105.5 WDHA's Terrie Carr talks with Ace Frehley and Steve Brown.
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00:00105.5 WDHA, The Rock of New Jersey.
00:02But you're recording it anyway.
00:04There he is.
00:05You hear him in the background.
00:07It is the one and only.
00:08I mean, how do I introduce Ace?
00:11An iconic guitarist, founder of Kiss and Freely's Comet,
00:18a successful solo artist, rock and roll hall of famer,
00:22designer of the Kiss logo, an author, a best-selling author.
00:27No regrets.
00:28No regrets.
00:28No regrets, the book.
00:302011, I guess, was the year for that.
00:32Oh, and Steve Brown is here, too.
00:34We're here.
00:35Steve and Ace.
00:35Steve Brown is here, my co-producer, and my new best buddy.
00:40Yeah.
00:40Well, here's, all right, look.
00:42You've got this record that we love at WDHA.
00:47The fans are going crazy.
00:48I'm going crazy as program director of this radio station.
00:51I've always loved you.
00:53You know, grew up on Ace.
00:54Never did I expect, though, when I heard 10,000 Volts.
00:58I'm deaf.
00:59This is like, this is literally like one of your best, absolute best.
01:05Thank you so much.
01:06Absolute best songs.
01:09And I want to talk about the chemistry between the two of you.
01:16Now, Steve co-wrote, co-produced this track.
01:21And engineered.
01:22And engineered.
01:23And engineered the record.
01:24Almost all of it.
01:24Except for that one song Alex did.
01:27Well, yeah, yeah.
01:28I mean, we did so much work on it together, Ace and I.
01:31Up in the sky.
01:32Yeah.
01:32But it was originally called Stranger Than Fiction.
01:37Okay.
01:37All right.
01:38So, Ace, tell me when you guys hook up together, what is it about Steve that makes that magic
01:46for you guys?
01:47You know, I can't even verbalize it, to be honest with you.
01:53My fiance was a huge fan of Steve's when she was in her early 20s.
01:58She's only 54.
02:00Laura Cove.
02:01And she's been hounding me to get together with Steve.
02:08She goes, Steve's a great guitar player, great songwriter.
02:11You know, she couldn't say enough good things about Steve.
02:13So, finally, I broke down and I said, all right, I gave Steve a call.
02:18Did I call you?
02:19Yeah.
02:19I believe I did.
02:20Yeah.
02:20Well, what happened was, you know, we were trying to get this going.
02:23Tokyo Mortar Fist did a couple shows with Ace Frehley, back a bit with Ace and the guys.
02:28That's right.
02:29What was that crazy show we did in Manhattan?
02:31Yeah.
02:31We did a couple shows.
02:33And all of his guys and Lara, you know, Phil Dealey, who is his production manager,
02:37used to work for Trickster back in the day.
02:39And John Astronomy, they're all saying, you and Ace got to work together.
02:42You guys got to get.
02:43Pesky.
02:43Well, that too.
02:44We had a stage name saying we got to get together.
02:48And so it was just, it took some time.
02:50And for me, I came up with a couple ideas.
02:53The first song that Ace and I worked on was Walking on the Moon and I'll never forget it.
02:57I came up with this idea.
02:59I sent it to Ace and I literally was at my house in Ringwood.
03:03I got out of the shower and my phone's ringing.
03:05I see it's Ace calling.
03:06And I sent him, you know, a couple ideas.
03:09And he calls me up and he goes, Steve, this song is great.
03:12It wasn't Walking on the Moon.
03:14But he immediately had his producer, his creative mind was already working when we hadn't done anything.
03:21And he was like, we got to call this song.
03:23You got the line Walking on the Moon.
03:25And he goes, that's going to be the title of the song.
03:27That's the title of the record.
03:29You know, that was the original working title of the album.
03:32And a week later, I was in his studio and we wrote and recorded 98% of what is on the finished album.
03:41Wow.
03:41It was what we recorded in November of last year.
03:44Wow.
03:44And here we are with, you know, and I'm proud to say for Ace and myself, we've made the greatest Ace Frehley solo record since his 1978 solo record.
03:55Yeah, I agree.
03:56Rock fans rejoice and kiss fans.
03:58I agree.
04:00And I think that this is one of those records that as soon as anybody hears it, whether you're, you know, we have staff members here.
04:08One guy's 28 and then one guy's, you know, Jim's 145.
04:11It doesn't matter because this is just a great rock record.
04:16There's no filler.
04:17There's no filler.
04:19And when you hear people say, oh, rock is dead.
04:23I live this every day with these people that are in the parking lot and whatever.
04:27This is exactly the example of what we're talking about and making a great straight ahead rock record.
04:37And when you say this is the best of Ace's career, I'm not, you know, going to dispute that because I think you guys have put together just a dynamite, incredible 11 song piece of music that rock fans are going to love.
04:50And Ace, your fans are just going to go crazy.
04:52I call them the Ace base because there's a very special faction of these people that are just so tuned into you as an artist.
05:02So talk to me about some of the other songs on this record before we get into 10,000 volts.
05:09The funny thing when, yeah, when he sent me Walking on the Moon, the chorus did not end with that line.
05:17And I said, you have to end with Walking on the Moon.
05:20And I said, come over to my house.
05:23Let's rewrite it.
05:25And I love that.
05:26Come over to my house.
05:27And what I said before, the vocals that Ace did that first day that we recorded the song, he did four vocal tracks.
05:36That's what's on the record.
05:37And what's even cooler is after we did that day, he woke up at three o'clock in the morning.
05:41He was so excited.
05:42And what is so endearing as well is a guy who's been making records for 50 years.
05:48We were like little kids working together like teenagers.
05:52Yeah.
05:52Like back in the old days of being excited.
05:54And we are our enthusiasm with each other.
05:58That's how we worked off each other.
06:00Well, you can hear that.
06:01You can hear that.
06:02You can't fake that.
06:03You cannot.
06:04That's in a finished product of a record.
06:06Well, there are three things about this record I love so much.
06:09I love the Ace's guitar tone.
06:11And that guitar is just everything.
06:15My style hasn't really changed very much.
06:17No, no, but it's so front and center and I just love it.
06:20Your vocals are so spot on.
06:22And again, this is a very song-driven project.
06:26You know, I've been reading comments on YouTube and, you know, it bothers me when some fans say,
06:34Oh, most of Ace's vocals are auto-tuned.
06:38And you know what that is.
06:39Of course.
06:40It's a plug-in in Pro Tools that brings up the notes that you sing flat or lowers the songs that you sing sharp.
06:50Now, here's the engineer.
06:52Was anything auto-tuned?
06:54No, there wasn't.
06:54There was no auto-tune.
06:55The vocal was just sung multiple.
06:59I just did two or three takes, four takes sometimes.
07:02Ace has great pitch and he has great timing.
07:05And we were able to, you know, again, capture.
07:07Like I said, walking on the moon that first day.
07:09And now 10,000 volts.
07:11I can't remember the second song.
07:13The coolest thing is that when Ace and I first got together, we basically said to each other,
07:19if I said to him, if you trust me and I trust you, I promise you, we promise ourselves and we promise all the Kiss fans, all the Ace Freely fans, that we are going to deliver a record.
07:3111 songs, every one of them is great in their own right.
07:36There are no throwaways.
07:38Ace said right from when we did the first couple songs, walking on the moon, fighting for life, cherry medicine, 10,000 volts.
07:45We knew we had something extra special.
07:47And the goal was every song has to be great.
07:51And that's the thing I'm most proud of and that he followed through on that.
07:55Because he was working with some other people, you know, on the record.
07:58It was going slow.
07:59Yeah, it was going slow and the songs weren't up to the par that the other ones were.
08:03And I kept telling him, Ace, we are at a level with these first couple songs.
08:07Every one of them has to be there.
08:09And even the instrumental, the last song on the record, Stratosphere, which Ace is always famous for instrumentals, that is top level as well.
08:18So we're just so proud of that.
08:19Interestingly enough, the only song that we didn't write was Life of a Stranger.
08:26And it's a funny story behind this.
08:28You remember the movie Transporter with Jason Statham?
08:32Yeah, absolutely.
08:33How long ago was that movie?
08:3515 years ago?
08:37Was it?
08:37Not yet.
08:38Anyway, I'll never forget the song that went over the credits after the movie ended.
08:44And it was by, what was the girl?
08:47Nadia.
08:48Nadia.
08:48But I don't think she wrote the song.
08:50To make a long story short, I never forgot that song.
08:53And I always said to myself, one day I should record that and do it heavy.
08:59Yeah.
08:59And that's the only song I've ever recorded that the chorus modulates twice.
09:08He aced it up.
09:09It doesn't happen very often.
09:11It was a very unique song because there were some other cover songs.
09:14And I wasn't sure I was going to sing it.
09:16And Steve said to me, Ace, you're going to be able to hit that note.
09:19Wow.
09:19It was a unique song, very off the wall, not expected.
09:24But as soon as I heard it, I was like, yeah, we're going to do this.
09:27And I heard a very big production.
09:29We added keyboard strings.
09:32Again, getting back to 10,000 volts, this record, there are things on this record that Ace has never done before.
09:39Different trying.
09:40And that's a testament to him trusting me, but also as someone who cares about still making a great record and great art because that's what this is.
09:51Well, you talked about to me, I'm looking in and I'm going into this in a different way because I'm I'm such a fan.
10:00So I think it's very different for an artist when you're not just thrown with a producer and an engineer, but you actually have somebody who is such a fan of you as an artist making your record.
10:15And so I think that that that has has definitely been a big a big piece of this.
10:20Yeah, Terry, I've never made any bones about this.
10:22And I've said it numerous times throughout my whole career.
10:25Ace and Eddie Van Halen are the two reasons that I started playing guitar in 1978.
10:31We've been friends for 30 years.
10:33We've known each other.
10:34But over the last year, we've become like brothers in the sense of we finish each other's sentences musically, if you know what I mean, in writing.
10:43It was so easy and so much fun.
10:46And I can't again, it meant so much to me to work with him.
10:51And the one thing that I said to him all the time was, I said, the ideas that I brought to him were for me being his biggest fan and being Kiss's biggest fan, because I wanted to do this not only for me and him to make a great record for all of the Kiss fans, for all of the Ace Frehley fans.
11:10And it's just been the response has just been incredible.
11:12Tell her what happened with Back Into My Arms Again.
11:17Oh, well, that happened by accident.
11:19Again, you know, an old song from 1987.
11:23We were working on 10,000 volts in my studio doing, you know, vocals.
11:27And we have YouTube on because we're always looking for inspiration.
11:31And all of a sudden, I see this thumbnail and I see Ace Frehley back in my arms.
11:35And I go, Ace, what is this?
11:36He goes, oh, it's a song I wrote back in 1987 with this guy Arthur Stead.
11:40You know, I do a good, pretty good Ace impression.
11:42But he and I go, well, what is this?
11:46And I click on it because I saw he was it was from the unmasked.
11:49Somebody made a video from when he was wearing the unmasked costume.
11:52And we played the song.
11:54And by the time it got to the chorus, we looked at each other.
11:56And he goes, we should we should record this song.
11:59And I was like, absolutely.
12:01And of course, it's going to be one of the fan favorites because all the Ace Frehley fans have been waiting on this song for 35 years.
12:08I just did a piece of it in my living room.
12:10You did.
12:11And it's on all the social media.
12:13Everyone loves it.
12:14Yeah.
12:14Well, Ace has got this whole new he's like this whole new social media guy now.
12:18That's right.
12:18We get this whole insight into Ace.
12:20I felt like I was at your house at Christmas watching Elf with you and Chewy.
12:23You know, Ace is definitely now the social media social media guy, which is super cool because you've got this.
12:30I never really was a big social media guy.
12:32But, you know, now I've realized it can really, you know, make an album here or up here.
12:42Absolutely.
12:43Depending upon how much energy you put on, you know.
12:46So, you know, I'm I'm always thinking of ideas.
12:49You know, kids want to see my sock collection.
12:53I mean, it's just nuts.
12:55Yeah.
12:55Yeah.
12:56No, Ace.
12:56It's fun now.
12:57Talk to me about about trusting Steve because, you know, Steve's coming in with all these ideas.
13:03Did you have always this level of trust with him?
13:06This great good because, you know, making music is so incredibly personal when you're doing it so close together.
13:11Did you did you have that trust in him from the beginning?
13:14You know, I'm the kind of guy that will not write a song or even pick up a guitar for a month and then buy a new guitar that I picked up in a pawn shop and write three or four songs in a week.
13:29It's just like I can't fake it because like I remember Gene Simmons, you know, when he used to have a penthouse in Manhattan, he he would sit in his closet and he had a little recorder there and stuff.
13:41And he religiously wrote one song every day.
13:45So he wrote 365 songs a year, you know, but how many actually made it on record?
13:51You know, maybe five.
13:53Yeah.
13:54Yeah.
13:54Yeah.
13:55So I said, why do all that extra work?
13:57I only write when I'm I feel it.
14:00Yeah.
14:00I wrote a song yesterday.
14:02Yeah.
14:03You know, because I was playing this miniature Les Paul and then all of a sudden I jumped.
14:07You know, that 1952 big body, the the Gretsch, the one with the P90 on it.
14:18I said I bought it in San Diego in a pawn shop.
14:21I get you have so many guitars.
14:22You bought a pawn shop.
14:23I can't even I can't even make.
14:25I don't know which is the best place to get guitars.
14:28The best, the best, the feeling in the history.
14:30All right.
14:30I want to play 10,000 volts.
14:31And then, of course, we're going to come back.
14:33And I'm so happy that you're I'm so grateful that you came in to hang out with us.
14:36So thank you so much.
14:37Let's do 10,000 volts.
14:40105.5 WDHA.