Ex-Wife Of PETER CRISS Discusses KISS' Early Years

TheKissArmy.com recently conducted an interview with Lydia Criss — the ex-wife of original KISS drummer Peter Criss — about her forthcoming book, "Sealed with a Kiss". A couple of excerpts from the question-and-answer session follow:

TheKissArmy.com: You were there from the beginning of KISS. Were Peter, Ace, Gene and Paul like brothers at first and then slowly started to pull apart or were there some cracks in the foundation from day one?

Lydia: I thought they were just like every other band that Peter was ever in, except that they were determined to make it. They were close, not like brothers, but you have to be somewhat close to be able to hang out with each other day after day, yet I always felt there was a jealousy between them. Whether it be that Peter was jealous of Paul and Gene because they could easily write songs, or that Paul and Gene were jealous of Peter because he dressed so cool. I think Ace was the only one that didn't give a damn. He was Ace and he was great at being himself. I think the fact that Peter and Ace drank and did drugs, kind of put some cracks in the foundation, since Gene and Paul didn't.

TheKissArmy.com: Why wait this long to do a book when it is the popular thing? Why wasn't it done years ago?

Lydia: Creating a book is not an easy task. I started the manuscript almost nine years ago, at the end of 1997, and finished it May 1, 1999. I then handed it over to my publisher. Unfortunately, he was an independent publisher and went bankrupt, and it took me years to get my stuff back from him. After that, I spent some time looking for a literary agent who then wasted a year trying to get me a book deal. I had no luck, because I was told that Gene had flooded the market with KISS books. By auctioning off my KISS collection, I raised enough money to publish the book myself. I then had the task of finding the right people to work with me, and finally, in October 2005, we started assembling the book.

TheKissArmy.com: Lydia, Peter and you come from Italian/American backgrounds, what was life like in your household as a child, and what did your folks think of KISS?

Lydia: I had a pretty strict Catholic upbringing. We were a close family and most of our relatives lived in the same neighborhood. Peter, on the other hand, had a much more liberal family life, even though Catholic, things were a lot more accepted and tolerated in his family. At first my folks thought KISS was strange, but by the time Peter was in KISS, I had been married to him for almost three years and my family had already gotten used to him.

TheKissArmy.com: Lydia, much has been said about Ace and Peter and their wild days, on a personal level, just how hard was it to deal with Peter and did Gene and Paul give you any support or did have to deal with it alone?

Lydia: Everyone knew that Peter was hard to deal with, but it wasn't all the time. The good definitely outweighed the bad. I think that Gene and Paul felt bad for me at times, but the majority of Peter and Ace's wildness was somewhat expected and laughed at most of the time.

Read the entire interview at www.thekissarmy.com.