Ten Essential Ace Frehley Songs
This is week 3 of KISS Month, with guitar player extraordinaire Ace Frehley getting the spotlight. This is covering Ace's contributions to KISS and also his own solo releases with Frehley's Comet.
This is a last minute addition since I had Ace songs on random and this one caught me by surprise. The cool thing about the Comet albums is that Ace really isn't the best lyricist and singer, so it was nice to have songs where he could fall back into his role of lead guitarist, too. I think that's where his latest album suffered. Anyway, rant over.
9. "Breakout" (Frehley's Comet)
This was a song written by Ace and Eric Carr that predates Frehley's Comet, and would later be used as an instrumental on KISS' Revenge as a tribute to Eric. Tod Howarth, Ace's guitarist and occasional vocalist, takes lead vocals on this track.
8. "Into The Night" (Frehley's Comet)
"Into The Night" was originally "In The Night", written and performed by Russ Ballard. I became familiar with it through an episode of Miami Vice when Crockett and his family are about to be the target of an assasin, while Tubbs is racing across town at top speed to stop the killer. Oh, the days before cellular phones. Not sure why the Ace version changes the title slightly.
The opening track on Ace's 1978 solo album is arguably its best. The solo section is killer, starting with a dizzying drum solo from Anton Fig, then morphing into furious playing from the "Space Ace."
6. "Save Your Love" (Dynasty)
I think Dynasty gets a lot of unfair criticism for being a "disco" album. Sure, the single "I Was Made For Lovin You" may have been disco-inspired, but I think it's just a good venture into pop music for the band. The rest of the album tracks are not "disco" songs, and if they alienated any fans at the time, I have a theory. Dynasty was the first studio album as a band following their split into solo records, and now with four members contributing equally, I think they were still in the mind-set of their solo albums when writing for this album. They just sound like a collection of songs assembled together.
Psycho Circus is probably my least favorite KISS album. While Gene may have been "absent" for a few of those late 80's albums, he at least contributed his own material along with Paul's, with some input from members like Eric Carr and Bruce Kulick. With Psycho Circus, I think the amount of writers increased but the amount of band members that actually played on it decreased. I even think there's probably a correlation with you could make with their album quality, starting with Unmasked.
4. "Trouble Walkin'" (Trouble Walkin')
Seems like Ace's weakness is lyrics and I thought this song was pretty damn good for an Ace tune. Then wikipedia told me that he didn't write it, he just played and sang. Oh well. It's still just as killer.
3. "2000 Man" (Dynasty)
When I started these "top ten" lists, my number one rule was that I wasn't going to include cover songs. These should be the best material from a given artist that is their own, even if their number one hit was a single, it still needs to be done as a tribute to their own material. Well, now that I've altered it to "essential" songs as a 'catch all', I guess I'll allow covers. And I think in Ace's case, there might be more covers than his own material. Ooops.
Another cover song, but this one has become synonymous with Ace, so much that it might as well be his own song. He performed it with KISS after it appeared on Dynasty until he left the band in the early 1980's, and then it returned to setlists occasionally in the 90's.
1. "Rock Soldiers" (Frehley's Comet)
An autobiographical song about Ace behind the wheel, written as a warning about the dangers of drinking and driving, but it also works as a great rock n roll anthem with lines like, "some hear the drum, and some never know." You can almost march to it.
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