INTERVIEW: Celebrating the rockified magnificence of KISS … again
Photo: Bob Kulick produced a KISS tribute album that was recently rereleased by Cleopatra Records. Photo courtesy of Glass Onyon PR / Provided with permission.
Recently, KISS announced an expansive tour that may prove to be their last, so the guys in makeup have been on the minds of rock aficionados as of late. Their legacy is unparalleled and extraordinary — lasting decades and including such honors as induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. From “Detroit Rock City” to “God of Thunder” to “Lick It Up,” their catalog is impressive and made for the arena treatment.
To honor the musical contributions of the iconic band, Bob Kulick and Bruce Bouillet produced a tribute album a number of years ago with some equally worthy talent in the world of rock. Their efforts resulted in the album Spin the Bottle, which has recently been reissued and renamed as Pure Fire: The Ultimate KISS Tribute.
On the recording, fans can hear unique renditions of KISS songs by the likes of Tommy Shaw, Lemmy Kilmister, Dee Snider and C.C. DeVille, among others. Many of the classics are there, plus some rare gems: “Love Gun,” “King of the Night Time World,” “Calling Dr. Love” and “Strutter.”
“[The reissue] came via all of my connections with the KISS camp and all of what was going on,” Kulick said in a recent phone interview. “Somebody had mentioned to me the old record, Spin the Bottle, that we did 14 years ago, and one thing led to another. And next thing I know Cleopatra Records wants to put the record out.”
Kulick has some real KISS credibility. For starters, he produced for them in the studio, and his brother, Bruce Kulick, was a guitarist for the band for a number of years. This particular tribute album, though, is all about admiration from afar; the current KISS lineup is not featured.
The 14 years between the album’s original release and its new rerelease means more than simply a title change.
“[Cleopatra] decided wisely to change the artwork, but to me the really exciting thing about this rerelease is that it’s a time capsule from 14 years ago,” Kulick said. “These are organic performances. These recordings were made before the advent of Pro Tools and all that stuff, the ability to put the recordings on to a grid, to tune them, and copy and cut and paste them, and fix them, and ‘Beat Detective; them and line up all the snare hits until they’re absolutely computer perfect. That’s exactly what this is not. This is recorded on digital tape, DAD8’s 14 years ago. These performances are not fixed, so what you hear are real people singing and playing.”
The rerelease also comes with a making-of DVD that shows some of the behind-the-scenes work that went into the recording of the album. That means fans can see the likes of Shaw (Styx), Chris Jericho, Kilmister, Snider and Buzz Osbourne.
“To be able to see Tommy Shaw and Chris Jericho and Lemmy and Paul Gilbert and all the rest, Kip Winger, Mark Slaughter to talk about people they know and music that they are passionate about 14 years ago is like going back in time like a VH1 special or an MTV special show from 14 years ago,” he said. “To actually see Lemmy talking about his participation is really something special. Along with Lemmy, there’s one other person who is no longer with us, Mike Porcaro from Toto. He played bass. He’s also included on the video portion, so this record has a lot of heart to it, aside from the obvious, aside from the performances and the fact that these are most of the songs that are the main catalog of the band as it stands today. I feel really great about this, and seeing everyone’s response to it has been really overwhelmingly positive.”
Kilmister, who fronted Motörhead for years, is a rock legend, and on the album he sings “Shout It Out Loud” with Jennifer Batten, Samantha Maloney and Kulick himself. That must have been quite the experience for Kulick to play alongside such a venerable figure.
“Lemmy was my friend, a dear friend, and the joke was, what if we use you with two girls,” Kulick remembered. “He was like, ‘What do you mean?’ I was like, ‘Well, let’s get Jennifer Batten,’ at the time Michael Jackson’s guitar player, a phenomenal player, and Samantha Maloney at the time was playing with Mötley Crüe and also wound up playing with Eagles of Death Metal. So we mounted that, and it needed some rhythm guitars. So I wound up having to play. That was the original idea of Lemmy and these two girls doing ‘Shout It Out Loud,’ so it had a little bit of a tongue-and-cheek joke to it. And his vocal is such that I think people will be amazed how he owns this song.”
Kulick and Bouillet produced the project, so they were chiefly responsible for bringing the song selections and interesting pairings to life. In the end, they needed to collaborate with the individual artists, a motley crew of personalities.
“So for certain artists you ask, ‘Here’s what we think. What do you think? Here’s the lineup we’re mounting for you. What do you think,'” he said. “Most of the time, ‘Who would you like to play with? Who would you like on drums?’ ‘Dave Grohl.’ ‘OK, then we’ll get Dave Grohl,’ which we did on [a different] Christmas record. So there are artists where you go out and you get what they want, and you put the pieces together to finish that lineup, which was the Christmas record that I did a few years ago, We Wish You a Metal Christmas. The rest of that lineup was Lemmy, his request Dave Grohl, my suggestion Billy Gibbons, and that was the band that played on the track. So all of these are exactly that. Bruce and I figured out who to use, contact the people, get the arrangements in order and then have at it. In this case, these are organic performances, so we didn’t take a verse and a chorus from the drums and make a song out of it.”
The results are pure fire.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Pure Fire: The Ultimate KISS Tribute is now available from Cleopatra Records. Click here for more information.
