“The rehearsals were long, but they were exciting, and it wasn’t just the music he was pushing us on, it was the lyrics too – the ‘fuck me, suck me’ songs were out.” “He might want to run through the drumbeat to Detroit Rock City with Peter, or maybe talk to Gene about the bass part, which incidentally is based on Curtis Mayfield’s Freddie’s Dead. “Sometimes he’d ask for most of the band to leave the rehearsal space so he could focus in on a particular person,” says Paul. Not only did the Toronto-born taskmaster insist that they tune their own instruments (which is a bit like asking the boy Beckham to wash his own kit), but he arranged them in a circle, Alcoholics Anonymous-meeting style, going through the material with an attention to detail usually reserved for the building of monuments out of matches. Three years later, Ezrin would be in the studio with David Gilmour, Roger Waters et al helming the Pink Floyd classic The Wall, so the Kiss camp can at least reflect with pride that they put their faith in a good ’un. But we listened to him because he was, well, right! With Bob, it was ‘teach us’.” At the time, of course, we were basking in the glory of our success with Kiss Alive!, and we weren’t exactly open to outside opinion. “Bob definitely had a whistle round his neck. “Actually, brutal boot camp was more like it,” winces Paul. In the world of Bob Ezrin (dubbed ‘Bobo Earzone’ by Hanoi Rocks he worked with them on their Three Steps From The Move release in 1984), there was a little thing called ‘pre-production’ that had to be factored in – a first-time experience for Kiss, who must have felt they were suddenly back at school. It was a straightforward process, the way presumably every record was made. In making their first three albums, Kiss had simply written the songs then gone into the studio to record them, before heading out on tour. “However, I was well aware of what he could do in the studio, of the work he’d done with Alice Cooper, which was cinematic and atmospheric, yet still totally rock’n’roll his fingerprints are all over that stuff, so it was just a no-brainer that he should be our one and only choice for Destroyer.”
#YOUTUBE PINK FLOYD THE WALL FULL#
“He asked me if I liked the sound of my own records, and because I was young and full of – what’s the expression? – piss and vinegar, I said that I did. “I’d first crossed paths with Bob up in Canada where I was doing some promotion,” recounts Paul. Someone who would leave no shape unthrown in the quest for musical greatness. What they needed was a cheerleader and a guru. But if Kiss Alive! was going to be a springboard rather than an anchor, then Kiss couldn’t afford to rest on their platforms – they needed to return to the studio (the Record Plant in New York) with more than just a glorified engineer, however good the songs at their disposal.
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