Ace Frehley looked back at his career with Kiss and recalled that his infamous “Shock Me” moment wasn’t the only time he suffered an injury onstage.
The guitarist wrote the 1977 single after being electrocuted during a show when he made contact with the uninsulated metal rail of a stairway prop.
In a recent interview with MusicRadar, Frehley said, “I should have been dead that night. The fact that I got electrocuted and didn’t fall forward was a godsend. There must have been angels pushing me back.”
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He added, “I was standing on top of four Marshall cabinets on a staircase [and] I had a heavy Les Paul around my neck. … If I fell forward, I would have broken my fucking neck.
“But I fell back, and the road crew dragged me back off of the staircase. I had no feeling in my hands for five to ten minutes. I went on to finish the show. … It was crazy shit, man, but I did get ‘Shock Me’ out of it. So, I guess it wasn’t all for nothing.”
Frehley remembered that his famous rocket-launching guitar also had a second effect built in. “I burned my leg real bad once. … A smoke bomb ignited too early inside the cavity of the guitar, and it melted the asbestos – which our fucking costumes were made from – to my thigh.”
He also admitted that he “fired one of those rockets at Gene [Siummons] and it almost fucking hit him! It flew right by his head. It would have burned him pretty bad.”
Doctor Warned Ace Frehley He’d End Up in a Wheelchair
The guitarist also owned up to falling off his platform boots regularly, which led to one of his trademark stage antics, and a permanent injury. “I used to fall a lot in those boots,” he said.
“A lot of times, Paul [Stanley] would cover for me by walking over to me like it was part of the show. He made it look like it was choreography or something. If nobody realised I’d fallen, I’d play on my knees and get back up. It [became] just part of the show!
“I screwed my knees up doing that,” he noted. “I ended up chipping a bone in my knee, and the doctor said, ‘Listen, you gotta stop doing that, or you’ll end up in a wheelchair.’ We ended up putting a pad under the carpet where I’d fall … and if you look at old videos, you can see that I’d go down one knee at a time.”
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Counting down solo albums released by various members of Kiss.
Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening
