KISS Guitarist TOMMY THAYER Speaks

Writer/photographer John Harrell recently conducted an interview with KISS guitarist Tommy Thayer for a cover story in the Japanese magazine Burrn! An excerpt from the chat follows:

Burrn!: Do the fans hassle you about being in Ace's makeup?

Tommy: "The vast majority of the people see KISS up there and a lot of the younger ones don't know if it's Ace or whoever. It's just that is the lead guitarist with that makeup on and then for some of the older fans yeah, some of them aren't comfortable with it and they say that it's not cool or think that fundamentally it's the wrong thing to be doing, that I should have my own makeup or the band shouldn't be wearing makeup at all. Most all fans are very supportive."

Burrn!: Your playing is great and what a lot of our younger readers may not know is that you are the one who actually taught Ace his parts again when the reunion happened back in '95, '96.

Tommy: "Over the years with his solo bands, he seemed to have slowly got off the path of the original classic signature KISS parts, which is fine, but when it came time to do the Reunion tour Paul and Gene wanted the band to sound and be faithful to the original parts that were recorded and played originally, because that's what everybody knows and loves. So they asked me to come in and help Ace and Peter on separate occasions with some of the things that they were doing and help them get back on track with those signature parts."

Burrn!: So you actually helped make the band more authentic again.

Tommy: "I grew up on 'KISS Alive', that album in particular, and obviously Ace was a big influence on me so I tried to learn all of that stuff to begin with when I was a kid, so it's been in my conscience for a long time. When they played on 'The Midnight Special' on television at 11:30 at night before we had video recorders, I had my little cassette recorder up against the TV so I could hear the audio over and over. It was exciting just to listen back to the audio in those days so I studied that stuff just because I loved it. So when they started playing together again it un-jarred me because I said that you've got to play the classic parts, this is really important! I'm not taking credit for everything, but I did push for the signature stuff."

Burrn!: Was there ever a time when they were together onstage that you were backstage playing Ace's classic parts out of sight while he was onstage?

Tommy: "No.

Burrn!: Wasn't Ace late a couple of times to shows and you------

Tommy: "On the Farewell Tour in 2000, we had just had a week off and the first show back was at Irvine Meadows here in Southern Cal. Ace was back in New York at home and he was supposed to come out the day before because we had a rule that nobody should be flying across the country the day of a show; it's just too risky, tickets are sold and so on. At that time I was road managing, so of course the day before, I get Ace a car and I had to monitor these things; it was like constantly every half hour monitoring progress or no progress. So I'd be calling the car company and they'd tell me, we're here at the residence in front, we're waiting and he's supposed to be coming out any time now. Then I'd call back and they'd tell me, we haven't seen him, he hasn't come out. I was calling him and leaving him messages — your car is out there and you have to get in it now because you're going to miss the flight! So anyway he never made it out, I don't know why but he just never made it out of the house into the car. So we were kind of screwed and then I finally got him on the phone, 'Ace, you've got to promise me that you're going to get on this flight in the morning.' He was like 'Okay, okay, I promise,' and then the same thing happened again! Is he coming out of the house yet? No, on and on and so he missed that morning flight too. The noon flight, same thing, I didn't know what was going on but he just was not responding. So now I started to get really nervous because there was only one more flight that afternoon that would get Ace into L.A. in just enough time to get in a car, if everything went like clockwork, that would get him down to Irvine and to the show. So I said, 'Ace, this is do or die on this one, it's got to happen.' So I called the car company and they say, uh, he hasn't come out yet and Ace, I tell him on the phone, you've got to get in the car and so FINALLY, he came out of his house and got in the car and was on his way to the airport, so I felt a little relief. I'm the one who is responsible, because if he screws it all up I'm the road manager and everybody is going to be looking at me like, what the hell? Like, how come you couldn't make this happen even though they kind of understood (laughs) who we're dealing with here. So okay finally he's on his way to the airport and this is good but that was the most crucial thing, just getting him out of the house and into the car; that was the biggest struggle. So I'm resting a little easy and I'm getting into my car to drive down to Irvine because now it's that afternoon. So I'm driving along and my phone rings and it's our travel agent. She says, 'Well, Tommy, I just want to call you and give you an update: I've got some good news and some bad news and she asked me, what do you want to hear first?"

Read the entire interview at KissOnline.com.