RIP Ace Frehley – Kiss (1951-2025)

18th October 2025 · 2020s, 2025, Music, R.I.P., Rock

Ace Frehley, aka Space Ace, aka The Spaceman, was the creator of countless heavy rock riffs – and solos – in his role as lead guitarist of Kiss.

My musical awakening came in the long hot summer of 1976. I had left school, left home, and moved to London to work as a porter at Christies the auctioneers.

By the month of May I was living in a flat off Gloucester Road with my fellow porter and future best friend Ben and we went to see Kiss at the Hammersmith Odeon.

I’m not sure why: neither of us had ever heard them but tickets were only £1 or so and there was a lot of excited talk about this new American rock band.

Much of that talk was about the make-up and costumes they wore and the special effects they used – a novelty at the time.

When we sat down we saw the entire stage taken up with wall-to-wall Marshall stacks beneath a vast illuminated sign saying “KISS” (with that suspiciously Nazi-looking double letter S).

When the band appeared in a barrage of explosions and smoke, looking like a sci-fi cartoon version of The New York Dolls, they were very loud indeed.

Visually, it was like a cross between a fancy-dress party, a fireworks display and a children’s party, with fire-breathing, blood-spitting, smoking guitars, a levitating drum kit and other explosions.

Aurally, it was a heavy-duty assault of riffing and posturing, and most of those riffs were played by Ace Frehley, supposedly representing a character called “The Spaceman.”

He even had a spot all to himself where he played a loud, fiddly guitar solo while leaping about and making facial contortions.

I don’t think we were impressed: neither of us ever bought a Kiss record, and the very next night we went to The Roundhouse to see Patti Smith, which changed my musical life.

I never looked back to the previous era of heavy rock which came to a deafening end just 24 hours earlier. This is the song with which Kiss opened the show – Deuce.
 

I don’t think we were very impressed. I never bought a single record by Kiss and nor did Ben, and the next night we went to see Patti Smith making her own UK debut at The Roundhouse, which changed my musical life.

I never looked back but Kiss carried on, and Ace Frehley, the lead guitarist, went on to inspire a whole bunch of future heavy metal guitarists. So he’s got a lot to answer for.