No Regrets by Ace Frehley

"This is remarkable. I've never met anyone with your resistance to tranquilizers."

"Well, Doc, being a rock star is a very stressful occupation."

The cover design is mostly fine, but the "A Rock N Roll Memoir" bit is a little silly, isn't it? I'd have put "The Spaceman Speaks!" on there somewhere. And maybe a fake-blurb from Toucan Sam: "Awk!"

As Ace himself readily admits, "let's face it, my memory isn't what it used to be." So even though we get the usual cross-section of early childhood details, rock star excess stories, drunken or drugged-up escapades, and the (more or less) happy ending common to most rock star memoirs, how much of it is as-told-to-the-author and how much of it is personal recollection is never quite certain.

On one hand, this means little, so long as the end product is entertaining. And although more than one reviewer thought this book should have been titled No Details, I can safely say that it is definitely entertaining. As Eric Singer notes, even the dullest Ace stories are crazier than anyone else's:

You'll never meet another person like him. Ace Frehley stories are the absolute best. Anyone who has ever worked with Ace will verify it. One night before a Kiss show, he actually took Viagra because he wanted his dick to be hard during the concert. When I asked him why, he said, "So people can see me get hard in the costume." He even tried snorting it once (...) He thought it would get into his system faster. So Ace snorted the Viagra... but his nose swelled up instead. True story! When I tell this stuff to people, they think I'm lying or embellishing. But it's all absolutely true. 

That story is not retold in No Regrets, but rest assured the stories we do get are all equally crazy. What I like about this one is Ace's motivation for snorting the Viagra. i.e. it's a great story that Ace snorted Viagra, but it's even better when you learn he was doing it "for the fans." I love that he (and Peter. And Paul and Gene, too, let's be honest) are so convinced seeing these guys get aroused in their costumes is part of what the fans want.

Hell, maybe it is. As for what this fan wants, erections, in-costume or otherwise, ain't it. But the general zaniness of Ace's approach to things definitely is. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line (as evidenced in the tell-all books published by former assistants and girlfriends) Ace's general zaniness was overcome by general addiction, and you can feel him straining, somewhat, to relay the stories without a whiff of regret. (Despite the title.) 

Put another way, while Ace may have learned "to live without regrets," he seems somewhat reluctant to embrace his own antics as wholeheartedly as he did, say, on the Tom Synder show.

That's probably a good thing, all around. But it lends a certain sadness to things. When you read about Ace's antics in Peter's and even Gene's books, there's a certain "Oh that rapscallion - what a loon" quality to the escapades. Not as much - though not absent altogether - in No Regrets. 

Would I have been more interested, say, in a mock-memoir of an alien from the Planet Jendell sharing his account of fifty-plus years of exile on Planet Earth? Sure. Might have been a harder sell for the public, though I suspect a younger Ace would have really gone for the idea, but it points to a different problem with the idea of a Space Ace memoir: the myth of the Spaceman overshadows even the real-life-craziness of Ace Frehley.

Space Tuba

Reconciling the two is no easy task, and in the final analysis, Ace wasn't quite up to it. We get instead this relatively breezy but not exceptionally insightful collection of anecdotes and musings. 

And info on the Frehley's Comet years (and Kiss reunion tour) is similarly thin.

The most discoverable moments come when he talks about his early days, running around the Bronx with the Duckies (a street gang immortalized - or as immortalized as something can be in a nearly-forgotten film - in The Wanderers) or sneaking backstage to hang out with John Kay and Jerry Garcia and others ("For awhile there I was the Leonard Zelig of the American rock scene, popping up randomly alongside the biggest stars in the business.") or seeing Cream and The Who at the RKO Theater. It's easy to see the formation of his personality and  outlook during these passages. 

Long hair was a political statement and threatened people in authority. To be perfectly candid, I was blissfully unaware of issues of any greater significance than how to get chicks out of their clothes. I was hardly a political dissident. Any hippie tendencies I might have exhibited were strictly a matter of convenience and lifestyle. I wanted to get laid, get drunk, get high, and play in a band. I wanted a certain look onstage, and by achieving that look, I found myself getting bundled in with war protesters and demonstrators.

Despite this disclaimer, Ace's "hippieness" comes through loud and clear in other passages, particularly anything involving guardian angels or the number 27. (Gene wrote a bit about Ace's obsession with the number 27. From Gene's perspective, it wasn't so lucky, and he recommended Ace get a different one.)

Passages like these: 

You never know what life might bring… or when it might come to a screeching halt.

And it’s best to act accordingly.

Life as a rock star at the highest level is weird beyond words. It’s great in a lot of ways, obviously, but it’s disorienting, too. You very quickly begin to realize that you are part of something much bigger than yourself. Everything you do is designed to help the machine keep moving. (…) After awhile, the make-up became almost like a prison.

comprise an awful lot of the reading. On one hand, it's relevant insight. On the other, it's the sort of insight you can come up with on your own without having lived Ace Frehley's life.

But since it is Ace's life we're talking about...

INTO THE VOID

Ace was well on his way to being an alcoholic before he joined Kiss.

Alcohol, mainly beer, made me a different person, and I kind of liked that person. He wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody. Not only that, but he was smooth as silk when it came to dealing with girls. It all goes hand in hand. Women like guys who are confident, funny, cocky. A little bit dangerous. I was all of those things in a single package. I’d found girls and alcohol to be a great combination. The rock and roll would soon follow.

It wasn't until Kiss hit the big time (around the time of Destroyer) where he was introduced to cocaine, and he discovered this put him "in a whole different league as a drinker." Cocaine enabled him to stay up drinking for days at a time. He discovered this led to nuclear-war-sized hangovers, so he started gobbling tranquilizers and painkillers to mitigate them. As he points out, this wasn't quite that out of place in the anything-goes atmosphere of late-70s New York. Finding doctors to prescribe weapons-grade pharmaceuticals (and accept uncut cocaine in lieu of payment) was relatively easy.

These years are dealt with (for the most part) honestly. (I say "for the most part" because he's somewhat cagey - and it's understandable - about the amount of time he spent pretending to be sober or "working on it," when he was still quietly feeding his demons. Again, in spite of the title, you get the sense he'd rather his life story was defined a bit more by his successes than his decades of addiction.) The reader gets a contact high as Ace pals around with Belushi or heads to Studio 54 with models on his arm, snorting lines with Mick and Bianca and whomever else in the office, and the contact-jitters as he realizes he's incapable of stopping the neverending party on his own.

Being addicted to Betty * occupies a lot of your time. I’d get a large prescription of antibiotics from my doctor and make sure they came in a capsule form. Then I’d empty out a dozen capsules and very carefully refill them with cocaine. After the capsules were reassembled, I’d mark them with a tiny dot so I could tell them apart from the rest. If anyone tested the capsules for illegal drugs, the chances were better than 6 to 1 in a prescription of 90 pills that the coke wouldn’t be discovered. This type of insane planning surely sounds obsessive to a normal person, but if you’re strung out, this amount of meticulous preparation for a trip is almost commonplace.

* "Betty White" was Ace's sobriquet for cocaine.

OZONE (I'm the kind of guy...)

I have a reputation for being one of the world’s worst drivers, but that’s not entirely well deserved. I’m actually a pretty good driver; I’m just a really bad drunk driver. Trouble is, from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s, whenever I got behind the wheel of a car, the odds were pretty good that I’d been drinking.

Ace's vehicular misadventures are somewhat legendary. I'll only focus on three here.

The first: After a multi-day bender, he was attempting to leave a bar in the city and head back to Connecticut when a cop spotted him love-tapping the parked car behind him as he pulled out into traffic. What followed was, as Ace recounts it, "a real life game of Grand Theft Auto where I led the police on a chase through Westchester County." Pushing his DeLorean to the limit, he managed to lose the cops - multiple times - but was busted when he pulled into a diner to use the pay phone to report the car stolen. (The car was billowing smoke, and he was battered and bloodied from the chase. But he didn't think anyone would notice, nor did he himself notice the phalanx of squad cars that surrounded the diner as he made call after call, trying to sort it out.) Needless to say, this did not end well for the Spaceman, and he spent the next day and night suffering through an agonizing withdrawal and hangover (not to mention a dawning awareness of the mess he was now in.) Cell #27, ironically enough.

Also ironic: This was how he met his AA sponsor, who was one of the cops chasing him. "If you ever want to stop living like this," he said, giving Ace his card, "call me." Eventually, Ace did, and the two have been friends ever since.

In a way I was fortunate. Had this been 25 years later, the fallout would have been much worse: mug shot on TMZ.com, video clips of my courtroom appearance on CNN, and cellphone footage of the car chase on YouTube.

The second: He and Anton Fig (drummer for many an Ace project, as well as Kiss's Dynasty and Unmasked albums) went out fishing and got wrecked, and he totaled the car on the way back. They walked away from this one (first fishing out the coolerful of trout from the trunk) and only discovered the extent of their injuries hours later at home. Reluctantly agreeing to go to the hospital, his mood brightened when the doctors sent he and Anton home with two huge bottles of Percocet.

"Jackpot!"

The third is another escaping from the cops story, this one ending with his making it home to his mansion in Wilton, CT and calling his lawyer to (somehow) get the cops who started surrounding the place to "back off." What this entailed he doesn't describe, but once he discovered that they had left, the party continued. He got out his .357 Magnum and walked out into the driveway amidst other houseguests.

I was interested in figuring out how many times a .357 Magnum bullet would ricochet off concrete walls before coming to a halt. I felt I was being scientific, figuring out the trajectory of the bullet, where it would strike, and the geometry of the angles its paths would follow. 

Although nothing bad happened as a result of these scientific inquiries - besides scaring his guests back into the house - a similar incident involving an uzi that blew up in his hand led him back to the hospital. (Apparently, the right combination of firearms, pills, coke and booze brought out his inner Sid the Science Kid.) The doctors discovered pieces of bullet shrapnel had embedded themselves in his chest.

The other: with the docs and the bullets in his chest after the uzi jams. “At one point, the surgeon asked a nurse for a magnetic probe to help locate the fragments. “I don’t think that’ll work,” I slurred. “Excuse me?” the doctor said. “Bullets are made of lead, right? How you gonna’ find ‘em with a fucking magnetic probe? Lead isn’t magnetic."

It's got to be something to be medically corrected by Ace Frehley.

SAVE YOUR LOVE

Perhaps tellingly, you end up learning more about his buddies and their antics than you do about any of the ladies involved in the Ace Frehley story. Outside of a few obviously heartfelt passages involving his daughter Monique,

Despite almost killing her as an infant when he crashed his truck through the wall of her nursery, stopping inches away from her crib. She wasn't in it at the time, but still.

not much is revealed about his personal relationships, whether with his wife Jeanette 

or with his other daughter Lindsay (fathered while he was still married to Jeanette.) We learn a bit about Jeanette's family (all Teamsters, whose extracurricular methods of persuasion he'd offer up to Kiss management when they ran into trouble) and that their first maid Ellie once vacuumed up "Mr. F's happy powder" while cleaning. That's about it. Virtually nothing is said of his time with Wendy Moore, who penned the tell-all Into the Void.

Given that book's contents, perhaps this last omission is understandable.

He has more to say about his relationships with other Kiss members, though.

Gene was a 50 year old accountant in a 23 year old body… (He) was incapable of loosening up to join the fun, even in a setting that clearly called for some spontaneity and horsing around. How seriously can you take yourself when you’re sitting there in a superhero costume and full face makeup? I love the guy, but he never, ever got it.

Gene is a sex addict in much the same way that I’m an alcoholic. He’s had a lot of unkind things to say about me over the years. Some of the criticism is legitimate. In sobriety you embrace accountability, and I can’t deny that my drinking and drug use eventually became highly disruptive and problematic. But some of the personal jabs have been harder to take, partly because we were all friends at one time, and we did do something remarkable, but also because Gene wasn’t the easiest guy to get along with. (…) He lived in a state of perpetual infestation. (…) What can I say? Gene is eccentric. Always has been.

That "we did something remarkable" bit makes me a little sad. Because it's true. It'd be nice if these guys could have just worked it out, if only on the strength of that. I mean, wouldn't it? Isn't that what any fan of any band wants, their heroes kicking back and happy about what they accomplished and the tunes they brought to your life?

But that's a rarity in the rock band world, not the routine. He trashes Gene in a few places, but (even now) he's a lot nicer about the guy than Gene ever is about him. Equally understandable, perhaps, but it's too bad. 

He sums up Gene's solo album rather amusingly: "Fucking Helen Reddy, Gene? Really?"

"Paul? I don't know. Paul basically just became Paul - a glamorous singer with sex appeal."

In other interviews, Ace has expressed some confusion about Paul's more recent assertions that the two of them were never really friends. 

"Peter, well, he had a thing for cats. What can I tell you? He became my best friend in the band and is a really sweet and sensitive guy and I miss hanging out with him."

His thoughts on Kiss are pretty much what you'd expect them to be. The long and short of it:

I can sum up the Kiss situation in five words: What goes around comes around. No matter what happens, I’ll be fine. 

That being said, in reality, I think they’re just a bunch of dirty rotten whores. Awk!

SHOT FULL OF ROCK

As aforementioned, those looking for some insight into how all those great Ace tunes came to be will get very little. There's an extended sequence on the writing of "Rocket Ride" with Sean Delaney (SPOILER ALERT: lots of coke was involved,) as well as a lot of (fun) technical details on the making of the 1978 solo album. 

He does mention how miserable a time he had during the making of Destroyer on account of Bob Ezrin, who by all accounts was a drill sergeant in the studio. Whereas Paul and Gene accepted Bob's aggressiveness as necessary to take Kiss to the next level - and perhaps it was - his attitude had the opposite effect on Ace. I can relate to this one. 

Whenever I read about a Bob Ezrin type and hear how "effective" his methods are, all I see is a bullying asshole who'd be even more effective with a shovel to the face. (Same goes for Bill Parcells.)

Bob's drug use never seemed to bother Paul and Gene funnily enough. “This was one of the things that bothered me most about Paul and Gene – they were very selective in their moral indignation.” This still appears to be the case. Despite his miserable time making the record, "if I take a step back and try to judge it objectively, I’d say it’s one of Kiss’s best studio efforts." I disagree, but what do I know? I think "Torpedo Girl" is the best song Kiss ever recorded. 

Ace adds little to the public record about Attack of the Phantoms (“I thought it was a natural step in the devolution of Kiss. We got exactly what we deserved.”) But he does write about how they had the entire amusement park to themselves and how he'd ride around at night on his motorcycle, all by himself, not a soul around, just him and the statues and the rides and the shuddered stands.

Unsurprisingly, he crashed it.

After Peter was fired, Ace found himself outvoted on everything and retreated even further into isolated drinking and drugging. The final straw was Music from... The Elder.

I knew it was a collosal mistake in judgment. Paul, Gene, and Bob didn’t get it. They went forward with the whole ridiculous concept. As anyone who knows rock and roll can tell you, concept records can be career killers for the most talented bands. The problem is instead of ending up with a masterpiece like Tommy, you could end up with Saucy Jack, Spinal Tap’s unproduced rock opera about Jack the Ripper. (…) Didn’t matter, though, I was outvoted. 

Ezrin has willingly taken considerable heat for that album over the years and admitted he was doing a lot of drugs at the time, which clouded his judgment. Dammit! I was doing a lot of drugs, too, but I could still see the project was going to be a flop. At one meeting after another, I went on record against it, but the other guys insisted on moving forward.

Ace walked away from the $15 million dollar deal Kiss's management had arranged with Polygram just to get away from having to deal with Gene and Paul. It's difficult to tell how much he made from the reunion tours, but it's probably somewhere around there. So, I guess he got it back in the end. 

I Live Five Days To Your ONE...

While No Regrets was not my favorite expose on rock star living nor a particularly revealing look at one of my all-time favorite guitarists or Kiss as a band, it's definitely fun reading. And his friendships with the other members aside, it all ends happily enough. Ace is by all accounts clean and sober these days, engaged, touring, giving interviews, and recording. I sometimes worry all of these reports are bullshit, as so many of them have turned out to be over the years. (The 20 year gap between Trouble Walkin' and Anomaly featured semiannual assurances that Ace was clean and that the new album was coming out "next spring.")

Regardless, Ace's place in the rock and roll history books is well-earned and will always be attended to with great affection by yours truly.

AWK!

Space Ace: My Favorites

Let's turn our attention to Our Man from Jendell, the Spaceman himself, Mr. Ace Frehley. One of only a handful of known extra-terrestrials active on Planet Earth today. And my favorite example of that curious specimen: the Rock Star Guitar God.

This isn't an overview of his Kiss work nor a biography, although aspects of both will undoubtedly come up. It's just a list of my 20 favorite Ace songs. Given the relative obscurity of some of these tunes, I've included links to each song for reference but only one of the official music videos ("New York Groove.") They're there if you want them, or feel free to skip them.

In 1978, each member of Kiss released a solo album on the same day. Ace's is not only the best but also among my personal top 5 hard rock/ metal albums of the 20th century.

(The others, you ask? Def Leppard's Pyromania, Fifth Angel's Fifth Angel, Iron Maiden's Brave New World, and Black Sabbath's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. And an honorable mention for Saxon's Crusader. Amen.)

Ace wanted out of the band (as did Peter) and he clearly had a great time recording it. Its success must have been exceptionally gratifying. It's a bit like All Things Must Pass by George Harrison. In the same way George had all of these great tunes that he could never get on a Beatles record because of John and Paul, Ace had a similar backlog for similar reasons.

Ace formally left Kiss in 1982 and formed Frehley's Comet (a name I always thought was great.) They released two studio albums and a couple of live efforts.

There's a sense of diminishing return in Ace's solo career. I loved the crap out of Trouble Walkin' when it came out: 

 

But while it (and the Frehley's Comet records) have some moments of brilliance, they are mostly unremarkable. Which isn't to take away from them - and I think Trouble Walkin' is better than Crazy Nights or Hot in the Shade, by way of comparison - it's just acknowledging how high the bar was set with the 1978 one. Saleswise, Ace's '78 album rules the roost, and the others range from minor hits to duds, unfortunately.

Recorded after the Space Ace finally got clean after decades of flying high, 2009's Anomaly breaks the pattern somewhat. 

No one would confuse it with Ace Frehley (1978) but it's a solid record and the ratio of great-tunes-to-meh is a happy surprise. Fun cover.

And the CD packaging folds into a pyramid, to boot.

It's interesting to consider what might have happened had Ace left the band when he wanted to in the late 70s. The tunes that ended up on Kiss records (Talk To Me, Two Sides of the Coin, Torpedo Girl, 2000 Man, Save Your Love, Hard Times, Dark Light, Escape from the Island) would likely have been on his follow-up to the '78 album. That would have made a pretty formidable one-two punch. How would the 80s have been different, both for Ace and for Kiss? Certainly better than the one-two of Ace Frehley followed by Frehley's Comet, and, without Ace's tunes on either record, immensely better than the one-two Kiss would have had with Dynasty and Unmasked. 

I'd love to peek into an alternate reality where the above is what happened instead of what happened in ours. 

But let us however-reluctantly stick to this universe for now.

Here are my favorite solo-Ace tunes, least to most. (Honorable mention for "Fractured Too," which I do very much enjoy, but I already have all the other "Fractured"s on here, so it's well-represented.)

20. 2 Young 2 Die (from Trouble Walkin') Ace was always pretty generous with letting friends and guests share the spotlight and stage. This makes Frehley's Comet, Second Sighting and Trouble Walkin' a bit uneven, though, as Richie Scarlet (who sings this one) and Tod Howarth, who gets a lot of space on the Frehley's Comet records, have very different styles than Ace.

This is a fun little track, though, and Peter Criss sings back-up. (Allegedly. It's tough to pick him out.) All in all, a little bit of non-Ace stuff goes a long way. This is the only non-Ace tune on Trouble Walkin', whereas Howarth sings like four or five songs on Second Sighting alone.

19. Separate (from Second Sighting) This isn't an especially fantastic track, and the video linked-to is of poor quality. But what can I say? It's a list of favorites, not suggestions for an Academy of St. Martin in the Fields retrospective.

18. Juvenile Delinquent (from Second Sighting) And same goes for this one. I cut a lot of lawns to this cassette! This tune cracks me up. I felt at the time that this was good, empowering advice.

17.5. "Into the Night" (from Frehley's Comet) (EDIT: I forgot about this one, but thanks to longtime pal and DSO reader Michael Haeflinger, I now remember. I apologize to the Celestial Court of Rock and Roll for my negligence.)

17. Fox on the Run (from Anomaly) Unlike "2000 Man" or the one coming up a little further in the countdown, I was very familiar with the original of this tune before hearing this version. But Ace brings his characteristic flair to things - nothing very surprising, but fun and perfectly acceptable. 

16. Change the World (from Anomaly) This didn't make my original list. But I found myself singing it to myself a lot, the past few days, so I've convinced myself it belongs here. It's a nice little tune. The melody is kind of the same thing as the riff for "Separate." But who cares.

15. The Acorn is Spinning (from Second Sighting) Fun instrumental track with a story, narrated by Ace in his otherworldly Bronx accent. Around the time this came out, the band Hurricane (who kind of came and went but that was another lawn-cutting cassette indelibly burned on my brain) had a song called "Baby Snakes" which followed the same sort of pattern. The two songs are not very alike musically, just the whole story-laid-over-guitar-heavy-instrumental approach, I mean.

14. Foxy and Free (from Anomaly) Not sure if Ace was going for a fox theme with Anomaly, or it's just a coincidence that this and "Fox on the Run" are on the same record. Probably just a coincidence. Kiss does that kind of stuff often. I always chuckle when I scan the track listings on an album and see "Night," (as on Crazy Nights) "Rock," (everywhere) or a fire theme (as on Animalize) jump out at me. (That last one most especially. "We have all these fire-themed tunes, what should we name the album? ANIMALIZE.") 

Anyway, this is a great riff. Ace always brings it with the opening tracks on his records.

13. Fractured III (from Trouble Walkin') While Second Sighting's "Fractured Too" is atmospheric but somewhat tough to whistle, this version adds a takeaway melody, so I like it a little better.

12. Rock Soldiers (from Frehley's Comet) The AV Club had a bit of fun at Ace's expense (not unreasonably) for being so proud of the lyrics to this one that he reproduced them in full for his memoir. But why shouldn't he be? They're ridiculous, but they're kinda perfectly ridiculous, if you know what I mean. He lets the devil know at the end in no uncertain terms that if he wants to play his satanic card game now "he's gonna play without an Ace in his deck." Hell has never been the same.

11. Space Bear (from Anomaly) I'll probably bring up my buddy Kevin in every one of these blogs; he's sort of inseparable from my Kiss appreciation. He got me this CD when it came out and swung by the bar I was running at the time. After I closed up, I locked the doors, and put it on the stereo while we drank beers and shot some pool. When we got to this song, Kevin let out a perfectly-timed "Spaaaace Beeeaarrr!" in a good approximation of Ace's cadence, and I still recall it and laugh everytime I hear it. I recommend this approach.

A swaggering instrumental. Nobody's reinventing the wheel here, but it's fun to roll and gets you where you need to go even if you didn't know you wanted to get there. This is not just me being cute. This really is like a massage for a muscle you didn't realize was so tense. There is a critical lack of things like "Space Bear" in the musical ether these days. (UPDATE: The Japanese-import version has some fun sound fx and Ace's re-creation of his manic appearance on Tom Snyder, above. "I'm the owner of the only Ssshpace Bear in captivity!")

10. Genghis Khan (from Anomaly) It's amusing to imagine a newly sober Ace reading about Genghis Khan, perhaps even pondering the Battle of Ain Jalut and why we're not all speaking Chinese today, and writing this song. But it's likely a reference to how the other guys in Kiss thought he was Mongolian when they first met him. No lyrics to speak of really except "So long, Genghis Khan, now you're gone." I'd be curious to know what (if any) the inspiration for this track is.

9. Dolls (from Frehley's Comet) Okay, so I was only 13 or so when I got into this song, and I sincerely believed it was about Ace having a doll collection. I used to wonder what dolls - G.I. Joes? Kiss dolls? Star Wars figures? Raggedy Anns? - and was charmed by the idea of this huge rock star singing to the world about how he loved his dolls and didn't care who knew it. Of course, the dolls are metaphors for pills or for chicks, or both. But I still like to think of Ace waking up, surrounded by mechanical dolls that clean up the room "so sweet-ly, neat-ly" while he takes a shower.

8. Trouble Walkin’ (from Trouble Walkin') Pretty self-explanatory. I am trouble walkin' / every mother's nightmare, riff, solo, rinse wash repeat. Whoah-oh-oh-whoah-whoah-oh-oh! OH! But fun. 10th and 11th grade would've been exponentially lamer if I hadn't had this to listen to.

Gene Colan's take on the Spaceman from Howard the Duck #14.

7. Sister (from Anomaly) This is a great rock tune. It seems from the title and the first verse to be about a girl with whom Ace's buddies think he's carrying on but then he sings Look Out! and the rest of it is more a I can't change / I can't re-arrange sort of message. Which is a bit out of step with the tone of the rest of the record, lyrically. I'm not sure what to make of it all, but the riff/ rocking is très cool.

6. Do Ya (from Trouble Walkin') This version was my first exposure to the song and consequently the original never sounds right to me. That's unfair, of course, but so it goes. Do ya do ya want the ACE? he asks us at the end. A question for the ages.

5. Fractured Quantum (from Anomaly) Just a sweet slice of guitar instrumental. Ace doesn't quite get the credit he deserves for the variety of moods and sensitivity he can bring to the table. (Of course, he also wrote "Rocket Ride," so, you know. We all make our beds.)

4. Shot Full of Rock (from Trouble Walkin') I always misheard the line "Taste the hard rock candy / guaranteed to melt in your mouth." I thought he was singing "Take the hard rock challenge," like the Pepsi Challenge or something, and was always confused by the follow-up line. I like my version slightly better, but nevertheless, this is the kind of rock-ass rocker no one really makes anymore. (I originally meant to write "kick-ass rocker" but "rock-ass" seems even closer to the point, so I'm leaving it.) One of my favorite outros in the hard rock canon, right up there with King Crimson's "Lament" or Oasis's "Rock and Roll Star."

3. Outer Space (from Anomaly) Here's another one that's charting higher than I expected. It made my original list and then a few more listens catapulted it all the way to the #3 spot. 

I think it's a dig at Wendy Moore, who wrote a tell-all book about her time shooting up with the Space Ace on the Psycho Circus tour, but it doesn't have to be. It could just be about an alien who came to Earth, got sick of the place, and returned to orbit to blow it all up from space.

"This place is gonna be fried."

2. Insane (from Second Sighting) The music video is pretty shameless. Slutty nurses and bad behavior, and Ace looks a mess. Everyone's sure having a great time, though. I pilfered the line "I live five days to your one" for the Boat Chips tune "Slow Cooker:" "I cook two-and-a-half to your one." Sorry about that, Ace.

At any rate, it's too bad this never was a huge hit, because as riffs/ shout-along rockers go, it's one of my go-tos. And you know it's tru-oo-ue, YEAH! So LISTEN!

The top spot in our countdown is a bit of a cheat, as I'm nominating the entire solo album from 1978. If these were Kiss tunes- which I guess technically they're considered to be, though not by me - they'd push all but "Torpedo Girl" and a handful of others out of the way.

1.9 Wiped Out Ace was notorious about getting wasted and driving his car too fast. And usually crashing it. It may seem wildly irresponsible to write a badass riff-monster-slog celebrating the behavior instead of trying to atone for it (which he does on "Rock Soldiers") but this album is not about apologies or explanations. If you ever want to approximate what it feels like to be rich, 'luded/coked to the gills, and drinking tequila at 90 miles per hour with Playboy models and biker chicks on all sides without any of the consequences (or STDs) this is the one to crank.

1.8 I’m in Need of Love So turn me on. Pretty to the point. I'll always have a soft spot for this one. I once got to an ex-girlfriend's house much later than I'd said I'd be there - and more than half in the bag, I must confess - and thought it'd be a good idea to serenade her with this one from her front porch. It actually worked; she thought it was funny and totally neutralized her anger. Thanks, Ace! (I passed out moments later; the anger had returned by the time I woke up.)

1.7 Rip It Out Great album opener. Ace's "I hope you suffer" line is perhaps ungracious, but hey, we've all been there.

1.6 New York Groove

It's not an Ace original, but it was Ace's one bona-fide solo hit and is probably popularly associated with him more than it is with Russ Ballard (who wrote it) or Hello (who first performed it.)

Much speculation on why 3rd and 43 is name-checked in the song. Was it where Ace met his dealer? Picked up hookers? Enjoyed a sandwich? Who knows.

Here's the Street View from Google - looks tame to me.

But Ace was a product of pre-Guiliani NYC; I'm sure it looked (and felt) much different then.

1.5 What’s On Your Mind? I mentioned when doing the album-by-album overview that "Talk To Me" was one of 2 Ace songs that should be in every teen movie ever made. This is the other one. Specifically, for a montage. Another fantastic outro on this one.

1.4 Snowblind As with "Wiped Out," not a particularly remorseful tune about getting obliviated, but so what? Along with "Mirror in the Bathroom" by the English Beat, the entire Be Here Now album by Oasis, and "Tusk" by Fleetwood Mac, probably my favorite cautionary tale (even if it's not very cautionary) of wild cocaine livin'. The riff will never leave your head, and Anton Fig's drums never sounded better. This is rock and roll, folks, and it doesn't get much better.

1.3 Fractured Mirror Whenever I hear this, I picture it at the end of a Kiss biopic, with Ed Norton (maybe Edward James Olmos) playing Ace Frehley. It's the height of their fame, power, and debauchery, and Ace is breaking down in the dressing room. Everything is in shambles, and as he tries to get it together for the encore, with the crowd thundering through the walls, he espies his fractured reflection - make-up smeared, hair caked with cocaine, fists bloodied - in the shards of mirror on the floor. This coincides with right when the guitar synth kicks in, around the 2:30 minute mark.

A bit on-the-nose, (no pun intended) but that'd be cool. If I could go back in time and convince Oliver Stone to make Kiss instead of The Doors, it'd almost be worth losing that masterpiece to see what he'd have made with the idea while at the height of his powers.

Gene and Paul, of course, will never allow a Kiss biopic to be made that they don't control and certainly not one that filters the experience through the lens of the Spaceman.

1.2 Speeding Back to My Baby As long as I live, I will consider "Speeding back to my baby / and I don't mean maybe" the greatest couplet ever written. (Right up there with Vonnegut's "When the tupelo / goes poop-a-lo / I'll come back to youp-a-lo" from Timequake) If Shakespeare had lived in a world of combustible engines, he'd have penned the same line. Fantastic production, soloing, riff, rhythm, you name it. As far as rock tunes celebrating vehicular velocity are concerned, this is right up there with "Highway Star" and "I Can't Drive 55."

And finally (drumroll, please)

1.1 Ozone Gene and Paul were (understandably, for the most part) disapproving of Ace's and Peter's hard-partying ways, and as the band realized more and more income from prepubescent fans buying their merch, Gene in particular tried to keep a tight lid on the public's knowledge of just how out of control the partying had gotten by 1978. Ace, however, didn't really give a shit. And if anyone needed proof of that, here it is. He might as well be screaming this right in Gene's face.

It might seem a little adolescent or misguided. But hey, so was Rimbaud, and he's taught the world over. As confessional odes to lewd behavior go, this is my favorite.

If this song was only an unapologetic middle finger extended to Gene, it'd be amusing but shrugworthy. (Or even a bit pathetic, like Guns 'n' Roses's "Get in the Ring," a song I nonetheless enjoy.) But it's hard to imagine how this could be more awesome. It's the opposite of subtle, and it's irresistible. One's head nods and one's fist rises in the traditional metal gesture (with pinkies extended) involuntarily when cranked. 

Proven to heal minor cuts and abrasions! Guaranteed to please! Will power your car when you run out of petrol.

Crank with abandon, and often.

~

This has been ALL YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ACE FREHLEY'S SOLO CATALOG BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK.

This should read "Awk!" not "Ack." It seems like too much bother to fix. So, "Ack!"