“When the stuff started to take hold, it was Jekyll and Hyde”: Gene Simmons regrets not staging an intervention for Ace Frehley
From his infamous struggle with addiction, to repeatedly quitting and rejoining Kiss, the late Ace Frehley lived a pretty chaotic life. However, his ex-bandmates are no longer holding that against him; in a recent interview, Kiss bassist Gene Simmons admits that he wishes he’d done more to help Frehley while he was still alive.
Speaking on the Inside Of You With Michael Rosenbaum podcast, Simmons recalls how the state of Frehley’s personal life was “up and down for 50 years”. However, Simmons admits he could have done more to support Frehley through his alcohol and drug dependency. “I should have, when [I first saw] the disease starting to get a hold of him,” he says [via Blabbermouth]. “I should have, decades ago, took him aside.”
READ MORE: Ace Frehley’s wild Kiss moments: “A smoke bomb ignited too early inside the cavity of the guitar, and it melted my asbestos costume to my thigh”
While Frehley ended up beating his addictions, being clean and sober for around 20 years before his passing, Simmons still regrets not stepping in to help his bandmate. He admits that an intervention would have been the best port of call, rather than the animosity and anger.
“[I should have] forced him to understand he’s not just hurting himself by his lifestyle choices, but his family, his child and the fans,” the bassist continues, before noting that it was a “stupid and shameful decision” to hide Frehley’s genuine addiction struggles for years.
“Right now the fans who are gonna listen to this are gonna [say], ‘Prick Gene, he never says anything [positive]’… But the kids at home don’t understand [what it was like],” Simmons reflects. “They never met and spent time with Ace. When he’s straight – lovable, everything’s great. When the stuff started to take hold, it was Jekyll and Hyde. You just can’t make smart decisions when you’re drunk or high.”
When Frehley left the band in 1973 and 2002, Simmons would often be met with outrage when trying to explain Frehley’s unreliable nature: “[It’s like] when mum suddenly kicks dad out of the house, and she tries to explain ‘He was a drunk, he was a loser, he was late…’ The fans are the kids, they don’t understand.”
“Ace turned to beverages and chemicals early on, and he wouldn’t show up to do this guitar parts…” he goes on to explain. “The fans don’t like to hear this because he was so talented. Everybody, all the new guitar players, were influenced by him.
The decision to downplay Frehley’s struggles was often due to the band not wanting to worry fans. “[We thought] ‘No, don’t get the fans upset, let’s [pretend] he’s in the band and everything’s okay at home,’” Simmons recalls.
However, despite the addictions Frehley was battling, Simmons insists he was in his own league of guitar playing. “You look at his body of work, and guitar players [like] Eddie Van Halen point to Ace…” he says. “They say, ‘I cut my teeth on guitar by listening to Ace.’”
True to Simmons’ words, countless guitar icons came forward last October to pay tribute to Frehley. Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello named Frehley his “first guitar hero”, while Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt also praised Frehley’s influence in Kiss, naming them the “first rock band [he] wanted to be like”.
View this post on Instagram
The post “When the stuff started to take hold, it was Jekyll and Hyde”: Gene Simmons regrets not staging an intervention for Ace Frehley appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
