They pulled on their platform boots and slapped on the makeup when everybody else was discarding theirs. Their albums were subject to poor production and scathing reviews. Other bands refused to have them as their opening act. Their record company was up against the wall. By all reasoning, Kiss should have become one of the 'lost' bands of the 1970s, like the Harlots of 42nd Street or The Hollywood Stars. Yet in 1975 the band unexpectedly came Alive! and by the following year, they were the biggest rock and roll band - and brand - in America.
This is a journey through Kiss's most eventful decade. It is the story of the four men behind the masks, and the music they made, the legendary live albums, and of one of the greatest rock follies in music history - the four simultaneously released solo albums. Along the way, it tells of the costumes and the concerts, the merchandise and the Marvel comic books, the television appearances and the disastrous 1978 movie, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. And having straddled the 1970s like an unstoppable colossus, it ends with Kiss under siege, beset by changing public taste and their own combustible personalities.
Peter Gallagher is a regular contributor to the British music magazine Shindig!, and the author of two previous books for Sonicbond, Marc Bolan, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and T. Rex: On Track, and Warren Zevon On Track. His fiction has been published in Writing Magazine and The London Reader, and he is currently working on a novel set in the Weimar Republic, which he hopes will see publication sometime before the cows come home. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.