Paul Daniel Frehley (Ace Frehley)
Real Name: Paul Daniel Frehley
AKA: Ace Frehley Birthday: April 27, 1951 Origin: The Bronx, New York, United States Music: Hard Rock
Heavey Metal
Bands: Kiss |
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Ace's background was basically straight off the streets. Born Paul Daniel Frehley on April 27, 1951, in the Bronx, to Carl Danel and Esther Frehley. Karl was the son of Dutch immigrants while Esther was the youngest of seven children of the Hecht family who had emigrated to North Carolina from Germany at the turn of the 19th/20th Century. Ace was almost an accidental musician, even though his parents encouraged music in the household with his father being an excellent classically pianist who had wanted to make music his profession until the depression and family forced him to take other paths in order to make ends meet.
Growing in the Bronx up Ace went to DeWitt Clinton High School until "they ended up kicking me out of the school... They transferred me to Roosevelt on Fordham Road in the Bronx" (Prime Choice, 10/26/98). Of DeWitt Ace only remembered, "I got attacked… by a fag in the locker room" (Eddie Trunk, 12/23/00) which does not say a whole lot about his life experience. Ace has two older siblings, Charley, who is a year older, and Nancy, who is six years older, and was, "was raised on music that his brother and sister were listening to, folk music, including Peter, Paul, and Mary and Simon and Garfunkl. According to Charley, "I learned how to play guitar listening to those people. Mid 60's, by 1965, I was 15 years old, and I was sitting and listening to Paul Simon's stuff and figuring out the songs. The first song I ever figured out for myself was a Peter, Paul and Mary song, one of their old traditional folk songs. And that's how I got my chops, I just started working. I never took lessons. I had played piano and understood something about music, and I just wanted to do it on my own. I just took the music of the day and used it as a basis for teaching myself how to play. And I just grew with it". |
Ace also recalled some of the music in the house, "I grew up in a family with musicians. Everybody in my family played an instrument. My father was a concert pianist. He played the church organ. I was the baby of the family. My brother and sister were both schooled musicians. I never took a lesson. I just had a natural knack for it. Some people don't. It wasn't hard for me to pick up the instrument and after six months, when I was 13, I was playing Beatles' and Stones' songs" (Wolf Marshall's Guitar One, June 1997). Occasionally, Paul Frehley would pick up his brother's acoustic guitar and try to strum a few chords, but beyond that his interest in the technicalities of guitar was limited. Instead, Ace was more fascinated with mechanical things and electronics, which was combined with his interest in science fiction films and stories about UFOs and aliens from other planets… That is until he was 13 years old when had "gone over his friend's house to see the guitar his friend had bought for $25. A Kent guitar with a little amplifier. 'I was amazed', Ace later told Frank Rose in Circus, 'I mean, holy shit, that was unbelievable, what came out of the amplifier-I freaked. He was playing songs like 'Wipe-out' and 'Walk Don't run' and I went nuts'. Asking to try it out himself, Ace fell in love with the idea of having the ability to control sounds coming out of the amplifier by his own control of the electric guitar. Going home, he began to take an occasional lesson from his brother on how to play some chords" (DS - BD). Ace's mechanical interest probably came from his engineer grandfather, but it would start a life time of disassembling things he got. Charley recalls, "he would always get his guitars and take them a part, he would take out the pickups and look at everything, and understand how everything worked, and then he'd put them back together again. Then he'd take day glow paint. He was an artist. He told me in the 80's that he was thinking about publishing some of his computer graphics stuff. But he would always take his guitars, and using day glow paint, he would just paint them. And we'd have black lights and the guitars would glow" (JG, 2/01). Yet there was more to Ace's musical development than that. Charley and Ace learned how to play together since they were so close in age that they could relate to the same things on the same level. Charley recalls this, "We learned how to play guitar together. Right around 1964/5, when the Beatles were just doing everything, just turning music around. Everyone wanted to grow their hair long and play guitar so Paul and I both did that around the same time. It's just my orientation was to learn chords and learn how to strum, and he right away, he didn't want to deal with chords, he just wanted to pick out the notes and turn the volume on the amp all the way up to the top. That's all he wanted to do. Even before he could really play, that's all he wanted to do! We all went through some growing pains, my ears are still a little sore from that! But he learned quick and within a year he was so, without lessons, proficient. It was just amazing. There was this one song we played by this group The Blues Magoos, they had a song, 'We Ain't Got Nothing Yet', and there was this little guitar instrumental part [raising scale], and after one year, self-taught, he nailed that perfectly. He was like 15 years old and he was playing with that kind of dexterity. Just natural talent. And then between Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, and all those guys that became so popular in the late sixties… He was in bands playing all their music and he just developed his chops using them as a baseline and then he just developed his own style. He had great music to learn from and it was just a great time in music when there was a lot of great stuff being produced" (JG, 2/01).
On April 27, 1965, Ace was given an electric guitar by his father, a present for his 14th birthday, which according to Charley may have been the "Zimgar starburst that he had. It had terrible action, it was awful" (JG 2/01). Within a year Ace was playing in bands of some description, some even with his brother, Charley remembers, "we were in a band called the Micro Organism, what can I tell you! That's what it was called. And we didn't gig much, we just actually practiced for a while and then it just kind of fell apart. We were just young kids. I was like 16, Paul was 15. I brought him in to play lead, and a drummer, a friend I knew from my school. It was just kid's stuff" (JG, 2/01). Along with the Beatles, guitarists like Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and later Jimi Hendrix would provide major influences to Ace. Jim McCarty of Mitch Ryder's band would also be one of Ace's guitar idols, and in September 1967 Ace would skip school to see Mitch Ryder with the Who and Cream opening at the New York RKO Radio Theater. Ace paid his early dues, even to the point of being knocked out and having his jaw broken for arguing with a bar owner over payment, in bands like the Exterminators, The Four Roses, King Kong, Honey & The Magic People, and The Muff Divers, many of these early bands had Larry Kelly as lead singer (Larry and and Sue Kelly would get a writing credit on "Rip It Out" on Ace's 1978 solo album). Charley was also a guitarist and would move on into the 1960's folk scene and continue his classical education, eventually releasing a folk CD as a member of The Bridge in March 2000. In his (and Gordon Gebert's) book KISS & Tell, former Ace friend Bob McAdams recalls jamming with Ace with Rob Sabino in the early 1960's. Bob also remembers that like Peter Criss, Ace ran around with neighborhood gang called the Duckie Boys (KISS & Tell, p4). Unfortunately, for the fans Ace seems to have serious memory problems when looking this far back in his career so his early musical history will often seem quite blank or sketchy at best. Most notable of his pre-KISS bands, and one which most KISS fans will have heard of, is Molimo who did some studio work for RCA for an abandoned album. Ace vaguely remembers Molimo as being him, Tom Lewis (Vocals), a female singer, another guitarist, a keyboardist, Barry Dempsey (Bass), and Dave the drummer. In assorted histories of the band it has sometimes been referred to as being "Millemo", or other such variations, but in an interview with Ken Sharp in Goldmine Magazine Ace responded to a question with the band's name used as "Millemo" which initially seemed to be something of an confirmation of the band's name. Later on Charley Frehley would be able to confirm that the band's name was "Molimo" finally putting to rest that chapter of confusion. While the band had scored a producer and were in line for a possible recording deal with RCA the band only managed to record about half an album the material for which Ace had not been involved in writing since he had been the last member to join the band. According to someone who is alleged to have heard the material possible song titles from the album, based of choral structures, include "Singapore Sling", "Face Down (Bourbon St.)", "My Way Or No Way", "Dead and Gone", "Street Coroner", "Don't Knock It, Until You Try It", "Bitter End", and "Soul Searcher". With a sound comparison similar to the difference between Wicked Lester and KISS, Molimo had powerful psychedelic Jefferson Airplane / West Coast rock feel with loose free-flowing song structures and extended soloing with plenty of distortion. Apparently, the main song structure of "Getaway" is very similar to that used in "My Way Or No Way", while the main riff in "Parasite" appears to have originally been used in "Dead and Gone" (NOTE: take all of this Molimo information with a grain of salt, it's not verified and may be completely false). This group would, however, play the Filmore East, before it was closed following an Allman Brothers Band concert on June 27, 1971, and the Village Gate, better known as a jazz joint, on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village (Sharp). Charley Frehley recalls seeing the band play the Gate, "I went to see him at the Village Gate play with Molimo one time and it was a soft sort of band, kind of reminiscent of Spanky & Our Gang, with a female lead singer. That poppy kind of sound. Paul would play lead on some songs, he would play acoustic on other songs. He was always into balls-y heavy metal. Zeppelin was the ultimate. That kind of thing you see with KISS, the punchy strong rock rhythms that he could play his wailing lead guitar to. So Molimo really didn't cut it for him.
It was just something to do until the opportunity came along". One thing is clear is that the "tapes" for this abandonded project are no longer in RCA's vaults, meaning that they are probably in the hands of one of the band members. About his other bands, Ace remembers little except that King Kong were cool, heavy and completely undisciplined. His best club band was Honey & The Magic People who did mostly early heavy metal covers from the likes of Cream and Zeppelin, as did all of his early bands. Whatever was current in the mid to late 1960's, if it was rock, it would have interested Ace and been covered. Ace also had experience with other bands managing to sneak into a Jimi Hendrix gig and setup Mitch Mitchell's drum kit at Jim's last show in New York at Randall's Island in 1970 (possibly July 17, 1970). That year also saw Ace seriously injured in a fight with a bar owner leading to the need for some reconstructive surgery to his face. However, not all was dark because Ace would also meet his future wife, Jenette, that year. |
By late 1972 Ace was looking for new opportunities, but mostly just bumming around, when he came across the KISS ad in the Village Voice. Calling for a guitar player "with flash and ability. Album out shortly", his interest, along with that of many other local guitarists, both professional and not, was piqued. There was only one obstacle. Bob Kulick, the hot favorite of the auditions who had gotten on really well with Paul Stanley. The auditions are remembered differently by those present at the time, indeed memories are clouded. According to Peter Criss, Ace was special, and had walked into the auditions, wearing non-matching shoes, and proceeded to plug in while someone else was auditioning and just start playing along. The person auditioning before Ace was Bob Kulick, who remembers, "that Ace would interrupt my audition by joining in, that he would actually unplug a guitar, is really comical to me. Anybody who knows me knows that I'm from New York. Nobody would ever stand for anybody doing that. Do you think that Gene and Paul would have allowed an audition to take place where somebody who could play was interrupted... pulling out the plug from his guitar, like I would just take that from somebody and say, 'oh sure, dude. Go ahead'. You know it's so silly. Somebody would never get near me like that, they would have been clocked in the head with my guitar! He did play right after me" (DS - BD3). Bob McAdams, who gave Ace a ride to the audition, recalls, "Ace was a little nervous, but he was a cocky bastard - he knew he could play. But you have to remember that at the time, Wicked Lester was just another poor band with no promotion and no record deal. I remember Ace was wearing one orange sneaker and one red one. He was just fucking crazy. They first jammed on some Led Zeppelin material and then they showed Ace some of their original material - "Deuce" and "Firehouse" were the first original songs they played together. I remember Black Diamond sounding awesome the first time they played it" (KISS & Tell, p19). About the audition, in an interview with Roger Lotring, Ace recalled, "When I went to audition for the band - y'know, I saw the ad in the Village Voice - ironically, I got there early and Bruce Kulick's brother, Bob Kulick, was auditioning. I was just kind of sitting in the corner practicing my guitar. Gene came walking over to me - he didn't know me - and he says, 'You think you could put that guitar away? I think you're making the other guy nervous'. I said, 'I didn't mean to offend anybody. I'm just trying to warm up, y'know'? He goes, 'Yeah, but, y'know, your turn'll come'. So, anyway, immediately I sensed this guy - I dunno, I didn't get a good vibe. Basically, after he left, I set up my Marshall amp, and Paul, Peter and Gene, they said, 'Listen, we're gonna play you a song. Listen to it, it's in the key of A'. Or, in reality, A flat, because we tune down a half-step. I heard it, and I loved it! I mean, it was just so driving. And they said, 'This is the place where the solo is'. They played it once and they said, 'plug in and do your stuff'. When it came time for the solo, I just pulled every cool lick I've every played out of my hat and out of my repertoire of solos. They said, 'we'll get back to ya'. Two weeks later, they called me back and I played with them again. They sent me out of the room for a couple minutes. I came back in, they said, 'You're hired'. It's trippy... but I had a feeling it was gonna work out because not only did I enjoy the music and hit it off with the guys, but I was into theatrical rock and was willing to wear makeup and do anything to make it. And everybody in Kiss was when we first started out. When we first started, the New York Dolls were popular on the New York scene, and they were kinda doing glam rock. Alice Cooper was huge. He was on the cover of every magazine. I'll never forget the night me, Paul and Gene went to see Alice Cooper at the Garden, and he was doing the Billion Dollar Babies tour. We were just blown away. But, at the same time, y'know, the gears were turning in our minds going, we could do this, but we could do it better" (Roger Lotring). On January 22, 1973 guitarist Paul "Ace" Frehley was added to the band, the Wicked Lester name was finally dropped, and KISS was born.