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| KISS 'Destroyer' Turn 40 Years Old Today |
Like many others who have laid claim that KISS Destroyer is the album that got them into the band or Hard Rock music (or both); I was most certainly the latter. KISS changed my life forever with this one.
KISS released their landmark album Destroyer 40 years ago today (March 15, 1976). Of course there's always going to be a number of people who say it's their least favorite or the worst album etc. But the majority will side with this one being their masterpiece; the uber-KISS album to own if you're going to own one KISS album. When people ask me my favorite KISS album I tell them it's a toss up between Destroyer and KISS Alive. And I've read the horror stories about Alive and Alive II not being so very "live". But I digress because I love both of those albums and big part of my youth (or my "yute" as actor Joe Pesci would say). And I could care less what was recorded in a studio and what was passed off as an actual 'live' performance. Just take my allowance, please!
Jumping in the way-back machine here, Destroyer is one of the first pieces of vinyl I purchased with my own money (the first one being The Monkees Greatest Hits). Yes, haha...funny, but I loved that album. AND I was eight years old. But I redeemed myself for missing the KISS boat earlier and the third album I bought was KISS Alive. Anyway, moving on......
In the Spring of '76 our family moved to Livingston, NJ. Not the epicenter of rock 'n roll, but as long as I could get New York City radio stations on my radio, then I was happy. I was into whatever was on the radio (light Rock - Chicago, Fleetwood Mac etc.).
Not one piece of furniture was moved into the house yet and my sister was already beating up on a neighborhood boy a few houses up the street from us. The guy she was pouncing on (Brian) was Don's brother; Don being the kid who turned me onto Destroyer, thus turning me into a KISS/Rock music fanatic. And I mean fanatic.
After Brian's Mom came to the house to not welcome us to the neighborhood, but to find out why her son was forced to eat dirt and getting beat upon (aka; ass handed to him), she had brought her son Don along. He was my age and awkward like me, so we actually bonded immediately. Not to say his brother didn't give me shit every time he saw me at his house. The paybacks to my sister beating his ass was by way of a punch to my back, arms, charlie-horse, headlock, ultimate wedgies.....it was never ending. But Don and I figured out how to keep his brother out of the room while we were in there.
Play-by-play of how it all went down for me:
Don: Have you heard the new song "Detroit Rock City"?
Me: Huh?
Don: You know, the song by KISS.
Me: Who?
Don: <blank stare>
Me: <blinking>
Don: You've never heard of KISS?
Me: I've heard of kissing.
Don: NO! The band KISS. With the makeup and costumes!
Me: <still blinking> <staring off and getting ready to make a run for it>
Don then places a vinyl record onto this massive stereo system, drops the needle and I hear the opening sequence of "Detroit Rock City" which is a radio announcer talking about a head-on collision car accident. Then a person is heard jingling keys, opening a car door, starting the engine, revving up the engine, jamming his radio, speeding away while singing KISS' own tune "Rock N Roll All Night". The car revs off.......
The guitar kicks in.....Da na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na....drums BOOM!! BOOM! More guitar: Da na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na......drums BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! Then Paul sings:
"I feel uptight on a Saturday night
Nine o' clock, the radio's the only light
I hear my song and it pulls me through
Comes on strong, tells me what I got to do
I got to
Get up
Everybody's gonna move their feet
Get down
Everybody's gonna leave their seat
You gotta lose your mind in Detroit Rock City...."
My eyes widened. I sat their motionless and felt a little out of body experience going on at that moment. I was deep in thought, "What......what....what is this? How come I never heard it before today? Why have I never heard of KISS?" Once I snapped out of it, I asked, no I told Don to lift the needle and play that song again. But this time we sat on the bed and sang along to the lyrics printed on the album sleeve. I sat there staring at the KISS logo too. It was just coolest logo I ever saw in my short life.
When I heard the car accident portion of the song I didn't put two and two together and thought the accident was another car. Forgive my ignorance, I was a pup. And it took me a few weeks to figure out the song was about a guy who died on his way to a rock concert (hence the foreshadowing of the song's intro). But the parts of the song that hooked me was the guitar (no doubt about it - fell in love with the guitar because of this one song) and the chorus "Get Up/Everybody's gonna move their feet/Get down/Everybody's gonna leave their seat".
After listening/singing along to "Detroit Rock City" ten times or so, we started to read about the KISS Army and we had to join. Don went off to find a few bucks, a couple envelopes and stamps. When he left the room, I went over to the record player and saw the Destroyer album cover for the first time. And the first time I ever set eyes on the band. The makeup....the costumes.....I kinda freaked out. Maybe even pee'd a little. I was looking at a devil band (no fault of my own, I was brought up in a Catholic family). I couldn't look away from the cover. I never saw anything like it.
When Don came back to the room he saw me standing there with the album cover in my hand with my mouth wide open. He asked me what was wrong. Said I looked like I saw a ghost. I was speechless. Between "Detroit Rock City" and the album cover, I didn't know what hit me. Mind you, at this point I hadn't listened to any other song on Destroyer except for DRC. When Don asked me if I wanted to listen to the rest of the album I was like, "THERE'S MORE????"
We listened to the rest of the album and...............the rest is KISStory. I was hooked from that point on. Once I bought my own copy of Destroyer I listened to it for months on end. I learned all the lyrics, air guitars, and air drums. The broom and tennis racket were my new instruments, the basement was my stage and the mirror, my audience. My parents had a phenomenal stereo in the basement and it was louder than my little suitcase style record player. So when Mom and Dad were at work I would blast KISS on the stereo. If they only knew back then. Yeah, my ass would've been sore and grounded for months. Good thing I learned some ninja skills early on.
From there I moved on to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple (yes, late to those too...I know), then Van Halen in '77. I was the only ten year old in my class at the time who even knew who Van Halen was, but that's for another blog.
SIDEBAR: If you're a fan of Destroyer and want to read an in depth account of the making of it, do yourself a favor and pick up James Campion's book "Shout It Out Loud: The Story of Kiss's Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon". (Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Shout-Out-Loud-Destroyer-American/dp/1617136182/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458100515&sr=8-1&keywords=kiss+destroyer+book).
One of my favorite Destroyer tracks "Flaming Youth".
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