This past Thursday (December 10), original KISS guitarist Ace Frehley spoke to Talking Metal Live about the status of his next all-original album. The record will be the follow-up to “Spaceman”, which was released in October 2018 via eOne.
According to Ace, he has spend the last few months building a full-fledged recording studio at his new house in New Jersey. “It’s not the first studio I’ve ever built,” he said (see video below). “If you remember, in the ’70s, when I lived in Connecticut, I spent $800,000 building a studio underground next to my home. But studios are nothing new to me, and I design ’em wherever I go; wherever I live, I always have a place to work. But the new place I’m in now has a 3,000-square-foot basement, so I’ve got plenty of room. So I made a large control room and I just was finishing up the drum room today. And after the New Year, I’m gonna start recording my new album, right in the basement. The beauty of it is because of this virus, everybody’s supposed to stay home,” he continued. “Well, I don’t have a problem staying home now, because I work from my house anyway.”
Asked if he is already writing music for his next solo album or if he is planning to begin the process once the studio has been completed, Ace said: “I’ve been writing all along. Plus, I have tracks that I’ve already recorded that I have to revisit and decide whether they have a chance to make it on my new studio record — [if they] have to be rewritten or [they’re] just good the way they are. And I’ve got people sending me song ideas constantly… So, little by little, it’s an ongoing process, and it evolves as it goes.”
Earlier in the year, Frehley told Canada’s iHeart Radio that he has “only written about three songs” for his next LP, and he added they were “not finished.” He said: “Now that I’m [living] on the East Coast [after moving to New Jersey from Southern California], my engineer only lives an hour from me, Alex Salzman, who worked with me extensively on this last record, and he played a lot of bass guitar as well, So it’s gonna be even easier, ‘Origins Vol. 3’ and the next [original] record.”
Frehley‘s latest release was “Origins Vol. 2”, the sequel to his 2016 collection of cover songs that inspired the former KISS guitarist.
“These albums are becoming fun,” he told iHeart Radio. “I just re-signed with eOne, and they want an ‘Origins Vol. 3’ after the next studio record. But it’s become a really fun process. It’s much easier than doing a studio record where you have to write the material yourself. I’m basically just taking other people’s material that influenced me as a kid and putting my stamp on it.”
“Origins Vol. 2” features cover versions of THE BEATLES‘ “I’m Down”, DEEP PURPLE‘s “Space Truckin'”, LED ZEPPELIN‘s “Good Times Bad Times”, THE ROLLING STONES‘ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, THE KINKS‘ “Lola” and THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE‘s “Manic Depression”, among others. A cover of the 1975 KISS tune “She” also appears as a bonus track. Guests on the set include CHEAP TRICK‘s Robin Zander, Lita Ford and former KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick.
KISS bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons co-wrote two tracks on “Spaceman”, “Without You I’m Nothing” and “Your Wish Is My Command”, the latter of which also features Simmons‘s bass playing.
