In a brand new interview with “Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz”, former KISS guitarist Ace Frehley was asked about the band’s infamous October 1979 appearance on Tom Snyder‘s “The Tomorrow Show” when a visibly irritated Paul Stanley (guitar, vocals) and Gene Simmons (bass) tried to contain the bombastic (and drunk) Frehley, whose nonstop laughter and joking overshadowed the rest of the group. He said (hear audio below): “It’s a funny interview. Obviously, I was slightly inebriated. [Laughs] But I had fun with Tom, and Tom had fun with me. And I pretty much upstaged the rest of the guys in the band, especially Gene, who didn’t seem too thrilled about it. But it was a live show; there was nothing they could do about it. I was really nervous about doing that show, because it was live, and I’d never done live TV before, and I knew it was a popular show and millions of people were gonna be watching. So I drank a little too much and got silly, but it ended up working out for the better.”
Back in 2012, Stanley told LA Weekly that he was less than amused by Frehley‘s antics on “The Tomorrow Show”.
“It wasn’t that big of a fun time because you have to respect your position,” Paul said. “You have to respect your job. You have to respect the people that you’re trying to communicate with. It may seem funny that somebody is drunk… but the fact is that the root of it was, I believe, a contempt and a lack of respect for the audience and the fans. So, sure, can you look at it and chuckle? Yeah. I can, too, but I see deeper. And I look at it and say, what a shame to take this lofty position that somebody gave us and spit in it. Spit in its face. By showing up inebriated or unable to connect a sentence. It may be funny on the surface, but what’s below the surface is a lack of appreciation for a gift that you’ve been given.”
Some of the footage from KISS‘s appearance on “The Tomorrow Show” was later included on the “Kissology – The Ultimate Kiss Collection Vol. 2 1978 – 1991” DVD, which came out in 2007.
In a 2009 interview with KissFAQ, Frehley was asked about his track “The Return Of Space Bear”, which was included on the iTunes version of his “Anomaly” album and which contained some of the dialog from “The Tomorrow Show” appearance.
“The associate producer of ‘Anomaly’, Frank Munoz, and I were throwing out ideas about a concept for this song I had called ‘Skels’, which was essentially a soundtrack song,” he said. “The initial idea was that we were going to use soundbites to tell the story of me being chased in my Porsche by the cops and by flying saucers. There’s actually a demo I have with that concept, but we thought it might go over people’s heads [laughs] — no pun intended. Then Frank suggested that I re-create my ‘one-liners’ from my appearance on the ‘The Tomorrow Show’ in 1979. We watched it on YouTube, laughed our asses off and then I recorded it. Frank does some of Tom‘s parts and, the fans who have heard it love it.”
Ace has just released a new covers album, “Origins Vol. 2”. The sequel to his 2016 album “Origins Vol. 1” features renditions of songs by various artists who influenced and inspired the former KISS axeman.
