105.5 WDHA's Terrie Carr talks with Ace Frehley and Steve Brown.
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00:00We are hanging out with the one and only Ace Frehley.
00:03The behind-the-scenes stuff.
00:04Steve Brown.
00:05And Steve Brown.
00:07It's so much fun because we're just getting all these great stories.
00:11We want to talk about guitar playing, though.
00:13I want to get into guitar playing because I said the sound,
00:15when I first heard the opening riff of 10,000 Volts
00:21and also Walking on the Moon,
00:23which I think is this fun, it's like a bluesy banger.
00:29It's got just great texture to it.
00:32Steve wrote the intro to Walking on the Moon.
00:34I love it.
00:35It's brilliant.
00:36I love it.
00:36And there was something about that guitar.
00:42And I thought to myself, wow, this is so Ace Frehley.
00:45And you talk to so many young artists who influenced you.
00:48Steve just said, Eddie Van Halen and Ace for him.
00:50And I talked to so many people that passed through here.
00:53And your name, Ace, comes up so much.
00:57So talk to me about this being a guitar record
01:00because this is a guitar record.
01:03And I want to talk to you guys about the construction of that.
01:07And was that always something that you envisioned
01:09or did it just sort of come out that way?
01:12Well, I think the most important thing was the fact that Ace and I
01:16are both guitar players first before we started writing songs.
01:20So the guitar, it's a part of our personality, part of our being.
01:26So my goal, and I said this to Ace.
01:28I said, Ace, we really need to focus on getting you these,
01:33getting back to your classic way you used to construct guitar solos.
01:37Yet it was spontaneous.
01:39But we also would go, I would let him play and play through the whole song.
01:44Go, hear that?
01:45That's great.
01:46We need to repeat that because Ace's solos back,
01:48especially on the Kiss songs, the great solos,
01:51he would repeat licks a lot.
01:52They were very thematic.
01:54So that was my goal.
01:55And what was so cool is I would have a guitar
01:58and Ace would have a guitar.
01:59He'd be plugged in and we'd just let the song rip.
02:02And I'd go to him while he's playing because he's very much,
02:05he loves to be spontaneous and raw.
02:07And I'd be going, no, dude, we got to make this.
02:10It's got to make sense.
02:11And then I would sit there and just because it was easy for him to understand,
02:15I'd go, dude, play the shock me lick.
02:18Play the thing you did in 100,000 years, you know, Kiss references.
02:22And then he would sometimes go, I don't want to play that.
02:24That's boring.
02:25And then 30 seconds later, he would play that lick.
02:28And I'd go, I got it.
02:29Because the other cool thing when you're recording in Pro Tools,
02:32you record everything.
02:33And so we would do 10 takes.
02:35And then I would sometimes put it together.
02:38But that was one of the really cool things about getting.
02:41And I think as a guitar player, and I think all the guitar fans out there,
02:44when they hear 10,000 Volts, they're going to say,
02:47this is one of Ace's greatest guitar playing records that he's done in,
02:52you know, 40 years, I think.
02:54What was that song that you wrote, the majority of it,
02:58the rhythm part, and you were happy with it?
03:02And I was happy with it, but I said, this song needs a bridge.
03:05You go, it doesn't need a bridge.
03:07Well, that was walking on the moon.
03:08That was walking on the moon.
03:09Yeah, I wrote the bridge for walking on the moon.
03:11He woke up.
03:11Because it didn't have a bridge.
03:13Right.
03:13He woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning.
03:15He recorded the vocals and recorded the guitar.
03:17Now, I had the duty as an engineer to cut and paste and chop it all in
03:21and make it work.
03:22But again, what he did by himself, singing and recording and playing,
03:27engineering in his own studio, we were able to use that.
03:30So that's the beauty.
03:31And again, recording at his studio in Sparta
03:34and my studio in Ringwood, New Jersey,
03:36it was just a marriage made in heaven.
03:38It was the perfect working environment.
03:39And we recorded the song Blinded, right?
03:42Came out great.
03:44So, 7 o'clock in the morning, you know,
03:49you wake up and you're like half asleep, half awake.
03:51A lot of times they get creative ideas at that juncture.
03:54I called up Steve and I go, why don't we use, open up the song with the chorus,
04:01a cappella, just to give another, you know, flavor to the record.
04:06Yeah.
04:06And he did it quickly.
04:08He says, let me just try it right now.
04:10Because he works on, he's such a quick engineer at editing on Pro Tools
04:15because he's been doing it for 30 years.
04:17And he called me back and he goes, amazing.
04:20Amazing.
04:20Yeah, we went for like, you know, I told him, I said, it's like, you know,
04:23it's like Kansas, carry on your wayward son,
04:25or like you give love a bad name.
04:27But I said that to Ace and he goes, I love Bon Jovi.
04:30That's perfect.
04:31Yeah.
04:31It was killer.
04:31And it was unique because we also wanted to make each song have its own
04:35unique thing.
04:36And like the song Constantly Cute, which is unique because we have Ace's
04:41fiancee, Lara, who sings background vocals.
04:43Singing background, right?
04:44And I'll tell you the story behind the title.
04:46Lara's talking to me.
04:47We were looking at photographs of me from the 70s to now.
04:52And, you know, I was saying, you know, I'm starting to look a little old,
04:56you know.
04:57I don't know if it's time for another facelift or what.
04:59She goes, forget about it.
05:01She goes, you're constantly cute.
05:03And then she starts, she continues to talk.
05:05I go, oh, Constantly Cute.
05:08That is a song title.
05:09And there you go.
05:10I call up Steve.
05:11I go, we got to write a song Constantly Cute.
05:13That's awesome.
05:14One day.
05:15Yeah, that's right.
05:16I love, and watching the two of you together, you know,
05:20and this is what I love the most.
05:22It's not just what came out of the record,
05:24but it's how excited you are and how excited you are.
05:28I mean, that's what music is all about.
05:29It's that passion of putting out great music.
05:34Again, Tara, this is, at 72 years old, this is a guy who has kind of been reborn musically on this record.
05:42This is his most successful record, Monarch, the label Monarch Heavy, who's putting it out.
05:47They've told me and Ace, you know, we're already at millions of streams, the views on the video.
05:52To be able to have this kind of success, it's rejuvenated him.
05:55And much like, if you listen to the new Rolling Stones record, those guys are 80 years old,
06:00and they made the best record that they've made in 40 years.
06:02I love that record.
06:03Hackney, Diamonds, Dynamite.
06:05Dynamite, Dynamite.
06:06And I, you know, put that up.
06:08Age is irrelevant here.
06:09I picked the right line of work, because I can do this until I'm 80.
06:13You can do this forever, Ace.
06:16I just had a physical from my doctor.
06:19This is a funny story.
06:20And he starts laughing in the office.
06:22He's going over my blood work.
06:24He goes, Ace, for the last three years, your blood work has gotten progressively better.
06:29You're the only patient I have that's aging in reverse.
06:33Yes!
06:33We need that!
06:34It's because he's electrified.
06:36He's full of 10,000 volts all the time.
06:39All right, I'm going to play.
06:40We got to do a little New York groove.
06:42Then I'm going to come back.
06:43I want to talk about the Carteret Pack show.
06:44Don't let me forget, because I want everybody to get their tickets.
06:48Ed's out.
06:48We're hanging out with Ace.
06:50It's a great way to spend a Wednesday.
06:53We're going to get him back here every Wednesday.