Ace Frehley, founding guitarist with theatrical rock band Kiss, dies at 74

Ace Frehley, who played lead guitar as a founding member of the face-painted, blood-spewing, fire-breathing hard-rock band Kiss, died Thursday in Morristown, N.J. He was 74.

His death was announced by his family, which said he’d recently suffered a fall. “In his last moments, we were fortunate enough to have been able to surround him with loving, caring, peaceful words, thoughts, prayers and intentions as he left this earth,” the family said in a statement.

In his alter ego as the Spaceman, Frehley played with the original incarnation of Kiss for less than a decade, from 1973 — when he formed the group in New York with Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss — until 1982, when he quit not long after Criss left. Yet he was instrumental to the creation of the band’s stomping and glittery sound as heard in songs like “Detroit Rock City,” “Rock and Roll All Nite,” “Strutter” and “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.” In the late ’70s, those hits — along with Kiss’ over-the-top live show — made the group an inescapable pop-cultural presence seen in comic books and on lunch boxes; today the group is widely viewed as a pioneer of rock ’n’ roll merchandising.

A member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Frehley rejoined Kiss in 1996 for a highly successful reunion, then left again in 2002 to return to the solo career he’d started in the early ’80s. In 2023, Kiss completed what Simmons and Stanley called a farewell tour with a hometown show at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Frehley, whose real first name was Paul, was born April 27, 1951, in the Bronx. He learned to play guitar as a kid and joined Stanley on rhythm guitar, Simmons on bass and Criss on drums after responding to an ad in the Village Voice.

Inspired by Led Zeppelin, the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper, the quartet called themselves Kiss and started playing around New York; Frehley designed the band’s eye-catching logo with its pair of lightning bolts. Each member chose a persona with a specific make-up scheme: Frehley the Spaceman, Stanley the Starchild, Simmons the Demon and Criss the Catman.

Kiss signed to Casablanca Records and released its self-titled debut in 1974; Stanley and Simmons wrote most of the songs, though Frehley contributed “Cold Gin,” about a down-and-out guy not too proud to admit that “the cheapest stuff is all I need to get me back on my feet again.”

The band exploded in 1975 with the release of “Kiss Alive!,” a concert album that broke into the top 10 of the Billboard 200. By 1978, Kiss was such a sensation that each member of the band released a solo album on the same day; Frehley scored a hit from his with a cover of Russ Ballard’s “New York Groove.” That same year, the band starred in a TV movie called “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park,” which was shot in part at Valencia’s Magic Mountain amusement park.

“Kiss is the band that made me and millions of others love rock ’n’ roll,” Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello said when he inducted Kiss into the Rock Hall in 2014. “What Elvis and the Beatles were to previous generations, Kiss were to us.”

Frehley left Kiss in 1982, not long after the band’s “Music from ‘The Elder’” LP was poorly received.

“Kiss started out as a great idea, but after a while, it became a nightmare for me, like a chain around my neck,” Frehley told The Times a decade later. “I hated to put that damn makeup on.” He recalled drinking too much after a gig in Paris. “I fell asleep with my makeup on, and when I woke up, my eyes were swollen shut from an allergic reaction to the silver paint,” he said.

Kiss backstage in 1979: Ace Frehley, from left, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.

(Bettmann Archive via Getty Image)

After Kiss, he recorded and performed under his own name and with a group he called Frehley’s Comet. In 1996, he reteamed with the band’s three other original members for a tour and an album, “Psycho Circus”; in recent years he’d collaborated with the likes of Slash, Lita Ford and Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready.

His survivors include his wife, Jeanette; his daughter, Monique; his brother, Charles; his sister, Nancy, and several nieces and nephews.

During Kiss’ Rock Hall induction, Frehley noted that he’d been sober for 7½ years and used the opportunity to advocate from the stage for education about sobriety.

“Some people think that it has to do with willpower, but unfortunately most addicts are born that way,” he said. “Only by the grace of God I’m here.”