Like many other rock fans throughout the world, I found myself quite saddened by the passing of ironic original Kiss guitarist, Ace Frehley, on October 16, 2025 (at the age of 74). Which, led to an immediate re-listening of his music.I also soon realized that I was lucky to have interviewed Frehley numerous times over the years, and in the process, covered a wide variety of topics which spanned his entire music career, and also, his personal life.
This led to the idea of compiling all of our many interviews into a single book, and also, adding all-new/previously-unpublished interviews with several renowned names in the rock world, including Eddie Trunk, Joe Bonamassa, and Soundgarden's Kim Thayil (among others), plus a foreword provided by Matt Pinfield. The result? My 50th book overall, Talk to Me: Conversations With Ace Frehley.
In the following excerpts from the book, several of the musicians interviewed were asked about the stories behind classic Kiss songs that they covered at various points in their respective careers.
Eagles of Death Metal: "God of Thunder"
Jesse Hughes: We were doing a covers album [2019's Eagles Of Death Metal Presents Boots Electric Performing The Best Songs We Never Wrote]. But I'm very particular about covers. You can fuck a cover up really hard, and just doing something that everyone loves isn't really good enough, in my opinion. Like, if you end up doing something where someone like, Joan Jett did "I Love Rock And Roll," and now no one will remember the Arrows. That's kind of like, what your goal would be. But with "God of Thunder," I just had to do a Kiss song, and I wanted to challenge myself.It was one of the coolest sensations in the world to be covering a hero song in a professional rock studio, knowing that it will reach the light of day. I was able to live a fully-realized Kiss fantasy that I think most kids want but never really get to quite reach. And it really made me feel like the luckiest motherfucker on earth. I really am genuinely an Ace Frehley fan. And I genuinely love the man.
"God Of Thunder" Songfacts entry
Coheed and Cambria: "Love Gun"
Travis Stever: Guitar-wise, we both approached it in the sense of combining our parts so it had its own kind of vibe that was separate from the original. But it had the same... not chords exactly, but the same keys. So that in singing it, for Claudio [Sanchez], it would be like in the same place. It really is our own take on it. It's really quite different. But it definitely follows the same theme and structure. It's just we didn't want to do "Love Gun" the same way they did it. We wanted to do it right, and we wanted to do right by the song, but we wanted to do something interesting with it. Because there's no doing it better than they did.And we weren't going to do a rock version, because quite honestly, we were doing it for an early entry acoustic thing [before a Coheed concert], and that's why we did it. But then I believe the recording is live. So one of the last dates that we were going to do it, we recorded a live version on stage, and then we did footage of it in the next venue, because it was nicer.
"Love Gun" Songfacts entry
During the all-new tribute interviews conducted for the book, I made it a point to ask each person I spoke with, "How would you like Ace to be remembered?" The following was blues guitar great Joe Bonamassa's response.
"I think Ace will be remembered as someone who inspired a lot of young people to play guitar. All the trials and tribulations and the rock star-isms can go by the wayside. And as Eddie Trunk says, he was also the most prolific of all the Kiss members – always putting out records. He was working on one when he had his accident. That's how he should be remembered – he was a true rock star."
"I think Ace will be remembered as someone who inspired a lot of young people to play guitar. All the trials and tribulations and the rock star-isms can go by the wayside. And as Eddie Trunk says, he was also the most prolific of all the Kiss members – always putting out records. He was working on one when he had his accident. That's how he should be remembered – he was a true rock star."
Megadeth: "Strange Ways"
David Ellefson: Well, the story behind it started really when Gene Simmons was reaching out to the community to get bands to play on the Kiss My Ass tribute album. And when our manager brought it to us, Dave [Mustaine] right away said, "Hey, have Junior do it" – meaning me ["Junior" was Ellefson's nickname in Megadeth] – "Have him talk to Gene." And I said, "Well, what song should I tell him we would do?" He goes, "Tell him we want to do an Ace Frehley song!" And of course, I right away was like, "Great." Y'know, Gene's my hero. I did not know Ace. And course, Ace was not in Kiss at this point – because this was 1993.But I did, and when I talked to Gene, we had several really great phone conversations about it. He was very open. He said, "You do whatever you want." I said, "Well, Dave brought up the idea of doing an Ace Frehley written composition." And he said, "You can do whatever you want. We don't care. I'm just looking for people to be part of it." So, as we moved on into the Youthanasia sessions, we needed a couple of extra songs – bonus tracks and things – and we decided to do "Strange Ways" then at that time [later appearing on the 2007 box set, Warchest].
"Strange Ways" Songfacts entry
Alex Skolnick Trio: "Detroit Rock City"
Alex Skolnick: I was on hiatus from Testament. I got very passionate about jazz guitar and took practically a decade focusing on that. And one day, I just had this idea of taking the tunes that I knew from my hard rock and heavy metal world and doing jazz arrangements [for 2002's Goodbye to Romance: Standards for a New Generation]. So, it included [Aerosmith's] "Dream On" and a couple songs by the Scorpions. And I, of course, had to do a song by Kiss. I realized that the instrumental section in the middle, it's sort of a guitar solo, but it's so melodic, it's almost more like an interlude. It fits this chord pattern that it's very common in flamenco music and Latin music, and it could actually work as a Latin jazz groove.And then the main part of the song, I realized the melody could actually work for a swing groove, and it was a crazy idea, but I tried it. And the guys I was playing with, they kind of had heard the song, but these are more like, full-time jazz players – an upright bass player and a drummer who plays on a small kit, not a giant drum kit like Peter Criss. And we tried it, and it worked great. It's very funny, when people hear the song, they're surprised because it sounds like it could be a jazz guitar song. And then they recognize the melody, and it's bit shocking.
"Detroit Rock City" Songfacts entry
November 17, 2025
Talk to Me: Conversations With Ace Frehley is available as paperback, hardcover, and Kindle editions. Here's the Amazon link.
Further Reading:
Fact or Fiction: Kiss Edition
Interview with Paul Stanley
Interview with Gene Simmons
Interview with Richie Wise
Kiss Truly Unmasked
More Song Writing
