Dirty livin '

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Dirty livin '
Kiss
publication September 1979
length 4:53; as single 3:46; Maxi single 5:58
Genre (s) Hard rock , disco
Author (s) Stan Penridge , Peter Criss , Vini Poncia
Publisher (s) Casablanca Records
album Dynasty

Dirty Livin ' is a song written by Stan Penridge and Peter Criss in 1972 and edited by Criss with Vini Poncia in 1979 , which was released by Kiss on the album Dynasty .

History of origin

The musical history of the band has several clearly separated phases. Kiss recorded six studio albums from 1974 to 1977 with Kiss , Hotter Than Hell , Dressed to Kill , Destroyer , Rock and Roll Over and Love Gun , which showed their typical hard rock comparatively consistently and without major deviations. At the end of this first phase, the four solo projects brought out simultaneously by all four band members in 1978 can be counted, each of which appeared under the band name.

In the run-up to the recording of the next Kiss album, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley had initiated a collaboration with Giorgio Moroder , but the discussions on this did not lead to any result. Drummer Peter Criss forced the remaining members to engage Vini Poncia as producer for this album by threatening to leave the band. The group gave in to save the deteriorating relationship with their drummer. But Criss' supposedly successful move turned out to be a mistake when Poncia definitively determined that the drummer was unable to play his instrument and excluded him from the recordings. Instead, Anton Fig was hired, who recorded the album with the band.

Gene Simmons later wrote:

“Ironically, Vini decided that even though he produced Peter's record, he didn't think Peter was good enough to drum on a KISS record. Peter was not qualified to make any judgments about material or arrangements, he said. In Vini Poncia's estimation, Peter was close to tone deaf and didn't play drums well enough. "

“Ironically, Vini decided that Peter wasn't good enough to play the drums on a KISS record even though he had produced his album. He said Peter was not qualified to judge material or arrangements. According to Vini Poncia's assessment, Peter was almost deaf and didn't play the drums well enough. "

- Gene Simmons : KISS & Makeup, p. 160

Peter Criss, on the other hand, felt he was a successful artist. His solo album, which had been produced by Vini Poncia , had been awarded in the USA on October 2, 1978 with a gold and a platinum record for 1,000,000 units. However, this was a marketing ploy of the sound record company back, had pressed the 1,317,664 copies and delivered. However, by January 1979, more than 2 million copies of the four solo albums had been returned to Casblanca. (According to data collected by Nielsen Media Research (SoundScan) since 1991, however , Criss' solo album is the weakest with over 23,000 copies sold in the US. In comparison, the albums by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley sold over 30,000 copies each, the album by Ace Frehley was the most successful with over 46,000 copies.)

For Dynasty , Criss contributed the songs Rumble, Out of Control, There's Nothing Better and Dirty Livin ' , of which only Dirty Livin' was accepted. Criss had already written the song in 1972 with Stan Penridge for their band Lips and recorded it for a demo tape on February 22 of the same year . Originally intended as a radio number , it lost many of the original elements when it was edited for Dynasty by Poncia and became a typical disco piece . In addition to singing, Criss also recorded the drums for this song.

When the band began recording Dynasty at Electric Lady Studios in New York in February 1979 , Criss was still recovering from the effects of a car accident he suffered while under the influence of narcotics while taking a ride in a rented Porsche in Marina del Rey in 1978 in which he lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a tree. He had been catapulted out of the car through the windshield and broken his arms that required hospitalization.

Dirty Livin ' was first released in September 1979 as the b-side of the single Sure Know Something and was later released by Bellaphon in Germany as a maxi single , for which a remix was made by Jim Burgess .

Individual evidence

  1. Kiss - The Story. In: Rock Power. June 1992, p. 20.
  2. a b C. K. Lendt: KISS and Sell - The Making of a Supergroup. Billboard Books 1997, ISBN 0-8230-7551-6 , pp. 97 ff.
  3. a b Julian Gill: The KISS Album Focus - Kings of the Night Time World. 3rd edition, p. 299.
  4. a b c Julian Gill: The KISS Album Focus. P. 301.
  5. Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) awards database , accessed April 15, 2020.
  6. a b Details at kissmonster.com , accessed April 17, 2020.
  7. ^ Lydia Criss: Sealed With a Kiss. Lydia Criss Publishing, ISBN 1-56849-739-3 .