On November 16, legendary producer Bob Ezrin (ALICE COOPER, PINK FLOYD, KISS) spoke virtually during the “KISS Kruise: Landlocked In Vegas” event at the Virgin Hotels casino and resort complex in Las Vegas. Some excerpts from his appearance appear below (as transcribed by Clay Marshall for BLABBERMOUTH.NET).
On the late Ace Frehley:
Bob: “Ace was a party all the time, but also just an amazing guitar player and a character. We laughed… Ace had the greatest sense of humor, and the best laugh in history. If you were in a room with him and he started talking and telling jokes and started laughing, you would be on the floor, guaranteed. There was no way to avoid it. There were some times where we butted heads, as has been memorialized often. He wasn’t really a fan of ‘[Music From] The Elder’. He didn’t really want to do that record, and the rest of us did. To his credit, he pulled up his big boy pants and gave some great performances on the album, and in hindsight, I have to say he was probably right and we were wrong, but you just have to do your best with the ideas that you have and with the time that you’re in. His passing is really, really tragic. It knocked me back in my chair when I heard about it, because it does feel very much like the end of that era.”
On the 45-year debate about the merits of “Music From The Elder”:
Bob: “I hadn’t heard it myself for decades, and then they were doing a book about it, and they came up to my place. I said, ‘Look, I’ll do an interview, but you have to bring the music because I don’t even have it anymore.’ They came up and started playing the record for me, and I was standing there just as a punter, listening, and thinking, ‘Wow, listen to that. That’s really great.’ There are some amazing moments on the record, but I did come away feeling – I have to say honestly — that we put Paul [Stanley] in a very difficult position, because he was basically playing an almost operatic role. This is before ‘Phantom [Of The Opera]’ — maybe after ‘Phantom’, that would have made sense, but before ‘Phantom’, it was completely foreign to him. He was playing this very, sort of, musical theater role, which was not comfortable for him. He did a fantastic job at it, but I think that at the end of the day, he didn’t feel fulfilled like he would have if we’d done a regular rock record. All of that being said, everything that you do along the way is valuable in some way or another, even if it’s just to teach you a lesson. This album, there are some really great performances by some amazing people — several of whom are no longer with us — so for me, it’s a monument, that album, to the time and to those people at that time.”
On his role in coaching Gene Simmons‘s performance on KISS‘s 1992 album “Revenge”:
Bob: “I didn’t really have to light a fire under [Gene]. I think the fire was there. Everybody was looking to do something really important — the makeup was off, [and] they wanted to set the stage for a new era for the band. Everybody brought their best game. It was a fun record to make. It wasn’t easy, but nothing really great is easy. I don’t think there were any fights in the control room or any of that sort of stuff during the making of this thing… I really think that Gene came to the table that time in a big way. He was energized. [It was] not me — he did it.”
On the band’s celebrated 1976 album “Destroyer”:
Bob: “I went to see KISS play live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Somebody had called me to see if I was interested in producing the band, so I went to see them live, and they played to 9,000 15-year-old boys. There wasn’t a girl in the audience. We met in New York to talk about what the possibilities were, and I said to them… There was a famous Marlon Brando movie from the ’50s called ‘The Wild One’. It’s a movie about two motorcycle gangs that come into this small town. One is led by Marlon Brando, and the other is led by Lee Marvin. They’re all bad guys, motorcycle gang guys, but Marlon Brando‘s team seemed to have a little bit more heart, and Marlon is the kind of guy that the pretty girl in town decided she could fix. She said to herself, ‘I love this guy. I’m going to fix him,’ whereas Lee Marvin was just pure evil and danger and repulsive. I said to the guys, ‘As far as women are concerned, right now you’re Lee Marvin. What we need to be is Marlon Brando. I want every woman in the world to fall in love with you and think they can fix you. We need to add a little bit of vulnerability and a lot more sort of candor, and we need to expose a little bit of our more sensitive side, et cetera, while still retaining the ballsy, heavy rock base of the band.’ They liked that — they got it, because they’re all fans of media. Gene in particular was a fan of movies and television, so they completely understood what it was that I was talking about. That was the mission.”
In addition to his efforts with KISS, the Canadian-born Ezrin has also worked with the likes of AEROSMITH, DEEP PURPLE and Peter Gabriel. He remains best known, however, for producing more than a dozen albums by ALICE COOPER and for co-producing PINK FLOYD‘s landmark 1979 album “The Wall”.
