Kiss kicked off their three-night residency of Las Vegas Virgin Hotels on Friday with a tribute to their late guitarist, Ace Frehley.
Fans had been given electric candles going into the venue and, before the show started, frontman Paul Stanley asked the crowd to remember the guitarist who died, aged 74, last month.
Stanley said: "Before we get going, we just wanted to take a moment to think about somebody who was at the foundation of this band. We're talking about Ace.”
"Why don't we take a moment, a little quiet, think about him looking down on us – from (the planet) Jendell, probably – let's have a moment for Ace. Candles up."
The three Las Vegas performances were the band’s first since their supposed ‘final’ show at Madison Square Garden in December 2023. That though was, apparently, their last show in makeup. The trio of shows over the weekend saw the group unmasked and were a celebration of 50 years of the Kiss Fan Club.
And Kiss activity continues. As well as the avatar shows, which are supposedly in development, there is a Kiss biopic, Shout It Out Loud. And Director McG (the professional name of Joseph McGinty Nichol) has been speaking to about what fans can expect from the movie.
According to Blabbermouth, he too was at the KISS Kruise: Landlocked In Vegas event and said: "I think Kiss is the most exciting rock n' roll band in history, and because of that, we owe the [Kiss] Army the most exciting film in history. It's the ultimate rock n' roll fantasy, and it's going to kick your fuckin' ass."
"I think more than any other band in the history of rock n' roll, there is rock 'n' roll before Kiss, and there is rock n' roll after Kiss," the director said. "Rock 'n' roll was pretty straightforward until Kiss came along and blew it up, literally and figuratively, with bombs and pyrotechnics and spitting blood and costumes and fun and explosiveness and providing a life that was larger than our own… Taylor Swift has pyrotechnics. That all traces back to Kiss. This is the inflection point in the movie where the world was forever changed through the power of rock 'n' roll.”
Hmm... Alice Cooper might have something to say about that, but point taken.
Earlier this year, it was announced that Nick Jonas, of Jonas Brothers fame, would play Paul Stanley in the film. But since then no further casting news has emerged.
Not that that has dampened McG’s enthusiasm: "I'm so happy to report that every young actor in the world wants to be a part of this movie," he claims. "I've met with them extensively. We're going to go to the ends of the earth to make sure that Gene [Simmons], Peter [Criss], Ace [Frehley], everybody is perfect. We're right in the middle of that right now, and I can't wait to announce what that's going to look like.”
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