Alive!

Alive!
Live album by Kiss
Publication (s)	September 1975
Label (s)	Casablanca Records
Format (s)	LP , CD , MC , TB , 8-track cassette
Genre (s)	Hard rock
Title (number)	16
running time	74:50
occupation	Vocals , rhythm guitar : Paul Stanley Vocals, bass guitar : Gene Simmons Vocals, lead guitar : Ace Frehley Vocals, drums : Peter Criss
production	Eddie Kramer
chronology Dressed to Kill (1975) Alive! Destroyer (1976)

Alive! is the first live album by the US hard rock band Kiss . It was released as a double album in 1975 .

History of origin

Classification in the musical background

→ Main article : Kiss / discography

After being hired by Neil Bogart in 1973 as the first artist for his newly founded record company Casablanca Records , Kiss recorded the three studio albums Kiss (1974), Hotter Than Hell (1974) and Dressed to Kill (1975) in quick succession , all of which did not have the hoped-for commercial success, which also had a negative effect on the record company. This ultimately prompted Neil Bogart to produce the album Dressed to Kill himself in order to save the costs of an external producer. At that time, the band was literally living off the American Express card of their manager Bill Aucoin , who advanced several times up to 25,000 US dollars until 1975 because Casablanca was no longer able to meet the contractual obligations for Kiss and to pay the group - In fact, the record company owed the band the contractually guaranteed shares from all Kiss records sold to date.

Casablanca was also in financial difficulties after the double album Here's Johnny ... Magic Moments From the Tonight Show with monologues by Johnny Carson had been pressed and marketed millions of times and only 500,000 copies could be sold. With Casablanca's 100% trade buy-back guarantee, the company suddenly found itself on a mountain of debt.

In contrast to the sales figures for the studio albums by Kiss, the group's concerts were well attended, the band just not yet known enough to fill larger venues. The contract with Casablanca Records would have been fulfilled with the fourth, yet to be released album of the group. Gene Simmons had the idea to produce a souvenir for the previous fans in order to save the costs of recording a (much more expensive) studio album .

Origin and result

Eddie Kramer , who was supposed to produce the album, recalls getting a phone call asking if he would like to record Kiss' live album. At that time he said he had a demo tape from the Boston group and he called Tom Scholz and told him, “The tape was great, he should release it as it was, I couldn't help him. I chose Kiss because it was more of a challenge. “Kramer had already produced a five-track demo tape for Kiss when the group was looking for a record deal in 1973.

The recording of the album were then performed at concerts in Cleveland ( Ohio , June 21, 1975), Davenport ( Iowa , July 20, 1975, two shows) and Wildwood ( New Jersey , however, July 23, 1975), most of it was on 16 Recorded May 1975 at Detroit's sold-out Cobo Arena . Another recording was originally for July 1, 1975 in Port Chester ( New York have been planned), but did not take place. At one of the concerts in Davenport, Gene Simmons shouted, “C'mon, Quad City!” During the song Let me go, Rock and Roll ! - the exclamation remained on the recordings and is the only reference to one of the recording locations of the album.

After the end of the tour, the last concert of which took place on August 28, 1975 in Indianapolis ( Indiana ), post-production was carried out in the studio, which later became controversial. Gene Simmons wrote in his autobiography that there was almost no post-production on the live recordings: “We polished up some vocal tracks and fixed a few guitar solos, but we didn't have the time or money to complete the recordings import again. What we wanted and got was a testament to the strength and roughness of the band. ” Paul Stanley later pointed out that the album had a bass bug with the track C'mon and Love Me .

In contrast, Eddie Kramer remembers that a large part of the recordings were unusable and a lot had to be re-recorded in the studio - a statement that is also confirmed by other participants, such as Peter Criss or Kiss' road manager JR Smalling. Among other things, Kramer said that for many tracks the bass , the rhythm guitar and sometimes the lead guitar had to be re-recorded, which was mainly explained by the fact that you cannot play your instrument perfectly if you run and jump around on stage, like Kiss did. Often sound recordings were not usable because of the pyrotechnic effects, because explosions overlaid music or overwhelmed the recording devices and distorted them by overdriving .

The necessary recordings for post-production took place in the Electric Lady Studios in New York. It cannot be ruled out that existing recordings from different concerts were also edited in order to correct errors or to make audience reactions clearer.

In November 1975, the Cleveland radio show King Biscuit Flower Hour broadcast parts of a Kiss concert in which the first three tracks ( Hotter Than Hell , Firehouse and Black Diamond ) were almost identical in sound to the recordings on Alive! are; marginal differences can only be seen in the transitions between the tracks and in the sound of the audience. The last two tracks, Let Me Know and Rock And Roll All Nite , are definitely from Cleveland: Here Paul Stanley's complete announcements about the songs are still on the recording.

publication

The album was released on September 10, 1975 in the USA in a gatefold cover. On the front was a photo of the band on a stage, taken by Fin Costello, which was not taken at a concert. Rather, it was recorded at Michigan Palace, Detroit on the afternoon of May 16, 1975 when the Cobo Arena was recording the Alive! should take place.

On the back of the LP cover was a photo of two teenagers holding a poster with the Kiss logo and a drawn picture of the group members. There was a lot of speculation about the creation of the picture - among other things, there was a rumor that it was a photo taken in the studio, which was then retouched in front of a picture of the audience . Sean Delaney , who worked with Kiss at the time , also contributed to the rumor and said he simply handed the two of them the poster and had them pose for a photo. In an interview he later stated that the photo was not taken at a Kiss concert, but on some other occasion.

However, this statement can be refuted by a photo published in 2002, taken by Chuck Diotte on May 16, 1975 at Cobo Arena and the two young people (it was Lee Neaves and Bruce Redoute) on chairs with their poster sitting in the hall shows. All photos used for the cover of Alive! have been recorded by Fin Costello.

The inside of the fold-out cover showed messages from the individual band members to their fans on the left , each written from the perspective of the respective alter ego : Frehley wrote to the dear Earthlings , Simmons to the dear victims , Stanley to his lovers and Peter Criss to the cat people . On the right-hand side, the cover was divided into four illustrated fields, the upper left field showed the band's logo with the word "More" printed above it, resulting in "More Kiss". The slogan "Availabale on Casablanca Records and Tapes" was under the logo . The other three fields showed the respective covers of the previous three studio albums Kiss , Hotter Than Hell and Dressed to Kill, arranged clockwise.

Alive! was also delivered with an eight-page color booklet the size of an album containing photos of the band members and live images. This was the first time that a Kiss album had an add-on - in the years that followed, these add-ons became an integral part of almost all of the group's albums.

effect

Alive! was well received by the audience and had a direct impact on the number of visitors to the concerts. Paul Stanley recalls that one hall in Dayton, Ohio was so full that even a shoehorn couldn't get anyone inside .

The album reached number 9 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the Cash Box hit list, where it also reached number 9, 110 weeks - the longest time a Kiss album could ever last there; In 2003 it was ranked 159 in Rolling Stone's list of " 500 Greatest Albums of All Times " ; In 2006 it landed at number 26 on the list of "100 Greatest Guitar Albums of All Time" by Guitar World magazine .

According to Eddie Kramer, no heavy metal group had ever released a live album until 1975 , in that respect Alive! a test balloon. It was astonishing that the album would receive a gold record ; no one had thought it possible that it would even come out platinum. The album reached gold status on December 4, 1975, platinum for 1,000,000 albums sold on January 31, 1976. A double platinum award is not recorded, but the proven sales figures speak for such an award.

Sales of Alive! apparently surprised everyone involved. At the same time, Casablanca released albums by Donna Summer ( Love to Love you Baby ) and Parliament ( Chocolate City ), and all three were selling well, which created a problem for Casablanca: the company simply didn't have the money to press enough albums allow.

Trivia

“Alive” means something like “alive” and can be understood as a play on words in relation to the initial situation of the band and record company before the recordings .

Track list

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Albums

Alive!   UK 49 06/26/1976 (2 weeks)   US 9 December 13, 1975 (110 weeks)

page 1

1. 3:32 Deuce (vocals: Gene Simmons; text and music: Gene Simmons)
2. 3:12 Strutter (vocals: Paul Stanley; text and music: Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons)
3. 3:35 Got to Choose (vocals: Paul Stanley; text and music: Paul Stanley)
4. 3:11 Hotter Than Hell (vocals: Paul Stanley; text and music: Paul Stanley)
5. 3:42 Firehouse (vocals: Paul Stanley; text and music: Paul Stanley)

Page 2

1. 3:23 Nothin 'to Lose (vocals: Gene Simmons; Peter Criss lyrics and music: Gene Simmons)
2. 2:52 C'mon and Love Me (vocals: Paul Stanley; text and music: Paul Stanley)
3. 3:21 Parasite (vocals: Gene Simmons; text and music: Ace Frehley)
4. 6:42 She (vocals: Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley; text and music: Gene Simmons, Stephen Coronel)

Page 3

1. 3:51 Watchin 'You (vocals: Gene Simmons; lyrics and music: Gene Simmons)
2. 12:10 100,000 Years (vocals: Paul Stanley; text and music: Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley)
3. 5:50 Black Diamond (vocals: Peter Criss; intro: Paul Stanley; text and music: Paul Stanley)

page 4

1. 4:59 Rock Bottom (vocals: Paul Stanley; text and music: Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley)
2. 5:43 Cold Gin (vocals: Gene Simmons; text and music: Ace Frehley)
3. 4:23 Rock and Roll all Nite (vocals: Gene Simmons; lyrics and music: Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons)
4. 5:45 Let me go, Rock 'n' Roll (vocals: Gene Simmons; text and music: Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons)

literature

• Julian Gill: The Kiss Album Focus - Kings of the Night Time World, 1972-1982 . 3rd edition, KissFaq.com, 2008, ISBN 978-0-9722253-7-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karen and John Lesniewski: Kiss Collectibles Identification and Price Guide . Avon Books, 1993, ISBN 0-380-77166-7 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Alive! ( Memento from June 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Kiss album Focus on kissfaq.com (English)
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} David Leaf, Ken Sharp: Kiss: Behind the Mask . Warner Books, New York 2003, ISBN 0-446-53073-5 .
4. ^ Kiss: Beyond the Makeup . Documentation from the Behind the Music series , VH1, 2001
5. ^ ^{A b} Larry Harris: And Party Every Day - The Inside Story of Casablanca Records . Backbeat Books / Hal Leonard, 2009, ISBN 978-0-87930-982-4 .
6. ^ ^{A b c d e f} Curt Gooch, Jeff Suhs: Kiss Alive Forever - A Complete Touring History . 1st edition. Billboard Books, 2002, ISBN 0-8230-8322-5
7. ^ Gene Simmons: Kiss and Make-Up . Crown Publishers, New York 2001, ISBN 0-609-60855-X
8. ↑ Paul Stanley in KISSTORY . Kisstory Ltd., 1994, Library of Congress Catalog Card 94-73457
9. ^ Dale Sherman: Black Diamond - The Unauthorized Biography of Kiss . Collectors Guide Publishing, 1997, ISBN 1-896522-35-1 .
10. ^ Kiss: X-treme Close-Up , DVD, PolyGram Video International, 1992
11. ↑ Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
12. ↑ Award list ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at kissfaq.com 
13. ↑ Charts UK Charts US