, it had three sides of live material plus a final side featuring five brand new studio tracks. And without doubt, the pick of the bunch was Frehley’s Rocket Ride – with a slinky, flange-ridden riff meant to simulate take off, and not one but two explosive solos.
It was record without Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Frehley handled bass and all guitars while his other bandmate Peter Criss played drums.
Frehley told MusicRadar: “Rocket Ride was interesting because I used a flange on the main riff and a wah-wah on the solo, which was unusual for me. I have no idea why I did it, though!
“That song, like most of my stuff, was all organic. It wasn’t planned, you know? So with the solo for Rocket Ride, it just kind of happened. I didn’t plan it out.
“By the time I did Rocket Ride, I was at the point in my career where I just said, ‘Hit the record button, and I’ll let it rip!’
“I’d do maybe half a dozen takes, and through that, I’d get a great solo.
“But the one that’s on Rocket Ride from the record, if I remember right, there are no edits. It’s one take… of a bunch.”
5. New York Groove
When the four members of Kiss made solo albums at the height of the band’s popularity in 1978, few people would have bet on Ace Frehley’s album being the most successful of them.
In this band, it was Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons who wrote and sang most of the songs - the most notable exception being the hit ballad Beth, which had been written and sung by drummer Peter Criss.
The Kiss solo albums were released simultaneously on 18 September 1978.
Paul Stanley’s was the closest to a regular Kiss album, with plenty of melodic hard rock songs.
The Gene Simmons album had some great Beatles-inspired tunes such as See You Tonite and featured A-list guest stars including Donna Sunmmer, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry and Simmons’ then-partner Cher.
The Peter Criss record was middle-of-the-road pop rock, sung in the style of Rod Stewart.
And the Ace Frehley album was a full-on hard rock banger.
But the guitarist also had an ace up his sleeve: a cover version of a glam rock song that would give him a huge hit single.
The song was New York Groove, written by former Zombies and Argent star Russ Ballard, and originally a top 10 UK hit for British band Hello.
As Frehley recalled to MusicRadar, he didn’t think much of New York Groove until his producer Eddie Kramer talked him into recording it.
“I didn’t even want to record the song!” Ace laughed. “I didn’t think it was indicative of the other songs on my album. But Eddie Kramer kept pushing me to do it.”
The bulk of the album was recorded in a rented mansion in Connecticut, but fittingly it was in New York City – where Ace was born and where Kiss was formed – that he cut New York Groove.
“I stepped out of my comfort zone with the funky guitar,” Ace said. “I experimented. And that stomping around sound? That’s actual people stomping on actual boxes.
“Beyond that, it was just me, a Les Paul, and a Fender amp. I turned it to ten and just did what I always do. It was a true organic song—and that’s what made it work, I think.”
Eddie Kramer’s instincts were proved right when New York Groove soared to No.13 on the US chart.
“I don’t know… it just kinda happened," Frehley said. “I didn’t know that song was going to be loved by so many people!”
6. Ozone
A deep cut from Ace’s solo album, Ozone is quintessential Ace Frehley – all hard rocking swagger and self-mythologising lyrics about his errant lifestyle.
For the album sessions in a Connecticut mansion, Frehley enlisted producer Eddie Kramer as part of three-man skeleton crew.
He recalled to MusicRadar: “It was me, Eddie Kramer and Anton Fig on drums. And we set up my amps in different rooms for different ambience. That was different than with Kiss.
“I especially liked using the library of the mansion because it was all wood and had a nice resonance and vibe, man. I recorded a lot there. It had a natural echo and a lot of natural ambience.
“I didn’t get to do that as much with Kiss, but while doing my solo album I really learned to use natural space because it sounded so great. The untrained ear might not be able to tell – but I can pick the difference out nine times out of ten.
“We experimented. I loved working with Eddie Kramer because he was willing to go the extra distance, take the time to do things, and get a natural ambience from a marble bathroom or a wood library.
“I remember putting mics at the entrance of the mansion hanging from the second floor. We got huge sounds - nothing else sounds like that. That’s not studio trickery - it’s a real and fucking huge natural echo from the hallways.”
7. Fractured Mirror
The final track on Ace’s 1978 solo album was an instrumental with an ominous quality.
In the 2003 book Kiss: Behind The Mask by David Leaf and Ken Sharp, Frehley said of Fractured Mirror: “It’s a classic. It just came to me. It’s weird. Most of the songs I write seem like they’re being beamed down to me into my head by aliens.”
In 1979 he told Guitar Player about the recording of Fractured Mirror:
“I used an old Gibson electric double-neck for that,” he said, “a very rare one with a 6-string guitar neck and a mandolin neck.
“On that intro I tuned the mandolin neck to open E and let it drone and resonate while I was picking the figure on the other neck.
“I don't think I've ever heard it on record before, that sound. We really got excited about that when I came up with it. I was also going through a Marshall stack that we were mic-ing, so that's how we got a lot of the ambience.”
8. Hard Times
After the success of his solo hit New York Groove, Frehley was more confident as a lead vocalist – so much so, in fact, that for the Kiss album that followed, 1979’s Dynasty, he sang not one but three tracks.
One was a cover of The Rolling Stones’ 2000 Man, from the Stones’ psychedelic album Their Satanic Majesties Request. Amazingly, the Kiss version, more rocky, improved upon the original.
The other two tracks were Ace’s own, and if the album finale Save Your Love was dull and repetitive, Hard Times was brilliant – a punchy hard rock tune with a whiff of nostalgia in the words he sings.
Ace said in Kiss: Behind The Mask: “Hard Times is one of my favourite songs that I’ve written, because the lyrics talk about when I used to go to high school and cut classes. I was a sophomore for two years. One year I partied away and I don’t remember half the things I did.”
9. Torpedo Girl
For a band as shrewdly marketed as Kiss, it was almost unbelievable that they would name an album Unmasked in 1980, when they were still in make-up.
It’s also an album that Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons have disowned, Stanley branding it “wimpy” and “pretty crappy”.
But there is some great stuff on Unmasked. For some fans, it’s the most underrated album in the entire Kiss catalogue.
It has great pop rock songs such as Shandi, Tomorrow and Is That You, and three songs from Ace – a couple of straight ahead numbers in Talk To Me and Two Sides Of The Coin, and a bizarre, funky, tongue-in-cheek tune in Torpedo Girl, with its classic shout-out: “Come on, get your feet wet!”
Ace talked about Torpedo Girl in Kiss: Behind The Mask: “That song is probably the funniest song I ever wrote,” he said. “That was just one of those silly songs I decided to write. I want my personality to come through on record. I don’t take myself as seriously and Paul and Gene do.”
10. Dark Light
No Kiss album is as odd – or as maligned – as Music From ‘The Elder’.
Released in 1981, this concept album is the soundtrack to a movie that was never made.
Like its predecessor, Unmasked, this album has been trashed by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. But still, Music From ‘The Elder’ is treasured by a devoted number of Kiss obsessives.
The album was produced by Bob Ezrin, who had worked on the band’s 1976 classic Destroyer as well as landmark albums for Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd and more.
Music From ‘The Elder’ was a radical departure for Kiss, with grandiose tracks such as Under The Rose and atypical songs like Mr. Blackwell and A World Without Heroes.
Amid all of this, Ace Frehley’s song Dark Light was a relatively simple rock track with a signature Ace riff and a strong chorus – plus an intro parodying the theme music from Jaws!
Ace later revealed: “Dark Light was originally called Don't Run. Bob Ezrin and the other guys didn’t feel my lyrics were strong enough so they brought in Lou Reed to rewrite the lyrics since everybody was happy with the musical track.”
Most significant of all, Dark Light was one of the last songs that Ace Frehley ever contributed to a Kiss record.
The band was never as great without him.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.