“I owe not just an artistic debt to him, but a life debt to him”: Tom Morello on the genius of Ace Frehley
Tom Morello has paid tribute to Ace Frehley, describing the late Kiss guitarist as not just a musical inspiration but someone to whom he owes a “life debt”.
Speaking on a recent episode of SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, Morello reflects on his first encounter with Kiss and his lifelong admiration for the band’s original guitarist, who passed away last week at the age of 74.
READ MORE: Ace Frehley 1951-2025: Guitar community mourns the death of Kiss’s trailblazing founding guitarist
“[Ace] was my first guitar hero. Kiss was the band that made me love rock and roll, and he was the lead guitar player of that band,” says the Rage Against The Machine guitarist [via Blabbermouth].
“I mean, without him, I don’t know whether I would’ve ever wanted to play guitar. It was totally formative. Kiss was the supernova that made me light up and think, ‘Oh, this is something I might wanna do for the rest of my life.’ And the lead guitarist of that band, a crucial part of that band, an indispensable part of that band’s original chemistry, was Ace Frehley.”
“So I owe not just an artistic debt to him, but just a life debt to him. Every riff that has ever come, every guitar solo that’s ever been a part of my life has its origins, the DNA imprint of Ace Frehley.”
Placing Frehley in the context of transformative acts, Morello continues: “In the same way that acts like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, they captured the imagination of generations and made people think, ‘There might be room for me to do that too,’ Kiss was that for us. And Ace was the coolest axe-slinging, Les Paul smoke-belching guitar hero for all of us.”
Morello also points out the enduring appeal of Frehley’s playing style, noting, in particular, how the guitarist prioritises melody and fun over technical perfection.
“And time has told the story that that really mattered,” says Morello. “I listened yesterday, after the news [of Ace’s death came], to Kiss’s Alive! beginning to end. I hadn’t listened to that record beginning to end for a long time. And maybe my kind of impression, off the cuff, is Kiss songs are these kind of hard rock songs with a pop element to ‘em.”
“It’s a band that has progressive elements. It’s a band that has huge [Black] Sabbath-like riffs in it. It’s a band where [Ace’s] guitar solos are these kind of journeys within the song – super hooky, super catchy. He’s got that kind of gun-slinging free way of playing that sometimes is beautifully messy. And I just was really kind of overwhelmed with it reminded me of what originally lit my fire and made me love the band and made me love him as a guitar player.”
Kiss were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, with Tom Morello delivering the induction speech. In his speech, the musician called Kiss his “favourite band” growing up and shared how it was “not easy being a Kiss fan” given the band’s relationship with critics.
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