KISS: The Story Of The Band’s Disastrous Reunion

Kiss reunited with their classic lineup on an 18 month-long Reunion Tour in 1996 but it ended up being a complete failure.

At the 1996 Grammy Awards, rapper Tupac Shakur introduced the reunited band. Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss strolled on stage in full Kiss makeup. They were there to present the award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal.

To some, the appearance and announcement of a reunited Kiss wasn’t a huge surprise as the writing was on the wall. The year prior, in August of 1995, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss played several Kiss songs during the band’s MTV Unplugged appearance.

Kiss’ Classic Lineup Falls Apart

While Kiss rose to fame in the mid-to-late 70’s, by the early 80’s, the band’s original and classic lineup was falling apart. The decade was a difficult time for Kiss.

By 1982, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley were out of the band and they were replaced. Soon afterwards, the band lost their makeup for a period of time.

Paul Stanley Steps Up To Lead The Band

Simmons seemed to have a diminishing role in the group as he pursued other interests like acting. As a result, guitarist and vocalist Paul Stanley took a greater role in leading the band

By the late 80’s, early 90’s, Kiss was struggling with their identity as rock n’ roll underwent a massive transformation with the rise of alternative rock. In addition, Kiss didn’t have a top 10 charting record during the whole decade.

By 1991, Kiss was also dealing with tragedy when drummer Eric Carr was found to have a tumour in his heart. While he was declared cancer-free towards the later part of 1991, he died on November 24, 1991due to several cerebral hemorrhages.

Eric Carr was replaced by Alice Cooper’s drummer Eric Singer. Some fans blasted the band for continuing on but Gene Simmons brushed it off, telling Classic Rock Magazine, “Some fans thought that we were insensitive… but they weren’t there. They’re not qualified to say.”

As the band turned their attention to their first record of the 90’s, they enlisted producer Bob Ezrin who also worked on the band’s 1975 record, Destroyer. Kiss hoped to repeat the same success with a back-to-basics approach, which partially worked. Appropriately titled and released in 1992, Revenge was the band’s first album since 1979’s Dynasty to chart in the top 10.

Kiss released Alive 3, a stop-gap live record, to tide over fans until their next release. They enlisted the help of Alice in Chains producer Toby Wright.

Kiss Receives Offer to Reunite with the Original Lineup

The album was shelved for several years when Kiss received a huge offer to reunite with the original lineup. The reunited lineup played their first show at Tiger Stadium in June 1996. Gene had reservations about opening the tour at such a big venue because he was worried there wouldn’t be enough interest in the band to sell out the stadium. He was wrong. The band sold 50,000 tickets that night in just a matter of hours.

“The closer it came to showtime, the more of a strange sense of deja vu permeated the air.” – Ace Frehley

The first show went great. Guitarist Ace Frehley recalled in his book No Regrets, “The closer it came to showtime, the more of a strange sense of deja vu permeated the air. From the moment we hit the stage, 40,000 screaming fans stood up, and the excitement continued until the final encore. When the show was over, we congratulated each other backstage. There was a genuine feeling of camaraderie in the dressing room.”

The tour was one of the most successful tours of the group’s career, raking in $144M. With touring out of the way, it was time for the reunited lineup to record a new album. That’s where things started to get problematic.

The shelved album Carnival of Souls finally saw its release, months after the reunion tour ended, but it didn’t feature Peter Criss or Ace Frehley. The album quickly faded from memory and the reunited lineup turned their attention to their follow-up record, which was their first together since 1979’s Dynasty.

While Paul and Gene claimed they wanted Ace and Peter to play on the record, according to the book, Kiss: Behind the Mask, it was the band’s producer, Bruce Fairbairn who wanted to bring outside musicians to play on the album as he wasn’t impressed with Ace and Peter’s playing in pre-production. In fact, Ace and Peter only played on a handful of songs on the 1998 ‘reunion record’, Psycho Circus.

Fairbairn recruited several musicians to play on the album, including drummer Eric Singer and guitarist Tommy Thayer who appeared on most of the record. Thayer apparently helped Ace re-learn his original guitar parts for the reunion tour and former Kiss guitarist, Bruce Kulick also reportedly chipped in with guitar and bass work on two tracks.

“They were offering us $850,000 each, not to play!” – Peter Criss

According to Criss, who spoke to Eddie Trunk, the only song to feature contributions from all 4 original members was the song, “Into The Void”. Both Ace and Peter were hurt by their lack of involvement in Psycho Circus. Criss revealed in his book, Makeup to Breakup, “Ace and I were both working on songs diligently. But then, once again, our hopes were shattered. They were offering us $850,000 each, not to play!”

Frehley put part of the blame on Gene and Paul, telling Disc Dive, “It was a disappointment for me. The only song I performed on was the one I wrote, ‘Into The Void’. Paul and Gene are such control freaks and I don’t know why I wasn’t invited to play on a lot of the other songs, but I wasn’t.”

“It just became ugly and sad.” – Paul Stanley

Paul Stanley had his own recollection of events. He told Chris Jericho on his Talk Is Jericho podcast, how both Ace and Peter wanted to be equal partners, something Stanley disagreed with. “When they came back, they were pretty broke… It wasn’t too long after things started to happen again that they started doing the same stuff. And it just became ugly and no fun.

You’ve got guys who are trying to renegotiate deals, and we’re talking to lawyers more than we’re talking to them, and this idea of, ‘I should have this many songs on the album.’ And honestly, I’ve been writing songs for 50 years, and I’ve gotten pretty good at what I do. So it just became ugly and sad.”

While Psycho Circus wasn’t the Kiss ‘reunion album’ fans were hoping for, it wasn’t a bad album. The album peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Charts, selling over 110,000 copies in its first week and received mostly favourable reviews.

The band hit some trouble a week after the record came out. The song, “Dreamin'” displayed similarities to the Alice Cooper song, “I’m Eighteen”. Cooper’s publisher filed a lawsuit against Kiss which they settled out of court.

As the band turned their attention to supporting the album on tour in 1998, tensions were brewing once again. The tour to support Psycho Circus failed to garner the public’s attention compared to their previous tour and ticket sales suffered. In addition, squabbles over money only escalated with Peter and Ace.

“The farewell tour was us wanting to put Kiss out of its misery.” – Paul Stanley

In 2000, Kiss announced their Farewell tour, but it wasn’t the group’s last trek. According to Stanley, who told Chris Jericho, “The farewell tour was us wanting to put Kiss out of its misery, and for a while, honestly, we lost sight that we didn’t have to stop – we had to get rid of them.”

According to Classic Rock Magazine, Frehley failed to show up for rehearsals, blaming Lyme disease, and at one show in California, he walked backstage and found Tommy Thayer ready to take his place.

For Peter Criss, things came to a head on Oct 7, 2000 in Charleston, South Carolina. According to Rolling Stone Magazine, the drummer had learned that Guitarist Ace Frehley was getting paid $50,000 a show – $10,000 more than Criss’ own salary. Criss remembered in his memoir, “It was the most devastating blow of my professional life. I was so hurt, I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”

Peter Criss Has a Meltdown on Stage

There were only 7 shows remaining on that tour, but Criss, that night in South Carolina, had a meltdown on stage and destroyed his drum kit, sending a tom-tom rolling towards Stanley. Criss wrote in his book, “Everyone stood up and cheered and Paul thought the cheers were for him until he turned around and saw a huge tom-tom coming down at him so he took his guitar, threw it down on the stage, and walked off.” This was the last time the classic lineup performed together on stage.

Drummer Eric Singer finished up the remainder of the tour while Ace Frehley’s final show with Kiss occurred on April 13, 2001 in Australia. While Frehley briefly rejoined the band during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, he was gone after that.

Peter Criss Briefly Re-Joins the Band

When the band hit the road again in 2002, promoters insisted that 3 of the 4 original members appear on the stage. Paul and Gene reluctantly invited Peter Criss to rejoin. Following the tour, Criss once again left the band.

In 2014, Kiss was inducted into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame. The 4 original members appeared on stage, but the band declined to perform that evening.

In 2018, as part of the Kiss Kruise, the band reunited with Ace Frehley to perform a handful of songs along with Bruce Kulick.

Kiss Announces End of the Road Tour

In 2019, Kiss announced the End of the Road Tour which was supposed to be the band’s very last tour. Kicking off in Canada, many fans wondered whether Peter and Ace would be involved, something manager Doc Mcghee claimed the band would be open to doing.

The tour was supposed to run until 2021 with their final shows to occur in New York City. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the tour was postponed part-way through.

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