Simon and Schuster 'Makeup to Breakup: My Activity In and Out of KISS' by Peter Criss Rock & cycle balance has consistently been a rather ample allotment of the Kiss package, but never afore accept we heard the data absolutely to this extent. These absolute excerpts from Peter Criss' adventures activate with the bagman advance the butt of a .357 Magnum down his own throat in the after-effects of the adverse Northridge earthquake. Later, he recalls partying with John Belushi ("a huge KISS fan") and aperture in Paris for Jerry Lewis, who joked of his absurd openers, "That's got to be the affliction or the best affair I've anytime seen."
Have you anytime tasted the butt of a .357 Magnum that's centermost down your throat? It's a absolutely acclaimed sensation, like a section of adamant biconcave in oil, with array of a coppery aftertaste. I got my aboriginal and (hopefully) endure aftertaste of one on January 17, 1994, sitting on the attic of my debris-strewn bedchamber in Los Angeles.
Just twelve hours beforehand I had been lying in bed, watching TV. It was about three A.M. and I was adequate beneath the covers if I feel a little tremor. I'd been through absolutely a few "shakers" in California. Chandeliers rattling, cartage lights swaying. But this was different. The tremors started accepting added accepted and I started to apprehend a cavernous noise, so I sat up in the bed and all of a abrupt the accomplished abode befuddled big-time and the TV flew off the dresser, confused down, and blew up. I was like, "Motherfucker!" Afresh the lamps fell over and I was like, "Holy shit!" Angry out this was the alpha of the Northridge earthquake, a massive accident that asleep thirty-three humans and afflicted added than eighty-seven hundred.
I'm a Brooklyn boy: I knew about cockroaches and rats and zip guns, not earthquakes. So I started to panic. I heard canteen ballyhoo in the bathroom. I was audition all this devastation, and just afresh addition big draft came, and my bed burst and the huge lath armoire started dancing beyond the bedchamber and afresh angled over. Abaft the armoire, on a nail, I had afraid a bag that was abounding with $100,000 cash. That was all the money I had to my name. I wasn't traveling to put it in a coffer – didn't assurance them – and I was in agitation with the IRS then, so I ample I'd accumulate the banknote adjacent and if anyone was traveling to rob it, that's a big section of motherfucking bits to move. But now the huge armoire was lying on the attic and the bag was blind from the nail, exposed.
My abhorrence of afterlife set in. Lamps were aerial through the air. I got up and ran into the active allowance and I saw all my KISS gold albums falling off the walls and shattering. I aswell had a abounding chiffonier of Steuben bright that I had managed to pry from my ex-wife's hands, and all that adored bright bankrupt up. All of a sudden, the couch flew through the air, the armchair went over, and I got befuddled into the bath wall. I was thinking, "Jesus, I'm traveling to fucking die in some shithole accommodation in Hollywood. I just don't accept you're traveling to yield me this way."
So I activate my .357 Magnum, tucked it beneath the waistband of my sweatpants, threw my bathrobe on, pulled on some sneakers, affective my bag with the cash, and ran. I knew abundant not to yield the elevator, so I rushed down the steps. It was still aphotic out and humans were screaming, active bisected naked out of their apartments into the street. Outside, it looked like a war zone. Cars were overturned; a baptize hydrant had destroyed up and there was baptize blubbering out into the street. Humans were active about agreeable that it was the end of the world. Then, like in a movie, I heard a cavernous complete and I saw the tar abstracted and the artery able open. Everybody was panicking, but al of a abrupt I got abnormally calm. I was scared, but already I had my basement and my money and my gun, I knew no one was traveling to yield them from me.
I just kept walking about in circles; I didn't apperceive area to go. By afresh the sun was advancing up and there was an aftershock and everybody screamed again. I had circled aback to the foreground of my building, area hundreds of humans had congregated. All the windows of the health-food abundance on the arena attic had shattered, and the aliment was all over the ground. Our underground barn had burst and lots of cars got totaled.
By backward afternoon, they let us aback into the building. I absolved into my accommodation and I couldn't accept it. Aggregate I had of bulk was leveled. I had no bed. The rod in the applicant closet had burst and my clothes were on the floor. The refrigerator had agitated over and all the aliment was traveling rancid. The kitchen cabinets bankrupt accessible and there was amoroso everywhere. In the active room, all my annal were burst on the floor. The top of my People's Choice Award, which I had won for "Beth," had torn off. My daughter's pictures had collapsed off the bank and burst into a actor pieces. Aggregate that I acclimated to attending at and adore was destroyed.
Just accepting the Catman; On the Charles Bridge in Prague, aboriginal ‘90s. (Photo: Courtesy of Gigi and Peter Criss; Courtesy of Amy Cantrell)
I didn't accept electricity yet, so I lit a few candles. I was filthy, covered with the clay and crud of the streets, but I couldn't battery because the accomplished battery had collapsed apart. Even if it hadn't, there was no water. I couldn't even run the bore and ablution my hands. I absolved aback into the bedchamber and sat down on the mattress on the floor. I had to besom abroad the clay from my flowerpots, which had all broken. It was aphotic and a huge beachcomber of abasement formed over me and I about threw up. I acquainted like there was a hot poker plunged into the pit of my stomach. I anticipation I was demography a stroke. I couldn't even breathe right: The air acquainted attenuate from the dust and the clay in the accommodation and the adulteration food. The accomplished allowance stank from death.
I anticipation to myself, Why should I accumulate going? I was in the average of recording a new album, but fucking whoop-de-do; I was on TNT, a antic label. Afresh I started talking to myself, like in that Peggy Lee song "Is That All There Is": "What do you absolutely accept to reside for? Your two marriages accept gone to shit. You hardly see your daughter. You got a hundred grand, but you were annual twelve-some-odd actor at one point in your life. If this had happened if you were in KISS, your administrator Bill Aucoin would accept been there with fifty cop cars, twenty ambulances, and a helicopter. If you're on top and you're authoritative anybody rich, they all adulation you, babe. Activity is wonderful. But now you're absolutely just a has-been. No one cares about you, abnormally in Hollywood."
I looked about the room. I already had money to burn. I'd fly to Barbados for the weekend. I lived in a twenty-two-room abode and had my aces of four affluence cars. And now I was sitting on the attic in the average of the bits of my above astral life. It was afresh that I accomplished that I didn't ambition to live. Activity had been just a fucking nightmare, annihilation but ups and downs and drugs and fighting, and I was ailing of it all.
So I pulled out the .357 Magnum and put it in my mouth. The butt is about six inches long, and I calmly put three inches in. The gun is an inch in diameter, so I began to gag a little. If I formed the gun aback with my feel on the trigger, I started shaking. I knew if I slipped, it was all over. I aswell knew that I had beeline flat-head bullets in the gun, so if I pulled the trigger, my accuracy would wind up about beyond the street. I was a advantageous bastard: I had cheated afterlife a few times, but that wasn't traveling to appear with a .357 Magnum in my mouth. That gun would in actuality yield a man's arch off. If you attempt an albatross in the head, it would go down. That's why Clint Eastwood admired it. It's the a lot of able blaster in the world.
They say that in situations like this, your apperception just starts racing, and you see your accomplished activity afore you. But for me, aggregate seemed to be in apathetic motion. I had cried wolf abounding times in my life, abnormally with KISS. I was accepted for abandonment the bandage a actor times. But this was different. This was far from a bluff, because there was cipher there that I was bluffing. Just me and the rubble.
Then I anticipation about my mother. There's not a day that goes by that I don't absolve myself with angelic baptize and afresh get in my car and rub the badge of the Virgin Mary that she gave me and say a Hail Mary for my mother. And afresh I kiss her Mass calendar that's appropriate there on the dashboard.
My mother had died three years earlier, on New Year's Day, 1991, and I still hadn't gotten over it. I had been actual abutting to my mother; we had a actual strange, abysmal relationship. We were added than mother and son: She was my abutting friend. I was still aching and afflicted her. I had been anxious my accomplished activity about absolution her down. I consistently accomplished how harder she had formed for me to be something, how abundant it meant to her that I became something. And if I asleep myself, how could I anytime accommodated her afresh in heaven?
And what about my father? He was still alive; he'd be devastated. And I anticipation of the KISS fans, the greatest admirers in the world. And afresh my eyes wandered a bit and I looked over at the collapsed armoire, and next to it was a annual of my daughter. It was my admired annual of her: Jenilee was about ten if it was taken, and she looked like a saint. And, miraculously, the canteen wasn't cracked, it wasn't torn – the anatomy was continuing up defiantly in the bosom of all the rubble. That's if it just clicked. I had been traveling through some absolute bullshit, but no bulk what, I still had my kid, man.
Suddenly there was an immense activity of acceptance in that room. I began to accept that God didn't ambition to yield me in the bosom of this massive aberration – that he had added in abundance for me. But the abasement was so aphotic and so abysmal and the affliction so acute; I was in the average of a tug of war, about like a action for my soul. I could feel the force of the ability I had captivation aback the activate with the gun in my mouth. I had the ability of activity and death, appropriate there and then. And I was in abounding ascendancy of me dying or living. It was very, actual heavy.
But how could I do this to my little angel in the picture? So I pulled the butt of the gun out of my mouth, put it aback in its holster, and afresh bound it aback up. And I bound to go and ability the anthology and yield my adolescent bandage on the alley and see what the approaching would bring. I animated myself up and took my pillows and fabricated a bed out of the mattress on the attic and slept appropriate through the night. And afresh I woke up the next morning and got on with my life.
Seated on the best bench in the world. (Photo: Courtesy of Gigi and Peter Criss)
CHAPTER NINE
We were in one of the studios at the Almanac Plant in New York, arguing over something stupid, as we generally did, if out of boilerplate Bob Ezrin, our producer, came active into the room. He was acid a T-shirt that apprehend TIME IS MONEY and he had a crazed attending in his eyes. Plus he was accustomed a metal blaze extinguisher.
"You cocksuckers are traveling to apprentice what this means," he said, apropos to the byword on his shirt. "You are not traveling to decay the fucking time that we're paying for arguing over what you're traveling to eat or if you're traveling to get some bobcat or whatever the fuck your problems are, because you can't even tune your own instruments. I'm traveling to appearance you the bulk of time."
He proceeded to alpha spraying the capacity of that blaze extinguisher all over the collapsed floor, all over the wall, all over our instruments, all over our amps, even all over us. We were abashed and ran out of the collapsed and into the animate allowance as we watched him berserk aerosol down the room. Afresh he marched aback into the animate allowance and sat abaft the big board, which had his name engraved on a metal bowl that was absorbed to it. He was that able a producer.
"Now who's crumbling money and time?" he asked.
Ezrin seemed out of his mind. Maybe the huge bank of cocaine accumulated up like a babyish abundance on the lath had something to do with this outburst.
"How continued is it traveling to yield us to get aback into the studio?" Gene asked.
"I don't absolutely care," Ezrin answered.
That was the aboriginal day of alive with the Boy Wonder, Bob Ezrin. And it wasn't even the affliction one.
Coming off our advance Alive album, we assuredly absitively to accept to the humans who kept cogent us that our music should be added sophisticated, added like the Who and Led Zeppelin. I consistently anticipation that our backbone was in our bite and balls-to-the-wall energy. KISS was consistently a abundant three-chord jerk-off band, the best three-chord bandage in history. I could accept the admiration for change: I was accepting appealing apathetic arena the aforementioned boom-ba boom-boom-ba, boom-ba boom-boom-ba exhausted song afterwards song. But as Gene admired to say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Yet now we were about to fix it afterwards we had accomplished our aboriginal above success.
We were all aflame about alive with Bob Ezrin, though. He had produced all the archetypal Alice Cooper albums and had done a groundbreaking almanac with Lou Reed. He was, from all accounts, a agreeable genius. He was aswell a above coke aficionado at the time. I had never apparent that abundant coke in one place. I'm not talking about grams – it was added like accoutrements abounding of draft that would be laid out in pyramids on the bond board.
It was absorbing that Gene and Paul didn't say a chat about Bob's biologic problem. They were both majorly antidrug, and if Ace or I would get fucked up on drugs, all hell would breach loose. In Gene's memoir, he claims that if he saw all that coke on the console, he anticipation it was Sweet'N Low and put it in his coffee, but he didn't alcohol it. He accept to accept anticipation the razor brand was a stirrer and the mirror was to adore himself in.
Paul anon had his adenoids up Ezrin's ass, and afore we knew it Bob was at Paul's abode autograph songs with him. The songs themselves were in actuality absolutely great, songs like "God of Thunder" and "Flaming Youth." What I didn't like was that they'd appear into the collapsed and acquaint me how to play the song. It wasn't a advancement and it wasn't a collaboration, it was "This is the way you do it." Of advance I rebelled. Afresh Ezrin would cascade out a bank of coke and use it to accolade me for accomplishing it his way.
So if the coke was to be our accepted ground, I capital to get up on his akin and do the aforementioned bulk as he did, but it was impossible. Ezrin had a adenoids like an aardvark and I could never accumulate up no bulk how harder I tried.
Ezrin absolutely took us all to school. One time he was alert to us play and absolved into the collapsed from the animate room.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he screamed at Gene.
"I'm playing," Gene said.
"You're not even in fucking tune. Don't you apperceive how to tune your guitar?"
He proceeded to appearance Gene how to altogether tune the bass. Gene was a large, alarming man, but I saw Bob burrow him out and carve him a new asshole. And Gene just took it.
Bob did the aforementioned affair with me. I was aggravating to play a song and Bob blew up.
"You can't play this beat?" he screamed. "Give me the fucking sticks." He sat down abaft my drums and played the exhausted and already he showed me and I accepted the approach of it, it wasn't hard. But he had to accomplish me attending like a jerk to advise it to me.
We all abstruse an astronomic bulk from him. It was like accepting in a agreeable summer camp. He brought a blackboard in and he wore a little cap and he had a blare about his close that he would draft if we fucked up.
"All right, campers, put your instruments down, we're traveling to school." And he'd address on the blackboard and advise us the fundamentals of music theory. All while he was burst out of his alembic on coke.
Working with Ezrin was the hardest acquaintance of my life. For me, music is all about affect and attitude. If you aces up those sticks, you accept to feel it or abroad you're just exhausted and tocking – you're a automated clock. A lot of of the greats didn't play by the book, they played from the heart. But this was different. Ezrin in actuality wrote out every bang allotment for me and came up with some actual intricate boot that wasn't even in my agreeable style. I was a axiological Charlie Watts, Motown blazon of guy. Ezrin accepted complexity, so I got balked actual fast that I wasn't giving Bob what he wanted.
Plus I was acid my own throat amusement Bob's blow. I assumption I could accept just said, "Bob, I don't ambition to do no blow. I'm fucking up here." But I anticipation I could do the draft and cut it on the drums. I couldn't. My timing was all over the place. Afterwards Bob shoved a agglomeration of draft up his nose, it apparently articulate even worse than it in actuality was.
So Bob chic up a click-track box for me that he alleged the Cat Box. He captivated it with argent brownish bandage and drew my face with my architecture on it, and he'd yield a drumstick and hit the box to accumulate me on the beat. I'd apprehend his bang box through my headphones while I was recording. I'd be arena forth with it, but all of the abrupt I'd apprehend an added exhausted and I'd get befuddled off and I'd stop the recording.
"Wait a minute. You just switched up the beat," I'd say. "There's something amiss with that box."
"Nah, there's annihilation amiss with the box," I'd apprehend him say from the animate room. There wasn't. He was just fucking with me, arena apperception games. As if this wasn't harder abundant to do on its own. I started to absolutely abhorrence Bob at that point. But, as with a lot of of the accepting that Bob did, he had a hidden agenda. Afterwards a while, Ezrin accomplished that I had a activate temper, and he began to advance me just far abundant so I would activate to yield out my acrimony on the drums. I would see him bedlam absurdly and I would hit those drums harder than I anytime hit them in my life. I just envisioned Ezrin's face on those drums and I hit them so harder it articulate awful and evil, which was what he was traveling for all the time.
It was excruciatingly painful, but the aftereffect was genius. You accept to those songs on Destroyer and you go, "Holy fuck, those drums are amazing." But to get there, I went through hell and so did anybody else. Like Gene acclimated to say, "If Peter isn't accepting a acceptable day, nobody's accepting a acceptable day."
As aching as these sessions were for me, they were doubly harder on Ace. Ace didn't acknowledge able-bodied to Bob's boxy love. Already you get the drums down and add the bass and the emphasis guitar, it's up to the advance guitarist to complete the picture. And afresh you're up there naked, you're on your own. Ace, like me, admired to play by feel. Ace's brother was a classically accomplished guitarist, but Ace hated his advised playing. Ace admired spontaneity, but Ezrin had added affairs for him.
I didn't get to attestant Ace's arguments with Ezrin because the minute my bang advance were done, I was out of there. Why would I ambition to breach about to accept to Ace accepting reamed out for the next 5 hours if I could go home and accept fun or go to a club?
Ace was bubbler and partying with his accompany a lot, and he started missing sessions. One time he in actuality told Ezrin that he couldn't almanac because he had a antecedent assurance to play cards with his pals. Ezrin didn't yield too attentive to that and alleged one of his own ace affair guys, Dick Wagner, who came in, nailed the songs, and left. The able pro. Wagner never got the credit, but it's him arena on songs like "Beth" and "Sweet Pain." Ace was bent he had been replaced and acquainted that Gene and Paul were traitors.
When Ezrin started alive with us, one of his criticisms was that all of our songs were about sex. He acquainted that to get to the next level, we had to aggrandize our palette a little bit and try to ability a broader admirers than the fifteen-year-old boys who were our fan base. Ezrin activate that car in a song I had accounting with Stan Penridge.
Back in the Chelsea days, Stan and I had accounting a antic song to assault our bandmate Mike Brand's wife, Becky. She would consistently alarm him during rehearsals apprehensive if he was advancing home. So the song originally went, "Beck, I apprehend you callin', but I can't appear home appropriate now / Me and the boys are playin', and we just can't acquisition the sound." So we were animadversion this guy's wife: Shut the fuck up, abdicate calling.
I capital to get a song on Destroyer, so one day Gene and I were in a limo and I started singing "Beck" to him. I knew that both he and Paul would never go for a ballad, so I sang him a faster adaptation of the song and he seemed to dig it and appropriate I play it for Ezrin. But if I sat down with Ezrin, he anon accepted it for what it was.
"This is a ballad. I apprehend it on the babyish grand. This is traveling to be a hit record," Bob enthused. "I'm traveling to get the New York Philharmonic to play on this."
"Yeah, right. In my fucking dreams," I said.
Ezrin just smiled.
"This little song says so abundant in so few words. 'I ambition I was home, but I can't be,'" Bob said. "Everyone will chronicle to that – businessmen, doctors. It's a accepted theme."
He capital to accomplish one agreeable change, though. He anticipation we should change the name from Beck to Beth. I was accomplished with that. Ezrin's man Dick Wagner, who played acoustic on the clue because Ace was out in amplitude somewhere, admired the song, too, and anon anticipation it could be a hit.
But Gene and Paul kept afraid it. They didn't ambition a carol on the record. That's if Bill stepped in. He had heard the basal track, and he anticipation "Beth" was a hit. So if Ezrin assassin the New York Philharmonic and we went down to almanac the session, Bill appropriate that anybody in the orchestra should abrasion those afflicted cape T-shirts and that I should go down in abounding architecture and yield photos with the orchestra.
"I apperceive you've been traveling through hell with them over your song, but I adulation it to death," Bill told me. "So let me accomplish you feel good."
Bob was in abounding cape and a top hat and played the babyish admirable piano. We accept to accept had added than twenty-five pieces in the orchestra. And if they accomplished the track, I was arrant my eyes out, it was so beautiful. And the orchestra was exhausted their bows and Bob stood up and alleged me up to yield a bow as the writer. If I was accedence to the room, I never acquainted so appreciative in my life.
With the clue completed, we afresh had to go in and almanac the vocal. I went into the collapsed and Bob bargain the lights to get me in the mood. Just then, in absolved Gene and Paul, and they sat down on the couch in foreground of the board. I was shitting a brick, all abandoned in there, about to sing KISS's aboriginal ballad. Meanwhile, those two fuckfaces were sitting in the berth stone-faced like they were at the zoo watching an beastly through the glass.
"Okay, yield one," Ezrin said.
All of a sudden, my legs began shaking. I was so afraid I anticipation that my articulation was cavernous if I began to sing. I looked and saw that Gene and Paul were animated because I was absolutely struggling.
"What's the matter, Peter?" Bob said.
"I can't sing like this," I said. "These two cocksuckers are sitting there bedlam – "
"Hey, assholes, get your fucking asses out of the room," Bob screamed at them.
They left, and Bob bankrupt the door. Afresh he sat down abaft the animate again.
"Okay, Peter, let's do this. Sing it for me."
We did a brace of takes and Bob appropriate I go up a little higher. I did, and it was beautiful.
"I adulation it, I fucking adulation it," he said, and alleged me into the animate allowance to accept to the playback. He had the architect accomplish a quick mix, and afresh he alleged Gene and Paul aback into the room.
"Listen to this," he said.
We listened and they had no reaction. No "Wow," no "Hmmm," no "Holy shit," not even a "This stinks." But I was ecstatic. Ezrin had taken Stan and my little song and had angry it into a masterpiece. Now I absolutely accepted why he was advised such a bedrock algid genius.
Not everybody aggregate those sentiments. If Destroyer was aboriginal released, we got a able backfire from our hardcore fans. Afterwards six months, the anthology was asleep in the water. The critics didn't anticipate abundant of it, either. Ezrin had even accustomed a blackmail from a guy who said he was traveling to go up to Toronto and bite him in the adenoids for all the KISS fans.
It was time to absolution addition individual from the anthology to stoke up sales, and I pushed for "Beth." Gene and Paul agreed, but fabricated abiding that it anguish up on the B-side of the single, with "Detroit Bedrock City," one of Paul's songs, featured on the A-side. But Scott Shannon, who was alive in the advance administration of Casablanca (and who would go on to become a acclaimed disc jockey), admired the song and apprenticed a anchorperson in Atlanta to cast the individual over and play "Beth." The acknowledgment was actual and overwhelming. "Beth" became our highest-charting individual ever. It active the album's sales and it won abounding awards, including a People's Choice award. It even got played on easy-listening stations. One day I was approach surfing and "Beth" was arena on three altered stations simultaneously.
I was on billow nine. Not just for the claimed accomplishment, but because my song propelled the anthology aback assimilate the charts. Destroyer was our White Album, the best anthology we anytime did in our lives, and it was nice to see Bob Ezrin get the acclaim he abundantly deserved. He may accept been a acrid taskmaster, but the end aftereffect was added than annual it. If "Beth" hit the charts, Bill Aucoin came over to our brownstone with a big canteen of Dom Pérignon albino and we fabricated a little blaze and broiled our acceptable fortune.
"The irony is that you adored the album, Peter," he said. "But they're traveling to abhorrence you for it."
Even admitting "Beth" had active the album, Gene and Paul didn't ambition me to play it live. If we started alarm for our next tour, Bill told us that we had to put "Beth" in the appearance by accepted demand. Gene and Paul anon said that it wouldn't work.
"We'll accomplish it work," Bill told us. "We accept new admirers who are advancing to see us because of that song." So they assuredly agreed. But if we started aggravating to play it, it was a fucking nightmare. None of them had played on the aboriginal track. Ace had no abstraction how to play an acoustic guitar.
Then Sean and Bill came up with a ablaze idea. We would play a recording of the agreeable clue and I would appear out from abaft my drums to the foreground of the stage, area I'd sit on a bang case and, with a individual spotlight on me, sing the song live.
"Fuck you," I told Sean. "I'm not abrogation my drums."
Frankly, I was abashed by the idea.
"When you get a aftertaste of what that's like to airing out there and sing your song, I'll accept to be boring you off the stage," Sean predicted.
He was right. If we aboriginal apposite it, they put my bang bench out foreground and I sat on it and sang the song. Of course, Gene and Paul went out foreground and fabricated fun of me. But if we assuredly did it reside onstage, the fucking abode came down and I accomplished that I assuredly had an ace in the aperture no bulk what Gene and Paul would try to do to me. I had tears active down my face that aboriginal time we did it. Sean was right. From that night on, I couldn't delay to get out and do that song.
You would anticipate that afterwards all my years of struggling, our newfound success would accept fabricated me feel added adequate and secure. In fact, the adverse angry out to be true. While we were in the collapsed recording Destroyer, I got absolutely depressed. Perhaps it was because I was afire my academician to a brittle with the massive bulk of coke I was doing, or maybe it had something to do with accepting exhausted up on a circadian base by Bob, but I was on the border of a afraid breakdown. I went to management, and Alan Miller recommended a analyst he had apparent alleged Daniel Casriel. He was beat a new blazon of analysis alleged age-old screaming, and I was gung ho to see him because I had heard that John Lennon had aswell undergone age-old therapy.
Casriel had a admirable brownstone on East Fifty-first. We did a appointment and I told him I was miserable. I was consistently on the alley or abroad in the studio. I couldn't adore my life. I didn't even feel like arena then. By the end of that session, we bent that my above affair was that I acquainted that I didn't deserve to be famous.
"Bullshit, you do deserve it," Dr. Casriel told me. "And eventually you're traveling to scream, 'I deserve to be famous' to me."
He had me appear a accumulation affair a few canicule later. There were six humans to a group, and anniversary of us would sit on a mat with Dr. Casriel in the centermost of the circle. Afterwards a few minutes, I accomplished that next to these added people, my problems seemed a little puny. One guy believed that he had a aperture in his head. The woman next to me was one of the a lot of admirable women I had anytime seen, a fifteen on a calibration of one to ten. You couldn't accumulate your eyes off her, but she anticipation she was ugly. There was a pilot who had a botheration with flying.
Each accommodating would get a abandoned mantra from Dr. Casriel. The woman's was "I am gorgeous. I accept aggregate traveling for me." And he would accomplish you echo it over and over again, louder and louder. My mantra was "I do deserve to be famous. I do deserve to be a winner." He had me agreeable that over and over, louder and louder, until it was about like an out-of-body acquaintance or an exorcism. I was rolling about on the ground, tears advancing out of my eyes, screaming, "I do deserve to be famous." And acknowledgment to my singing, I knew how to scream. I could bang canteen with my screaming. So all the added humans were adhering me and abating me and saying, "You do deserve to be famous."
When that affair was over, I acquainted reborn. Afterwards a few added sessions, I had never acquainted added relaxed. The emphasis was gone. No added agitation attacks. I had even bankrupt up and chock-full accomplishing coke and drinking. I acquainted that Peter Criscuola had reemerged and that that absurd Catman had receded into the background.
New Year's Eve 1976 was a acceptable admeasurement of our boundless success. Three years earlier, we had opened for Blue Oyster Cult and played to thirty-five hundred people. Now Blue Oyster Cult was aperture for us and we had awash out the Nassau Coliseum, all thirteen-thousand-plus seats. If we went onstage, we were advised like acquisition heroes. Backstage there were humans who capital to accept their annual taken with me, accept me kiss their babies. It was alarming to accept all these humans affecting me and avaricious at me. One babe pulled my brother and me abreast and pulled up her dress to appearance us a huge KISS logo tattooed on her ass. If I capital to, I could accept gotten blowjobs onstage, offstage, average stage, backstage, beneath the stage. It was wild.
Onstage, we consistently acquainted as if we were searching into some camp mirror. Thousands of humans in the admirers were acid our makeup. We were on the foreground covers of all the big industry magazines – Cashbox, Record World, Billboard.
Ironically, the one affair that absolutely ashamed us was that offstage we would never be accustomed afterwards our architecture on. Bill would consistently address us: "Don't anytime get bent afterwards your makeup. If you're out, abrasion big aphotic glasses that attending mysterious." At aboriginal that was fun, but afterwards a while it began to bother us. I bethink walking into the China Club in New York City-limits one night and cogent the host I was Peter Criss from KISS.
"Yeah, and I'm fucking Mick Jagger," he said, and angry away. I had to yield out my authorization and appearance it to him afore I could get a table. I couldn't accept that we'd ability a huge tour, the apple would go crazy, and afresh we'd go home and airing the streets of New York and no one would admit me.
After Destroyer came out, I slipped and fell aback into accomplishing cocaine again. It would be glib to say that afterwards alive with Gene and Paul, anybody could become a biologic addict. The accuracy was coke was everywhere. The promoters would consistently accept some for you, the radio-station guys would about-face you on. Aback at the office, Bill was accomplishing it. I'd go to Collapsed 54 and I'd sit with Halston and Liza Minnelli and Bianca Jagger and Steve Rubell, and anybody was accomplishing blow.
When we'd be in L.A., Ace and I would get a accommodation allowance from Casablanca beatific to our rooms. It would accommodate a bassinet of fruit, an abundantly acceptable canteen of wine, a brace of grams of coke, and some quaaludes forth with a calendar reading, WELCOME TO L.A. LOVE YOU, NEIL. CASABLANCA RECORDS. We'd go out to Le Dome, and bisected the agents at Casablanca would cull out their little bottles with the beanery on a chain. If you got a job at Casablanca you'd anon get a Mercedes, and every afternoon a guy would go aperture to aperture and yield orders for coke and quaaludes, which were put on your amount account. It was insane. We were too naïve to accept the dangers of coke. We ample that if a ability like Ezrin could do it and still aftermath alarmingly acclaimed platinum albums, what was the downside?
The affair arena in New York was just as crazy. There were abundant clubs like Tracks, JP's, and Ashley's. I would accepted Plato's Retreat a lot because it was a sex club that had agitating orgies. My admired abode was Collapsed 54. Area abroad could a kid from Brooklyn accompany with Warhol and Truman Capote? I would go admiral assimilate the balustrade and angular over with a alcohol in one duke while a ample was sucking my cock. Afterwards I'd go bench and spiral a archetypal in one of the bathrooms.
Even my role archetypal Bill Aucoin wasn't able abundant to abide the temptations of wealth. As we got richer, he got crazier and crazier. He had a admirable pad in Olympic Towers, one of the ritziest barrio in the city. He began to bandy coke-fueled parties area he'd beleaguer himself with conjugal adolescent boys, and his accommodation angry into Dante's Inferno. I bethink abounding nights of partying at Bill's if it would get to be about six in the morning and you'd get that electric activity from accomplishing too abundant blow, and the sun was advancing up and you'd accessible the apparel and see the huge 666 assurance on the adjoining architecture on Fifth Avenue. That was a wake-up alarm appropriate there.
Slowly but surely, I became absorbed to cocaine. I got crazier and crazier. I capitalized on the actuality that I was in the hottest bandage in the apple and I could get abroad with anything. I acted out, in part, because I was alpha to feel so alienated from Gene and Paul that I just didn't ambition to be about them anymore. The joy of authoritative music with them was gone.
There was consistently a lag amid our successes and the fruits of those successes. The money was traveling to appear to us, but it hadn't appear in all-inclusive quantities yet. So I began to accord coke to our crew. I'd cop a division of an ounce from Bob Ezrin's banker and afresh Lydia would cut it with babyish laxative and advertise it as grams. Bill and Sean would account from us. On the road, I was bartering all the roadies and our barter drivers. Gene and Paul never knew this or they would accept gone crazy. But it was harder to miss. The aggregation would in actuality be lined up in foreground of my hotel-room aperture afterwards a show. I answerable them sixty bucks a gram, which was a reasonable price, and that way Lydia and I got to snort coke for free.
But afterwards a brace of months ambidextrous coke, it got too risky. All of a abrupt I was accepting knocks at my hotel-room aperture at 5 in the morning.
"Get the fuck out of here!" I'd scream, and bandy a shoe at the door. I ample that eventually or afterwards I'd get busted.
But just because I chock-full ambidextrous didn't beggarly I chock-full using. I was built-in hyper. I'd been on medication aback I was a kid to accumulate me calm. So brainstorm what I was like on blow. Like all coke addicts, I could never accept enough. I would breach up for canicule on end. One time I backward up for seven beeline days. Eventually I started hallucinating. I anticipation the badge were surrounding our brownstone, so I got my gun and fabricated a barricade by the admiral window. Lydia alleged Sean, and he rushed over with a scattering of ludes. He promised that if I took them he would appear aback afterwards that night with some absolutely acceptable blow, so I downed them and went to sleep.
Around this time I befriended somebody who could snort me beneath the table. John Belushi was one of the bigger ball stars at that time. We met at JP's and hit it off immediately. He was a huge KISS fan. Afterwards we afraid out awhile, John did a absurdity on Saturday Night Live in which he played a backstage bouncer who wouldn't let humans in to see us. John capital me to appear on the appearance to do a cameo, but Bill didn't anticipate it would be such a acceptable abstraction to do it afterwards the band, so it never happened.
I anticipate one of the affidavit John admired blind out with me was because he capital to be a bedrock star. We met appropriate afore he did the Dejection Brothers with Dan Aykroyd. If they performed a reside appearance at Radio City-limits as the Dejection Brothers, John arrive me down. They were so blessed to be up there singing the dejection with absolute players like Duck Dunn. John acquainted he had been a clownlike cliché on Saturday Night Live. Music absolutely batten abundant added to his soul.
One of the aboriginal times we afraid calm was at a Saturday Night Live after-party the anniversary the Stones were on the show. They hosted it at an old bar that John and Dan had bought for their clandestine use. If I got there, we anon went to the bath and did some coke. John's activity was so overwhelming, he absorbed you appropriate into his insanity. Even the way he did draft was special. He had no time for tiny vials or little coke spoons. He agitated a baggie abounding of coke, and he would beat some up in his approach and in actuality boost it up your nose.
We had a abundant time that night. He alien me to Steve Martin, who was an advancing banana then. I accept Steve was aswell active on coke, because he never chock-full talking. But he seemed brilliant, and I just knew he was destined for stardom. The night was abracadabra until some guy started fucking with Keith Richards and Keith drew a derringer on him.
"Keith's a crazy guy," John confided to me, which was adage a lot.
One night I was blind at John's abode in the Village. He had soundproofed a allowance in his pad and he would crank up his stereo and bang the Allman Brothers. We had been partying all night, and the sun was advancing up if he came up with an idea.
"Let's go to Admirable Central Station," he said.
That articulate like a abhorrent idea.
"John, it's traveling to be blitz hour. I'm too active to handle that shit," I said.
He smiled his acclaimed innocent smile. "Trust me, you're gonna like this."
Before we left, he alleged up Aykroyd to acquaint him to accommodated us there. I could apprehend Dan through the phone. He was bustling the affair from The Twilight Zone.
"Witness: Two morons walking through the early-morning streets of Manhattan bedevilled to die," he said in his best Rod Sterling voice. "Now I'm traveling aback to bed."
And he afraid up.
"Fuck him," John said, and we affective a cab to Admirable Central. We went to one of the capital cat-and-mouse rooms, and John instructed me to go over to one bend of the allowance and face the wall. Afresh he marched over to the adverse bend and did the same. By afresh the allowance was abounding with the babble of the morning rush-hour commute.
"Peter, Peter, it's me," I heard a articulation as bright as a alarm advancing from the wall. Somehow John knew that the acoustics at Admirable Central were such that you could acquaint beyond the allowance if you faced the wall. So we were talking and talking. I can abandoned brainstorm what the casual commuters anticipation as they saw John and me both continuing abandoned on either ancillary of the allowance and talking to the wall.
Destroyer was appear in March of 1976. In May we larboard for our aboriginal bout of Europe. We had baffled our homeland, but Europe was a altered matter. We started off in England. Except for the Hammersmith Odeon in London, we played begrimed half-filled shitholes that the Beatles had played advancing up. How air-conditioned was that!
France was a little better. Our promoters gave us a aristocratic welcome, sending hookers over in a Mercedes. They'd aces us up, drive us around, and we'd get serviced in any way we wanted. One night I got so bashed on brandy, I couldn't get it up. She didn't accord a bits – she still got paid.
We had a botheration with the emphasis barrier in Paris. One day we capital to go sightseeing, so Gene asked Susan Meneo, one of the girls who formed at Casablanca, if she could allege French. She said she could, so we all accumulated into a cab. The cabdriver asked us area we capital to go in French. And Susan said, "Can yooo yield uz to zee Champs Eleeezay?" with a abundant French accent. We laughed so harder we about pissed our pants.
We played two shows in Paris at the Olympia Theater aperture for Jerry Lewis, of all people. He was appealing funny if he began his show. "I don't accept what I just saw. That's gotta be the affliction or the best affair I've anytime seen."
Germany was a aberrant place. Everybody there approved to act like Hitler had never existed and there wasn't a Second Apple War. But I rubbed it in their faces one night in Offenbach. We were blockage at an old-style auberge and it was the night of Muhammad Ali's big improvement action against a German guy alleged Richard Dunn. While we were watching the fight, I absitively to try Jägermeister. I was downing it with beer chasers, and that bits will fuck you up. Our roadie Fritz noticed that the Cat had gone crazy. I was aggressive to jump out the window, breach the abode up, whatever. So Fritz and J.R. and Campise absitively to lock me central the huge, admirable aged armoire in my room. They threw me in it and bound the doors.
That gave me flashbacks of accepting bound in the closet in Catholic school. I started agreeable and authoritative glottal noises and banging on the doors. Campise told me afterwards that you could in actuality see both abandon of the armoire apprehension out, the foreground doors abatement off, and the accomplished affair collapse as I bankrupt my way out. Afresh I ripped all my clothes off and jumped out the window. There was a two-foot-wide ledge that ran all the way about the hotel. I started scampering about the ledge to the foreground of the hotel, area there were two huge gargoyles on either ancillary of the capital entrance.
I climbed up on the aback of the one of the gargoyles, blade naked, screaming, "Muhammad Ali! Muhammad Ali rules, you fucking bastards!"
The badge came in two annual flat. They threw a absolute over me and abject me off the barbarian and aback into the auberge room. They told Bill that we'd bigger be out of Germany in the morning, which was accept aback we were appointed to play Sweden the next day. But we had to pay the auberge $10,000 in amercement afore we could leave.
A few canicule afterwards we were in Sweden and it was Ace's about-face to activity up some shit. We were bistro in a restaurant with a different theme. Everybody sat about a big pool, anniversary table would get a remote-controlled boat, and you'd captain your baiter beyond the basin to the chef, who would amount your baiter up with the specialty of the house, shrimp. Afresh you'd cross your loaded baiter aback to your ancillary of the basin and accept your dinner.
Ace and I were anguish down the drinks if Ace al of a abrupt entered the Forget It Zone. Ace angry to me and said, "Peter, I'm fucking Godzilla."
"Yeah?"
"I'm fucking Godzilla and I'm traveling to abort all those boats."
"Go appropriate ahead," I said.
So Ace got up and jumped over the barrier into the pool, absolutely clothed. He started assault his chest and belting out "ARRRRGGGHH!" and afresh he began to bang at the boats as they collection accomplished him. Cipher could accept what they were seeing, and the next affair I knew, boom, I anesthetized out face-first appropriate into my salad. But I'm told that Ace best up a baiter and went "ARRRRGGGHH!," and ate the shrimp, afresh threw the baiter beyond the pool. Afresh he splashed about some more, animadversion the boats around. All the added assemblage were freaking out. Shrimp were amphibian in the pool, the baptize bottomward over the sides. Our accumulation was in hysterics, even Gene and Paul, but anybody abroad was absolutely pissed off. One woman was agreeable that her dress had been ruined.
Of advance we got befuddled out. I was still comatose, so Big John had to aces me up and backpack me out on his back. The next day he came by and said that Ace's Godzilla accepted was the bigger amount of the tour.
But touring wasn't just fun and games. A lot of of the time, touring was banausic and lonely. You spent a lot of of your time just cat-and-mouse for the hour and a bisected you'd be onstage. And afterwards touring ceaseless for so abounding years, my physique was alpha to breach down. I couldn't even lift my accoutrements afterwards a while, so J.R. took me to a bounded doctor to get some shots. He attempt me up with a horse needle. He went appropriate to the cartilage and afresh confused the aggravate about so that the aqueous blood-soaked the cartilage down and the collective could move. Do you apperceive how fucking aching that is? But afterwards I got one, I could ability the show. What I didn't apperceive was that they were cutting me up with cortisone. And if that bits wore off afterwards that night, I would be in acute pain. I was disturbing the ligaments in my accoutrements even added by playing. With the cortisone, I just didn't feel the accident that was accepting done.
When I activate out I was accepting cortisone, I addled out. Meanwhile I was demography coke and every added biologic beneath the sun, but to me cortisone was a no-no. It afflicted me in awe-inspiring ways. My attitude got shittier, I was absolutely miserable, and I was affecting anybody about me. One night the affliction got so bad that if we were active aback from a gig, I couldn't even lift my arms. I was sitting in the aback of the limo with Paul and I angry to him.
"Paul, if you anytime did any appropriate affair in your life, amuse abolish this bout for me. I can't play anymore, I can't even lift my arms, I'm in acute pain. I apperceive I cry wolf, but I'm not fucking about this time."
Then I laid my arch on his accept and I started arrant like a baby.
When we got aback to the hotel, Paul went appropriate to Gene and told him we had to abolish the blow of the tour. They alleged Bill and he canceled the actual dates. For already Paul had done the appropriate thing, and I was absolutely grateful.
