Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / The Extraordinary Rise Of KISS Drummer Eric Carr [Episode 172]

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The Extraordinary Rise Of KISS Drummer Eric Carr [Episode 172] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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When he got on stage. This was the future Eric Carr. This is
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his passion, this is what he loves. But I think when you take
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him off stage, then he becomes that shy person. And he was also
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a very humble person as well. And everyone I've talked to about Eric all
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the way through his entire career of almost said he remained humble. Oh,
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we totally bummed in rock and roll. Well, I mean, I'll leave
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you. You're reading. Little Hans says, it's time to rock and roll,
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read roll. I totally booked. Welcome back to Booked on Rock,
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the podcast for those about to read and rock online at booked on rock dot
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com, where you can find every episode along with links to listening platforms,
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exclusive videos, blogs, and latest rockbook releases. Janet Simmons is this episode's
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guest. The book is called The Rise of the Fox nineteen fifty to nineteen
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eighty two, The Extraordinary Life of Kisses second drummer Eric Carr Revealed. The
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Rise of the Fox is part of the ericar Revealed series, comprehensive and unauthorized
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biographical series that explores the life and times of Kiss's second drummer, Eric Carr.
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It's an essential read for Kiss fans, hard rock fans, and anyone
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who loves a compelling rags to riches story. It digs deep into the life
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and career of the late great Eric Carr, who was the drummer of Kiss
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from nineteen eighty right up until his untimely death in nineteen ninety one. Author
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Janet Simmons draws on hundreds of sources, including rare interviews with era, documents
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from Kiss management, and exclusive interviews with people who witnessed Eric's amazing journey.
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She's here to share some of what's in the first volume, covering the years
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nineteen fifty to nineteen eighty two. To hear a playlist to Veri Carr,
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Eric Kiss, head over to the show notes page. Janet, Welcome to
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the podcast. Thank you so much. Eric. It's a pleasure to be
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here. This is the most comprehensive look at Eric Carr. What we're going
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to talk about today is Volume one, which covers the years nineteen fifty all
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the way up through nineteen eighty two. So let's go back to Eric's childhood
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days. Can you talk about where Eric Carr, then known as Paul Carafello,
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grew up and how music wasn't actually his first passion. He had an
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interest in art, and I think he also wanted a career with NASA.
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Yes, well, I think it was Freedom, Freedom seven, Freedom nine,
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It was one of the Freedom So they went up before the Apollo missions
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and he saw this go up and you know, he's like, wow,
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I want to do that. And he was very scientifically minded. You know,
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he was scoring nineties in geometry and you know he's a smart guy,
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an algebran of those types of things. So he had this natural ability to
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do that and he wanted to do that. But then one day in February
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nineteen sixty four, just like so many other people, they were watching me
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at Sullivan Show. And I think you've alluded to that in the previous podcast
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with Camell Matt I probably mentioned that in so many episodes. It's so true.
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February of sixty four, What got you any music? The Beatles?
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Yeah, it's Beadles on that Selliphant. And that's exactly what happened with Paul
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Caravello, the future Eric Carr. He saw that and he basically threw out
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all of his ideas of what he wanted to do and he just started to
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focus on that he wanted to be Ringo. He wanted to be just like
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his hero, and he saw Ringo as Ringo wasn't necessarily mobbed by the girls
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like Paul McCartney becomes of the cute looks. I'm not disparaging Ringo whatsoever,
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but the comparison, right, and Paul Caravella was a very shy, shy
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young man, so I think that that also helped him gravitate toward Hey,
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I can do this. This looks like fun. Everyone likes Ringo, but
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he's not exactly getting mobs, so he's a little bit to the back as
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well and up so he does have a little bit of I don't know,
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protection in front of him, if you know what I mean by having people
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there. So, yeah, he took the pots from the kitchen. Right
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here comes a drum set, and you know, his dad gave him a
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few books and stomping on the floor for the bass drum. And his dad
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actually made a piece of wood with a piece of rubber on it and he
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could use that as a snare, and that's what got him started. He
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was just he was just so immersed in it, and that is what he
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wanted to do, and that's what he did. Yeah, it was like
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an obsession with him to yeah, master the drums, and at one point
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he played with three bands in two years. Talk about the bands that he
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played and how many let me start counting, because he started off in nineteen
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sixty four with the band called the Allures and no one really even knows their
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name because they were only around for a few months. And then he started
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another band called the Cellarmon because they practiced in his cellar, and that only
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lasted a few months. But he did write two songs with the bassist for
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the Celerman, but they just broke apart. And then he started the Selamon
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basically part two, because they couldn't afford to change the name that he had
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printed on his bass drum. So all New York bands, by the way,
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right, he's from New York. He's from Brooklyn. Yeah, he's
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from Brooklyn nineteen fifty. So yeah, he met these other couple of people
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and soon they had the Salmon going and that lasted for a few years until
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they fell apart. And they're still they're just a copy band. They're not
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doing anything original. They did go into the studio a couple of times to
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record the two songs that the original Sellerman did and while Caravello sang lead on
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that on both of them, but nothing ever came of them. They were
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just acetates. They made them into a few forty fives and disseminated them to
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the DJs in the area, but they didn't get any airplay, nothing ever
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went anywhere, so they eventually fell apart. Then he was in a band
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called Smack. Then he was in another one called Things that Go Bump and
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then that can you imagine making posters and putting your lists just too long?
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Too long? And then he went into another band called Salt and Pepper,
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and that was nineteen seventy and from there it was basically the same band all
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the way through. It just changed names and personnel changed a bit here and
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there, but that was all the way through up until nineteen seventy nine.
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He was basically working with the same people. And this is what's so interesting
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when we get into the person that Eric was. He didn't seek help from
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a booking agent, which is interesting because he's clearly hungry to make it,
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and there are various speculations as to why. But his sister feels that Eric
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was shy and didn't think he was good enough. What do you make of
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that him not getting the booking agent. Well, I think that that's two
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different questions here, because one is really about his personality being shy. But
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I think when he got behind the drum kit, I don't think he was
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shy anymore because this is what he wanted to do when he got on stage.
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This was the future Eric carry, This is his passion, this is
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what he loves. But I think when you take him off stage, then
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he becomes that shy person. And he was also a very humble person as
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well. And everyone I've talked to about Eric all the way through his entire
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career of always that he remained humble. So I think that has a part
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to do with it. Right very back at the beginning and the booking agent,
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I really don't understand that, because, like you said, he's hungry
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to make it. He really really wants is driving. It's his passion,
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and he leaves bands or bands fall apart, and other people are talking to
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the booking agent, but he doesn't. And I was scratching my head at
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this is like, what are you doing? Don't you really really want this?
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Of course he does, because this is what he's driving for. But
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it's also the same conundrum he's in during the seventies. Why is he staying
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in a copy band for nine years? It just made absolutely no sense to
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me. I'm not too sure what was going on in his head at the
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time. You know, I wish I could talk to him and find out.
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He wouldn't have found out about the audition unless he had run into the
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former keyboardist for Flasher, Paul Trino, had quit the band in February,
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and they just happened to be in the same bar at the beginning of June
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later that year. But if Eric really Paul Caravello really wanted to make it,
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why didn't he have all of his networking friends out there saying are there
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any opportunities? There was none of that happening. And what's also strange is
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he's always in cover bands. There's very few opportunities to go into the studio
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and actually make something original. Because I think they recorded I'm going to guess
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at the top of my head about twelve songs, and perhaps half of them
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were cover songs. You're never going to get a record deal. I mean
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cover songs. It's just not going to happen. So something's going on there.
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He wants to make it, but he's not moving towards that as focused
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as he should have been. It was luck, really that he ran into
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Paul Torino that night at the club and was told about the audition, because
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Paul to Reno was very connected, and so he heard about it and automatically
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thought of his friend Paul Caravella. There was something there. I think that
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was holding him back because he again talked to his friend Paul Trino and said,
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I need help with the demo, which to me says he's still not
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connected with the people in the industry. And then he puts everything together.
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He's got the demo together, gets everything together in three days, puts it
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in an orange envelope, and then sits on it for an extra day.
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The deadline was Monday. He dropped it off on Tuesday, but hang on,
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he had it ready Sunday night. The bright orange envelope. The bright
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orange envelope. Yeah, so what's going on there? So if it's all
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together, all he had to do is drive it down into Manhattan and drop
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it off. Your guess is as good as mine. Why he didn't do
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that yeah, and we should know too. He's about to turn thirty,
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so he's thinking times almost up. You know, maybe the music business isn't
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for me. And he's repairing stoves during the day because his father had a
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stove repair business, right, Yeah, he was working part time at Jamaica
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Stove. I'm not too sure if it was his father owned the business or
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worked in the business. His father had a lot of different jobs, you
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know. He was working in a sheet metal factory. He was delivering appliances,
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all sorts of stuff, so he moved around different jobs. He was
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trying to make money for to keep the family float. But at that time
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in nineteen seventy nine, he's fixing gas rangers. There's stories and there of
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you know, getting cockroaches everywhere and all this fun stuff that you can just
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imagine if we're in the unpleasant places in Brooklyn and Queens and the pre Interinet
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days. He buys unmasked the next day to get the management company contact info
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and they didn't have it. He didn't have any kiss records, so he
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didn't He was immersed in disco at the time. In nineteen seventy seven,
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he went to the Commodore Show at Madison Square Garden and he said, that's
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really what solidified what he wanted to do. And I'm like, really,
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you've been doing this for since nineteen sixty three and this is the one that
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did it. I mean, the Commodore is in. They were huge,
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you know, Lionel Richie's doing Easy and all these other great great songs.
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He would have thought that if he was into rock and roll, because he
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loved Bonham, he loved Ginger Baker. That was his That's what got him
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really going into that double bass. And all of a sudden, he's he's
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doing discoing funk. Why wasn't he going to the gardens to see Kiss?
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Because they had sold out Madison Square Garden back in seventy seven as well,
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So why wasn't he going to do these things? So there's a lot of
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questions that will never be able to answer. But these things haven't been brought
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up in other books or movies or anything before, so it's kind of interesting
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to have that, like the curtain drawn back so you can see what's going
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on. I love the details regarding the criteria required to be in Kiss.
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So they wanted someone who was single, who wasn't into drugs or alcohol,
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who was basically a quiet personality that had no ties to anything, and Eric
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fit all at the sheet that was given to Bill a coin. He has
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checked off that he plays double bass, so they were looking for that.
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He's single check mark there. He has no photos anywhere, he has no
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contracts anywhere. It's check mark, check mark, check mark. Quite a
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list of things that people couldn't actually people like Carmen Apiece, apparently he was
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interested in becoming a kiss drummer for a little bit. He couldn't have met
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those requirements because he had his picture out there. Very few people could have
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done what Eric Carr did and meet those requirements. The cover letter or on
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the resume or something that he wrote and put in that envelope, he was
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making it clear that he's somewhat well known, but certainly not famous. Like
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he wanted to make sure that they knew that he played a Disney World.
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He played Tomorrowland. It was apparently a huge disco show. I was kind
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of traveling around disco show, so he was on there with the Tramps.
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They had a song on the Saturday Night Fever album, so they were doing
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quite well at the time. BT Express and I can't remember who else,
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but yeah, so he played in front of a few thousand people. But
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really, if you think about disco at the time, that's almost like a
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DJ, right. The band is like the DJ, and every now and
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again you look up and go, oh, yeah, they're still play because
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you're too busy dancing, you're too busy jumping around. You're not really focused
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on what the lead singer's doing, or you know that kind of thing.
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So the focus definitely was not on Paul Caravello, who's sitting at the back
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of all of this the stage on his drums. He wasn't the focus.
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It was the dancing with the focus. But by putting that on his resume,
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he's in the way saying I can play in front of people. I
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have no problem. I can do more than just a club of one hundred
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people. I don't have stage frights, basically what he's saying, and his
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resumes also gave examples of who his main people were, Ginger Baker and John
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Bonnamy has these wonderful influences, but then he also puts in Lenny White,
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Well, hang on, where's that coming from. He's a jazz drummer.
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So he's also saying, I'm kind of fluid, you know, I understand
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different genres, and then he names off bands as well, such as the
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Cars and the Neck. When he was in Flasher, he was playing those
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songs, so he's in the cover band. So he was quite familiar with
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the new wave music at the time, and he had just three days to
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put that demo tape together. I never knew about his audition tape, including
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Van Halen songs, and as you may see behind me here, I'm quite
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the fan. I saw that. Yeah, yeah, can you talk about
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what was included on the tape? And the kiss song Beth was the one
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he was going to put on there, but he said no. Actually they
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recorded Beth as a demo tape, and afterwards they kind of scratched their heads,
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you know, because there's three people in there that got Paul Torino as
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there, Paul Caravello and another person named Paul who owns the studio. How
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confusing can that be? So they decided that, no, we can't put
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Beth on here because Peter that was Peter's song and they're not going to sing
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Beth anyway. They're not going to do that in concerts. So let's show
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off Paul Caravello's voice with a different song. And Paul Trino heard Paul Caravello
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do Beth and he said, you know, holy crap, it sounds just
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like him. This is great, which is kind of interesting because down the
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road in nineteen eighty eight, as Eric Carr, he winds up recording Beth
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on Smashes. So when I first heard that, I didn't know it was
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Eric. I didn't look at the credits, just listen the cassette at the
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time, and I was like, well, you know, that sounds like
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Peter. It sounds a little different, but maybe they did something with Peter's
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voice, but it was so similar. I thought, at least it was
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similar, but a bit smoother. Yeah. Smoother, yeah, because you
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could say that Peter sounds a little He's got that gravelly voice, almost like
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a Rod Stewart kind of thing. But Eric's boys, he can also do
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that. I mean you could hear it when he sings Black Diamond, when
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he does that live, you can hear that gravelly voice, but he can
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also sing very smooth. And when he did Shandy, going back to your
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question about the demo, when he did Shandy, which was Paul Stanley song.
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He sung that very smooth, and that was the only song on the
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demo tape that he actually sang. On the other three songs he played the
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drum song and the two Vane Helen songs were and the Cradle Rock and You
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Really Got Me Yeah, and Torpedo Girl. He also did the Ace song
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Yeah, I love the drum pattern on that, and that was originally Anton
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Pig was the drummer for that one. He didn't pick an easy song to
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do. It's not like just steady four for Yeah, We'll just He picked
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an intricate one, which is it shows off what he can do. But
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also by including those two Van Halen songs, he's also saying, hey,
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I like the harder stuff. In a way that's like sending a message because
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he's saying, Okay, here's two songs from Unmassed. I can do this
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kind of new kiss sound, if that's what you want to call it,
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and I can also do the harder stuff. Once again, it's interesting that
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he chose those two Vanhalen songs. They were part of the set list for
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Flasher, so he's used to playing those. He was very familiar with them.
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But it's also interesting why he didn't choose an older kiss song, one
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of the harder songs, harder edged sound to include as well. So his
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choice says something so fascinating to get all these details like, for example,
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there's a myth that he drove to the office of Bill a coin in a
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bicycle. Not true, Not true. I originally read that way back in
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the eighties. I found it somewhere in a I think it was a fanzine
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or something. I can't remember where I found it, so if I had
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to dig into this, it was only a few months, well probably about
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a year ago that I found that. No, he'd actually driven his car
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there. There was a witness from Billy Coyn's office who directed, you know,
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Paul, go park down take a car and park it down there.
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And he said there's stove parts popping out of almost the windows. You know.
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So he's not there on his bike. He's borrowed the vehicle for work.
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That's even a better story to me is just take a picture that like
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a movie scene, and he pulls up in this beat up old vehicle and
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the stove repair parts are hanging out. Yeah, beat up old Volkswagen.
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It was Volkswagon. That's right, Yeah, yeah, the book down Rock
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Podcasts will be back after this. Janet Simmons is the author of the Rise
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of the Fox nineteen fifty to nineteen eighty two, The Extraordinary Life of Kisses
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second drummer Eric car Review. Eric begins the auditioning process with kiss They paired
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the list of potentials down to Eric and a drummer named Bobby ron Dennelly.
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The two face off in a second audition. Eric comes back for a third
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audition. It was a close call. What finally led to the band picking
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Eric over Bobby and what became of Bobby Rondinelli. It was neck and neck.
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People were back and forth. It's like, gee, you know,
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they're both really good drummers. They both can fit, and I think it
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came down to the simplicity of Eric's approach to the songs. Eric does say
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he heard another drummer, he doesn't name who it is, but how the
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auditions were set up, it had to have been Bobby. That he was
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putting too many you know, he was making it too fancy, too many
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fills. That is why Gina and Ace were like, yes, it's got
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to be this. Paul Caravello guy and Paul Stanley was sitting on the fence
18:51
a bit and we don't know why, but eventually he decided, yeah,
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okay, well we'll hire this Paul Caravello guy. And as for Bobby,
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he wound up. Gee, where did he go? He went to Blue
19:00
Oyster Cult, he went to Rainbow. He's had a very good career.
19:04
I don't know what he's doing now, but it's interesting that he had an
19:08
offer to work with Rainbow Richie Blackmore's Rainbow at the same time that he was
19:12
auditioning for Kiss. Gee, what should I take? You know, you
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can just see the wheels going in his head. He decided that he was
19:21
gonna take the Rainbow gig instead of the Kiss gig. And it worked out
19:25
well because all of a sudden, he gets his letter saying thanks, but
19:29
no thanks. We've moved on, and they hired Eric Carr. But in
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Kiss, they don't know that Bobby's no longer available. Eric Carr doesn't know
19:37
that his competition is no longer in the rear view mirror. So the pressure's
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on. You gotta do it because we don't want to go back. We
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don't have time to pull Bobby in. But if things do fall apart with
19:51
this new guy, we could probably bring Bobby in. Eric is probably also
19:55
thinking, jeez, if I mess up, they're just going to go to
19:56
the number two guy. I gotta get this right. There's a huge amount
20:00
of pressure on everyone in Kiss the organization for those few weeks in July leading
20:07
up to the debut show and July twenty fifth. He's hired on July first,
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so it's very very little time to get into, you know, become
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a kiss person a kiss persona that quickly. There is one thing that he
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does at that audition. I think that maybe makes the difference. Clearly he's
20:26
got the talent, but there's something that he does at that audition that speaks
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to his down to earth personality. Asked to get the autographs Paul, Gene
20:33
and Ace. This is the first audition he's done his bit, and he's
20:37
like, jeez, you know, I hope I'm good enough. You can
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probably see this going on in it's had the Audjez, I hope I'm good
20:42
enough. They might not call me back. I better get this audition letter
20:47
autograph because I may never see them again. So he turns around and asks
20:51
them for their autograph and they're just floored by it, maybe because no one
20:53
else had done that. The drummers that had come in prior to Paul Caravello
20:59
being there had and he was just down to earth guy, so it's like,
21:03
yeah, well I'll just ask and see what happens. And he got
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that, and little did he know that a few days later he'd be called
21:10
back for a second audition. At that point, they were working really well
21:15
together because during the first audition, Kiss hadn't been playing a whole lot,
21:19
so they're a little rusty during the audition process. So if you're not a
21:23
very good drummer, you're trying to figure out why is Kiss playing rusty?
21:27
You know what I mean? Eric comes in. He's listened to the wrong
21:30
versions of the songs. He's listened to the album cuts as opposed to live
21:34
cuts, so he's playing the same songs differently. So they immediately they're starting
21:40
to work together. You can see that they are working together as a band
21:44
as opposed to this is an audition. So how does Paul Caravello become Eric
21:48
Carr with two rs? He immediately thinks, well, I have to change
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my name. He knows there cannot be another Paul in the band because we
21:56
have Paul Stanley. So he decides, Okay, my last name, I'm
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going to just drop it down to the first syllable and add an extra R.
22:03
So that's very much like Ringo started. He's Richard Starkey, so just
22:07
drop it back a bit, add an extra R. And his girlfriend Pantera
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had made a list of possible names and they went through them. How does
22:18
this sound with the last name Carr and they tried those names out, but
22:22
Eric was very he knew how everything sounded. So he was looking for a
22:29
name that had two syllables at the first name and one syllable for the last
22:33
name, because that's what Peter had. So he is trying to really fit
22:37
in. He didn't want to have one syllable for his first name too for
22:41
the last because it wouldn't sound right. As he said, it wouldn't sound
22:45
right when you said the band's name. He eventually settled on Eric. He
22:49
wanted it to sound right and he also wanted it to look right. So
22:52
he's being very meticulous, extremely extremely detailed on his whole approach so he can
22:59
fit in seamlessly with the band. Because this is the most important thing to
23:03
him now, everything else doesn't matter. He wants this gig. He wants
23:07
everything to be perfect. He can see his life future here, so don't
23:11
mess it up at the beginning. You have to have that solid foundation,
23:14
and that's what he was thinking. He wanted those details down. So that's
23:18
how he came up with Eric cars Just he truncated his last name and his
23:22
girlfriend made a list, and that's the one he chose. Now, he
23:26
was initially to be the Hawk. How does he go from the Hawk to
23:30
the Fox? And like you said, there's not much time here, so
23:33
they got to really figure something out fast. So he gets a phone call
23:37
on July the first, Congratulations, you're now a member of Kiss. He
23:41
phones up his friend Paul Trino, who helped him get the gig, found
23:45
out about the gig, recorded the demo, and yeah, we're all happy.
23:48
I think he probably went to meet with Billy Coin's management team get all
23:53
the paperwork all sorted out that day, and then he went out with his
23:56
friend Paultrino that night and they celebrated the bit and then you've lost basically a
24:03
day. So July first is done. So now he's on a timeline to
24:07
get everything together, and he's thinking he has until the middle of August.
24:11
I think it was August ninth when Kiss was supposed to go off on a
24:15
Mexican tour. Nobody knows that at the time, but that's about to be
24:18
canceled and they're going to move his debut up to the twenty fifth. They
24:22
don't know that until later on in the week. So he is very he's
24:27
in that celebratory mood and he goes into the A Cooin office and he says,
24:33
we need a character, and this is what we have in mind,
24:36
because they were already thinking of different characters for the persona prior to hiring any
24:41
drummer. They were talking about it in the middle of June, so I
24:45
believe that they had a rough costume ready to go and it was a hot
24:51
costume. So Eric tries this on sometime in the next couple of days,
24:56
so it's going to be July second to third. He's trying the hot costume
25:00
on. There's photos of him in it and you can actually he's holding up
25:03
his arms so you can see what he this is what I look like in
25:07
this post and this post. And he's trying a few things and you can
25:10
actually see strings dangling down from it, so it's very rough costume. It's
25:15
almost like a prototype. It was made to fit anybody, so they could
25:18
probably fix it for whatever body shape that person was or height or whatever.
25:23
And then the next photos of him are different photos of the hawk face,
25:29
and they're only from the side view, so one is left profile and the
25:32
other one's right profile. And I was looking at it and I think,
25:34
you know what he's put half one side of makeup of is one design and
25:40
the other side is another design, And they just took profile photos to see
25:42
which one is which. They finally settle on one, and you can find
25:47
it. It's just a straight on headshot of him. We're in a black
25:51
T shirt. But if you look at his hair, he still has that
25:53
Paul Caravello hair. Hair's going everywhere kind of thing. It's not the kiss
25:59
haircut, so that to me. He says that that was done very early
26:02
in the timeline, probably the first couple of days. He probably got his
26:06
hair cut and dyed on the weekend, and it was Independence Day on the
26:10
weekend as well, so you also have this You're not going to get your
26:12
hair done then, probably because it's all closed down, right, So we're
26:17
losing days at this point. And at some point he stands there in Brooks,
26:22
which is a costume design theater design company. They're standing there and there
26:26
Paul Stanley and Bill a Coin are sitting there looking at and going, this
26:30
doesn't look right. He's dressed all in yellow feathers. It's just it looks
26:33
ridiculous. And you could take off the chest piece and as Eric described it,
26:37
he looked like the San Diego chicken. You know, he's like a
26:41
big bird. For Pete's sake, right, you take off this chess piece
26:45
and his jumpsuit whatever you want to call it, the leotard one piece,
26:49
it's yellow at the top. I mean, like, what were you thinking,
26:53
guys? But what cats me is they've also gone away from the whole
26:56
essence of kiss because the guys who are wearing this makeup, this is supposed
27:03
to be who they are on the inside. This is their personality coming out.
27:07
Gene Simmons is a demon. We have absolutely no doubt that this is
27:11
true, no doubt that is who he is on the inside. That's another
27:15
part of his personality. You cannot just give someone here go be a hawk
27:18
goal be of this, go be that, because that runs against what the
27:22
essence of kiss is. So Paul Stanley and Bill a Coin saying no,
27:26
this is ridiculous. They get rid of the hawk idea, and now Eric
27:30
has to start from scratch, which is absolutely perfect for him because now he
27:34
has to think about very quickly too, about what's happening inside of him and
27:40
who he wants to be and how to actually create this and makeup. But
27:44
also around this time, this is when he finds out that guess what his
27:48
debut is now going to be July twenty fifth, because they're running into financial
27:53
issues. This is running up to the bills and they don't have any money
27:56
coming in, so we better get a couple of shows going here. Now
28:00
he's moved up that date. Now the pressure's really on. We don't have
28:03
the exact timeline of what's happening during the following week, from the basically the
28:07
fifth to the twelfth. The twelfth is his birthday. You'd be thirty that
28:11
then. But by then we know that he has adopted the name Eric Carr,
28:15
and we also know that he has the Fox persona figured out at that
28:19
point because in his birthday card, that he gets from the people out of
28:23
Coin Management. They refer to him as Eric, and two people also referred
28:27
to him as Fox. So that's an indication that by the twelfth. We
28:33
can even say by the eleventh, because no one's going to sign a birthday
28:36
card on the day of, they usually have it circulating throughout the office right
28:40
at least probably the day before, so we can say probably by the eleventh.
28:44
We knew he had his name Eric Carr and he was a Fox at
28:48
that point. So sometime between I would guess the fifth or the sixth of
28:52
July and the eleventh, he had come up with his new persona so fast
28:57
that timeline we have time to waste. He said he was in the Palladium,
29:03
backstage at the Pladium because Kiss had rented out that venue for rehearsal purposes
29:07
as well, and he was just drawing on a piece of paper that's like
29:12
egg shaped, drawing on it as a face, and then he's just doodling
29:15
trying to get the makeup correct. So it was very quickly that that happened.
29:21
At one point he just turned around to Jeene Simon and said, what
29:22
do you think of this? And they said, looks like a fox,
29:26
right, this is perfect. So that's when he really started working on creating
29:32
that Fox makeup. By the time he's at the Palladium show on the twenty
29:37
fifth of July, he has everything together. He's got the costumes together,
29:41
he's got the makeup together, and there was this brew haa basically of everything's
29:45
going to fall apart if we don't have Eric Carr together by this date.
29:48
That's what I'd heard for so many years. But when you think about it,
29:52
we have a photo shoot scheduled for a couple of days before that,
29:57
and that was for the People magazine photo shoot. Everything had to be together
30:02
for that, it wasn't for the Palladium show. And that's actually the first
30:06
time you see Eric Carr wearing the orange Fox jacket and the boots. Before
30:14
that, only photos of him wearing his black jumpsuit are seen. The details
30:18
of his contract are interesting too. How much was it for? How long
30:22
was it for? Because he felt like he had won the lottery, but
30:25
it was more like he was an employee, not really a member of the
30:27
band. It was kind of one sided. Well yeah, it was one
30:30
sided, but I mean, he wouldn't be we wouldn't have Eric Carr unless
30:34
he signed that contract. At that point he had agreed, and it was
30:38
in writing in the contract that he'd only made ten thousand dollars playing the clubs.
30:42
Now, this is in nineteen eighty, so you'd have to do the
30:45
figure out what it is today. It's somewhere in the book. But he'd
30:51
only made ten thousand dollars over those last three years playing the clubs. And
30:55
now wow, he's getting paid one hundred thousand dollars. That's winning the lottery.
31:00
I mean, that's like, I don't know, three hundred and fifty
31:02
thousand or something like that in today's exchange rate basically inflation rate. So he's
31:07
making a ton of money. It's like, this is huge. So all
31:12
of a sudden he's got this money coming in. They back paid him to
31:15
July the first they've said, here you go, here's five thousand dollars.
31:21
You need some clothes, get some clothes, things like that. That all
31:26
that kind of stuff is in the contract because they have to bring him up
31:29
to try and get him up to their level in a few different ways,
31:33
and clothing is one of them. You can't have someone who's going g I
31:36
need gas money I can't go to rehearsal right, you can't have that.
31:40
So he's doing that kind of thing. But his contract was a little bit
31:44
of back and forth. I do have a draft from July twenty second,
31:48
and he basically had to give his whole life up for Kiss. They owned
31:55
his name. He could never admit that he was in Kiss. If he
32:00
was fired, to let go or the band fell apart, he could never
32:04
meet any of that. They owned all of the rights to his songs.
32:07
He was not allowed to play with any other band, which kind of makes
32:10
sense. Appearing Kiss makeup. You can't go out and do that, and
32:14
you have to act in a certain manner that is not disparaging to anything band.
32:19
So if Ace gets into trouble and you get into trouble with As,
32:22
we can fire you basically where it's going. So you got to be on
32:27
your best behavior. Some of the things he did negotiate though, He had
32:30
now travel allowance that he could travel in business class with the band as opposed
32:36
to back an economy because he's not the crew even though he is an employee.
32:42
So really he Kiss owned him. Kiss owned Eric Carr, down to
32:47
his name, down to his persona down to his makeup. He gave up
32:52
everything, and hey, if this is what I'd wanted to do for my
32:55
entire life, and this opportunity is given to me, yeah, going to
33:00
take it. Sure, I'm doing the same. Then you got to think
33:01
about that pressure as well, because I got to take it because Bobby Rondonelly's
33:07
right there and nobody knows that he's not right. If I don't cooperate,
33:13
Bobby Rondonelly can take my place. Sure you can't negotiate, take it or
33:16
leave it. This is your opportunity. By the way, inflation would bring
33:21
it to three hundred about three hundred ninety five thousand dollars a year today.
33:24
Yeah, yeah, so's he's It's almost like winning the lottery, right,
33:29
You're you're doing pretty darn good if all of a sudden you've gone from tenth
33:32
of that. But it was an amazing time for Eric because it was such
33:37
a transformative time. But it was also a very short amount of time.
33:42
He had three weeks to transform himself from being a guest brain for Paaraman and
33:46
a drummer and a cover band to playing in Kiss, having the whole persona
33:52
knowing everything, knowing all the stage kids. I mean, learning the songs
33:55
was probably not very difficult for him because he'd been doing it for the last
33:59
fifteen years. But then all of a sudden, he's got to know the
34:02
stage cues and when to jump up and when to sit down, and what
34:06
Paul's going to do and while he's you know, talking to the crowd and
34:08
everything. So it's a very steep learning curve, and he also has to
34:13
be very careful that he can remain fitting in with the others as well.
34:17
But I think that's where his personality came in, so we didn't really have
34:20
to try. It was just very natural for him. The book down Rock
34:23
Podcasts will be back after this. Eric Carr's first show with Kiss was July
34:30
twenty fifth, nineteen eighty right Palladium, New York City. Yeah, and
34:32
he moves the crowd over. They start chanting Peter in the beginning, but
34:36
by the end they love him and off we go. And he had to
34:39
have been shocked when he was told what the plans were for the next Kiss
34:43
album, because he had to been so excited about, Hey, let's what
34:46
are you to make a rock and roll album? You know? And it's
34:49
the concept album music from The Elder, and according to the book, him
34:52
and Ace opposed the idea. Now Eric did have the chance to express his
34:55
concerns to Gene and Paul. How did they react, Well, you're a
35:00
member of the band. Well, no, you're not a member of the
35:02
band. So he's in that catch twenty two. He's like, well,
35:06
I want to speak up, but gee, you know, I'm an employee.
35:09
So he did eventually speak his mind and he said, Nah, we
35:13
should really be doing a rock and roll album, and that's what he was
35:15
expecting. That's what they started to do. In February of nineteen eighty one,
35:21
they were working on some stuff that eventually came onto Killers. I think
35:25
it was on a legendary night that they I'd have to look in the book
35:29
that they recorded during that time for The Elder. They did a few songs
35:34
for that, and it just it didn't work out. It didn't work out
35:37
at all. As Billa Cooin said in one of the interviews, that they
35:39
were just tired of working together. No one was getting along. They didn't
35:44
want to do the album, and he said, what am I going to
35:46
do? We're contracted to have one album every twelve months. So the pressure's
35:53
on there, so you got to have this album out, get going.
35:57
And they had lost a lot of time because had left in May of nineteen
36:01
eighty and that cut into their touring cycle. So that means that now they've
36:07
put the tour off until August, so they've lost some of that touring cycle,
36:12
so they can't do North America. And they get off the road in
36:15
December from a really great concert series down in Australia and New Zealand. But
36:22
they're probably exhausted as well because they'd been at it for so long and then
36:25
they're told, well, great, you've had a few weeks off start recording,
36:29
and they didn't want to do it. So I don't understand why Bill
36:34
turned to bob Ezren. To me, I would have turned to Eddie Kramer.
36:38
Eddie did so many fantastic things. I mean, Eddie did the original
36:42
Kiss demos back in seventy three, He did Rock and Roll over Love Gun,
36:46
he did Aces album. I mean, these are fantastic albums in the
36:51
Kiss catalog. But he turned to bob Ezrin instead, and bob Ezrone was
36:54
just having not a very good year, as we found out, and they
36:59
decided that we're going to work together because Bob, as Bill said, knows
37:02
the personalities, knows how to get everyone to get along together. Eric's scratching
37:07
his head and saying, but I thought we wanted to do rock and roll.
37:10
We're not Pink Floyd, and we're doing this weird concept album. So
37:15
he did speak up, but he was basically told to you're just a drummer.
37:20
You do what you're paid to do. Start drumming. What can he
37:23
say, I mean, you can't right otherwise, Well, there goes my
37:27
job, and this is the job that I love. And he still hasn't
37:30
toured North America. I mean, he's not a great world tour, but
37:34
you know, it's what he's always wanted to do. So he decides I'm
37:37
better. Well, I'll keep my mouth shut and we'll just do this album.
37:40
But he must have felt a bit hesitant doing some of it, but
37:45
eventually he got into it. And there was apparently a list of songs that
37:51
Bob Ezrin or Gene Simmons had put up on the wall, and one of
37:53
them was called Under the Rose. And Eric looks at this and goes,
37:58
well, that's an interesting title, and so he goes off with his acoustic
38:00
guitar and he wrote under the Rose. He wasn't a very good lyricist,
38:06
so he gave the music to Gene and Jean said, this is great stuff.
38:09
We will go in and we'll cut this heat and Gene actually wrote the
38:13
lyrics to it, and Eric may or may not have it's still up in
38:16
the air played the acoustic guitar on the album cut for that, so he
38:22
did get into it. I think he really shines in the song Escape from
38:27
the Island, and that's just that's a great song. It's got such a
38:31
drive to it. You can hear he's got this double bass going and Ace
38:36
is just playing just like nobody else can. I mean, Ace is fantastic
38:39
on that. And that was recorded in Toronto, north of Toronto actually in
38:45
a little tiny room. It's a ten by ten room and they were trying
38:47
to squeak all the equipment in and it's just Ace and Eric and Bob Asben's
38:52
playing bass. That's it and they hit record and off they went. And
38:55
that's a fantastic song if you're looking at the timeline and people who are working
39:00
on this album, particularly Bob. Bob had a lot to do with the
39:05
direction that this album went in and that is because he was also working you
39:09
know, he worked on previous concept albums, you know, very famous for
39:13
doing The Wall, which sold I don't know how many million did that sell?
39:17
Yeah, huge, But he was also working with Lou Reed and worked
39:22
on this album called Berlin, which was a concept album. In the book,
39:25
I also line that up because it's very similar in the processes of the
39:30
vision. For Bob wanted Berlin to be like a Broadway theater type show,
39:36
and now he's telling Kiss, we can do this movie. You know.
39:38
So you see so many parallels happening with those two albums. But also Bob's
39:45
going through a really rough period at the beginning of nineteen eighty one. He's
39:49
working with folk slash country singer Murray McLaughlin who's working in Nashville and New York
39:55
at the time. They're recording there, and he's also contracted to work with
40:00
the band called The Kings, and Kings are a Canadian band. Well,
40:02
Mury McLaughlin's also Canadian, and the Kings are a Canadian band, and they
40:07
recently had a hit with a song called switch In to Glyde, which is
40:10
a really cool song, and it was all over the radio up here in
40:14
Canada, so they were a hot little band. So he's working with three
40:16
bands. He's coming off the Murray McLaughlin album, he's going into the Kiss
40:21
album, but he's also contracted to work with the Kings at the same time,
40:25
and the Kings wound up using I don't know how the timing actually worked
40:32
on it, but they actually used all of the same studio and all of
40:36
the same processes, and it seems like Bob was just bouncing back and forth
40:39
from one to the other. Because the Kings were complaining Bob's never around.
40:44
They wind up hiring another producer because Bob's never round. Well, then he's
40:49
off working with Kiss, and Kiss is complaining that Bob's never round. BET's
40:52
because he's off working with the Kings. So he's there, He's bouncing back
40:55
and forth, and he has also admitted he was going through some are problems
41:00
at the time and he was having a little bit of a drug issue at
41:02
the time. Putting it into context is huge because there's so many little bits
41:07
and pieces that are starting to fall apart for Kiss, and they have no
41:12
control over it because they didn't sign Bob to an exclusive production contract right so
41:19
he was off working with the Kings. They were even using the mobile recording
41:22
unit from the record plant, just like Kiss was. But one it's interesting
41:25
about that time period for Bob is Murray MacLachlan years later said, now this
41:31
is not my kind of thing. This wasn't a very good album. I
41:36
don't play any songs from it anymore. Then you have the Kings, and
41:39
it was interesting. I did little research on them, and they were apparently
41:44
touring across the country in a van or something, and they stopped into a
41:46
record store and they saw their CD there like this was a few years ago,
41:50
and they said, oh, you know, we'll take a listen to
41:52
it, and they throw it in the van, throw it in CD player
41:53
in the van, and off they go down the highway and they listened to
41:57
the first couple of songs and they pitched the thing out the window. They
41:59
still listen to it. They hate it, they won't play it, and
42:01
actually so did their record company. So you can see that what happened for
42:06
Bob in nineteen eighty one, he had a disastrous year. He's worked with
42:10
three artists, is the only three artists who worked with that year. None
42:14
of those three artists liked the outcome the drop of a producer, and he's
42:19
brilliant. He's a brilliant producer. But I think something was wrong in Bob's
42:22
life at the time because a good producer. According to Ted Templeman in his
42:28
book by Renoff, Yeah, that's a fantastic book. Love that book.
42:32
And the Van Halen Rising book's absolutely fantastic too, love that one. But
42:37
Ted says, you know, it's up to the producer to bring the best
42:39
out of the band and the musicians, and I don't think that happened during
42:45
that time period in Bob's life. I think that he was dictating this is
42:49
what I want you to do. Because the lead single from the Murray McLachlin
42:52
album tell your Mother She Wants You to, which is a euphemism to say,
42:58
f off, it's a great He's got this gang chorus in it.
43:00
It's not focused, not country, it's a great song. I started looking
43:04
at that song because I had heard that Kiss had actually done the background vocals
43:08
for it. Wow, because it was all Noel, was Bob right,
43:10
and they were all in the same studios, but the timing was a little
43:14
bit off, so Eric and Kiss did not do the gang vocals there,
43:16
but it's got that gang vocal and it's a really cool song, but nobody
43:21
wants to hear this. He's a folk singer and he's doing rock, so
43:24
he didn't pull the essence of the musician out for any of those three albums.
43:29
Another factor, too, is this is the end of Vases run.
43:32
Now he hasn't left yet. He's still hanging on, right, He's still
43:36
hanging on. But when they decided I'm going to out vote you, because
43:39
Eric Carr does not have a vote, right, He's just a hired hand.
43:44
Now all of a sudden, Peter is gone, so there's no even
43:46
out in the vote. So it's always going to be two against one.
43:51
And Bill's job was to basically break the tie. And I think more Buill
43:55
didn't really vote. I think he kind of talked people around to voting in
44:00
certain directions if they were at you know, loggerheads, and vote was tied.
44:04
But now that's disappeared. So the very first time that there's a problem,
44:09
Eric and Ace want to do a rock album. Paul and Jean are
44:13
like, they don't know what they want to do, and then they come
44:15
up with the concept this isn't rock and roll. They both say, well,
44:20
we're not going to listen to Eric because he's a hired hand. He's
44:22
a newbie, he's only played in the clubs. He's got one tour underneath
44:25
his belt, so they're not going to listen to him. And Ace,
44:30
well, we can just outvote you. And I think that was the beginning
44:32
of the downfall for Ace in a professional sense, because I don't want to
44:37
get in what else he was doing, like in his personal life with drugs,
44:40
alcohol and all that other stuff. That's a whole other story, which
44:45
he chronicles very well in his book, in his autobiography. But there's a
44:51
definite problem there with Ace because you can see that he's so into it.
44:57
I mean, Escape from the is fantastic. I love it. But at
45:00
some point he just says, enough of this, I'm tired of being told
45:04
what to do. I'm leaving, and he leaves Toronto and he goes back
45:07
to Connecticut. Fine, but when he does that, he also loses his
45:13
voice in the say so of what the band is doing, just mail it
45:16
to me basically is not being very proactive. At the end, he complains
45:22
like, well, you cut my solos or you did this or you did
45:25
that. Well, to me, that's part Lias's fault. He should have
45:29
taken responsibility for it. And even though it wasn't a very good situation for
45:32
him, if you leave that situation, you cannot stand up for yourself.
45:37
So you don't like the solo, you weren't there. So that's my take
45:42
on it. Now he's lost his artistic ability within the band because now it's
45:46
dictated to him. This is the finished product, and if you don't like
45:52
it, we don't have time to fix this. We're already running so late
45:55
because they kept putting it off, putting it off, and they have to
46:00
get this thing out by May, and there was just no way they were
46:01
going to do that because that's when Unmasked was released at the end of May
46:06
nineteen eighty so an album every year. They needed the Elder out by May
46:10
nineteen eighty one, and they didn't do that. So the record companies then
46:15
are looking at it and saying, well, we have options, so we
46:19
can now release the greatest hits. Now we can do this, Now we
46:21
can do that. Julian Gil really gets into that. He's got a really
46:25
good his last book that really gets into all of that kind of interesting stuff.
46:30
I didn't get into the contracts for Kiss that much because that's not where
46:36
I'm focusing, but it does have a bearing on the pressure that the band
46:39
is under at the time. So throughout the summer they're trying to push back
46:44
against the record company. The record company is getting ticked off because they just
46:47
spent the pile of money to buy out Cast the Blanco records. They want
46:52
their money back, and the only way they're going to get their money back
46:53
is to get Kiss selling records and the back catalog. So what do you
46:57
have? You got an album that's coming out October. Was delivered on first
47:01
of October, second of October. It's so late, but in a way
47:05
it's good time because it's there for the Christmas rush. But yeah, the
47:09
Kiss is in everybody's bad books by that time. The record company's ticked off
47:14
with them, and Bill's probably gone, you know, swiping his forehead.
47:17
Thank god, that thing's over, you know, finally got this thing and
47:22
recorded. It was a bit of a mess all the way around because of
47:24
the elder. It was basically the last straw of working with Bill a cooin.
47:29
So Gene and Paul said goodbye to Bill. I don't know if Ace
47:32
had any input into that, because by the end of March he had decided
47:37
he was going to leave. Here's my resignation, and now we have to
47:42
untangle this legal mess that we've created called Kiss I want out. So he's
47:46
delivered his resignation for then and they're saying, okay, we have a year
47:52
to untangle this, and then he's definitely gone. So that is I don't
47:55
know March thirty first, I guess, and then in April they say goodbye
48:00
to Bill. They have to also figure out what they want to do for
48:06
their next album because they're in crisis mode. The Elder was a flop but
48:10
before Bill left, and this is back in the middle of January, so
48:15
they're already thinking about the next album because they know why The Elder isn't doing
48:19
that well. So January nineteen eighty two, Michael James Jackson is brought into
48:23
the picture and Bill actually has them meet with Kiss at the time that they're
48:29
recording. Oh, they're doing the live version of Fridays January seventeenth, so
48:34
that's the first time that Michael James Jackson meets Jean and Paul by having Bill
48:39
introduce Michael James Jackson to Gene and Paul prior to leaving. It's one of
48:45
the best things that Bill ever did is he set them up for success for
48:50
the next several years because introducing Michael James Jackson to Kiss. They also found
48:57
Adam Mitchell as a songwriter. Wrote two songs on killers. I can't remember
49:01
which one Partners in Crime. I think you have it probably right now,
49:05
fight in front of the Here let's see. Adam Mitchell co wrote I'm a
49:09
Legend tonight with Paul. By the way, Ryan Adams part of the songwriting
49:15
team for Down on Your Knees, Yes Adams, Let's see. It wasn't
49:20
famous yet, yeah right, Yeah. He was working on the pre production
49:23
at that point for Cuts Like a Knife, which was the one that broke
49:27
him internationally. Yeah. Partners in Crime, Paul Stanley and it's credited to
49:31
Stanley Mitchell. Yeah so, and Adam Mitchell knew Michael James Jackson and that's
49:38
how he was brought in to the fold, the writing fold. They ran
49:43
into Brian Adams while they were doing pre production. They just happen to be
49:46
in the same studio more than anything, so that was happenstance. But Michael
49:52
James Jackson went on to work with Kiss later on in nineteen eighty seven for
49:55
Crazy Knights that album as well, So in a way, that set them
50:00
up for the next almost a decade because you have Michael James Jackson is going
50:05
to work put them on Killers, which came directly after The Elder. They
50:08
had to get that out really quickly, and it was only released in non
50:12
North American markets, and it was different tracks as well for different markets.
50:16
So the track listing in Japan is going to be different than the one Australia,
50:20
different than the one in Europe. And that was to meet contractual obligations
50:24
and fill that void, to also let people know that hey, Kiss is
50:29
still here, they can still rock. But most importantly is it sold.
50:32
It had better numbers than The Elder for Pete's sake. You know, it's
50:37
like wow, this is saying something about how The Elder was received by the
50:40
fans. But it also told PolyGram that this is still a viable group.
50:45
They can still sell albums, so let's get them back in the studio.
50:51
And that's where it leaves off. The book leaves off just as they're Okay,
50:54
we're at a crossroads now. If we don't deliver, we're in real
50:59
big trouble because if we do another Elder we may not have a record contract.
51:04
They make an album that I'm sure Eric was so happy with for two
51:07
reasons. One it's a flat out rock album, hard rock album. But
51:10
two he attains that bottom sound, which I'm sure you'll get to in the
51:15
next volume, which is Drums of Thunder nineteen eighty two to nineteen eighty six.
51:22
And there is a preview in the first volume right at the end.
51:24
Yeah, so in both the hardcover and the paperback. So the preview,
51:29
I think I had him in the studio. He was trying out different studios.
51:32
Gene and Eric just went to a bunch of different studios in La and
51:37
they were let's set up the drum and the bass and let's see what they
51:39
sound like. And they went into one studio didn't quite work, and Eric
51:43
said, well, let's open up this door, and it made the shape
51:45
of the room slightly different, and it was like, wow, that sounds
51:49
like a gunshot. Now now my snare sounds like a gunshot. It's just
51:52
got a snap to it. And he did a rumble on the bass drums
51:57
and it was just perfect. So that's how that all came about. And
52:00
then of course you're going to have the rest of you know, it's all
52:02
about micing and that different types of drums are using, and then of course
52:07
the mastering and everything else. Is there an expected release date for the next
52:12
volume, do you know? I'm trying to get this out in about a
52:15
year. Obviously, as you can see it's there's work done on it.
52:19
It's in pretty good shape. I am trying to get a couple of more
52:22
and I won't tell you who, a couple of more interviews that I think
52:24
will really round out what's happening for those albums, so that the next book
52:30
will cover Creatures Lick It Up, which was also produced by Michael James Jackson.
52:35
Then we have Analyze and Asylum, so it's going to cover four albums
52:39
and there's a lot going on there because just looking at the pictures of Eric,
52:43
you can see that all of a sudden, he's done from this eight
52:45
piece or whatever drum kit that's nice and silver and shiny, to all of
52:49
a sudden this kit that seems to explode. It's got all these electronic drums
52:53
in it, and so many more pieces as well. So I'll be looking
52:59
at him as the evolution have a drummer as well, and I do touch
53:01
upon that in this book because I wanted to get into the superhero thing and
53:06
the drum thing because being a drummer, it just fascinates me. I'm not
53:09
a drummer. I'm not a musician by any means, but if you think
53:13
about it, you gotta keep time. You're singing, your hands and feet
53:17
are going all over the place. How do you do that? And to
53:21
dive into some of the history of the drums like I did in this book,
53:24
like I talked about how the double bass came about. Ginger Baker and
53:30
Keith Moon went out to see a jazz band, Duke Kellington's jazz band,
53:34
and Hey, that guy's playing double bass. This is so cool. And
53:37
that's how it came into rock and roll. There's a YouTube channel too,
53:40
right, the ericar revealed YouTube channel. Yeah. What I do with the
53:44
YouTube channel is I have little snippets of interviews. I did not do these
53:47
interviews. Nothing on there belongs to me, copyright, you know, I
53:51
don't know any of it, And I just take little snippets of these interviews
53:53
and I put them up and then I put a little bit of trivia in
53:58
some background, and you know, in interesting stuff to it, and photos
54:01
of what it is that I'm talking about or what it is Eric is talking
54:05
about in these interviews. So yeah, I do that. And I'm also
54:08
on Facebook quite a lot. On the Eric Carr Revealed Facebook page. I
54:14
have people who have reading my book and they're sending me questions. Someone asked
54:17
me yesterday about the makeup that we were just talking about in the photos,
54:22
so on page forty blah blah blah. It's like, yeah, I sent
54:24
the photos to him. So yeah, I'm very interactive with the fans that
54:28
way. And I think there's just so much that Eric has to offer that
54:30
people just don't know about, and putting it up on Facebook and on YouTube
54:36
just opens up the world for Eric Carr fans and Kiss fans in general,
54:39
because understanding it's like I said in the book, it's like the origins of
54:45
the superhero because of the costume intery and all that and how that affected his
54:50
personality and that can come out in some of these comments that are on the
54:54
Facebook page. And awesome, what you'll find on the YouTube channel. So
54:59
there's more coming and it's going to be just as detailed as this. I'm
55:01
going to open up his personality bit more because we had that superhero persona that
55:07
sent all of a sudden taken away with the makeup, we got his evolution
55:10
of drumming. We got a whole bunch of stuff coming up. Well,
55:14
one last thing to ask you, Okay, what do you think of the
55:16
well, what did you think of the quote unquote Final Kiss show? And
55:21
what do you think of this avatar thing? So there was no mention of
55:23
Eric or any of the past members in that last show. Well, the
55:27
reason they don't have anything for Eric is because they don't own him anymore.
55:30
So what happened with that is I can't remember what year it was. I'd
55:36
have to think was that two thousand and to three maybe something like that.
55:42
The patent for Eric's Fox makeup they didn't renew its did not renew it,
55:46
and Vinnie Vincent wound up purchasing it. So they don't own anything for Eric.
55:53
I'm not too sure if they still own Eric Carr's name. I'm getting
55:58
the hit that they don't because Loretta has trademarked his signature, so I don't
56:04
think that Kiss can do anything without a licensing agreement at this point. I
56:08
don't know if Benny still owns the Eric Carr makeup, the Fox makeup.
56:13
And if you remember back, and I think it was two thousand and one
56:15
or two, they had the they called them the Creatures of the Night,
56:17
the McFarland dolls, you know, the little eight inch dolls, and they
56:21
were dressed up in the unmasked costumes, and Eric had his old Fox makeup,
56:27
the original one that he had used for the People magazine cover, not
56:31
the one that he used throughout the rest of his career, because Kiss can't
56:35
use that because they don't have the rights to use that. So that is
56:38
probably why there's no Eric Carr avatar, because they no longer have the rights
56:44
to it. I don't know why they decided to do that, why they
56:47
gave it all up to each in their own But I don't think you're going
56:52
to hear a whole lot of anything about Eric Carr from Kiss because he's no
56:57
longer part of the Kiss family because they don't own him any more. The
57:00
avatars are quite interesting. I can see them being a younger version of themselves
57:06
would be really cool. I'd love to be back. I saw Creatures of
57:10
the Night tour. Its fantastic. I'd love to do it again. Please
57:13
give me that. I'd also love to be in the Alive era. I'd
57:17
love to be in the audience for that as well. That'd be so cool.
57:21
Give me that. What they've done now with the avatars is they've made
57:23
them into superheroes, right. You can just see that by the way that
57:28
Gene is flying through the air with the wings and things like that. So
57:31
they're carrying on that superhero tradition, which is perfect for them. I mean,
57:36
if you look at what they did with the comic books and then kiss
57:38
Meets the Phantom, and you know the movie that they did, their comic
57:42
book come to life. So unfortunately, Eric won't be part of that.
57:45
In my estimation, I don't think he'll be part of that because he's no
57:49
longer part of the kids' family. The Rise of the Fox nineteen fifty to
57:52
nineteen eighty two The Extraordinary Life of Kisses second drummer Eric Carr revealed where can
57:57
people find the book? The people can find that book on Amazon. It's
58:00
available worldwide. As a paperback, as a hardcover, and as an ebook.
58:06
It will be out on Barnes and Noble in the States paperback version beginning
58:09
of January, the first week of January, and later on in the In
58:14
January it will be out on Apple Books. And I'll make sure I put
58:16
the link to your YouTube channel and also the Facebook page so people can reach
58:20
out to you. Oh yeah, just message me on my Facebook page,
58:22
the Eric car Revealed Facebook page. I'm happy to interact with people, and
58:27
you know, if you have a question, I'd be happy to answer the
58:29
best of my ability. Janet Simmons the author of the Rise of the Fox
58:34
and no relation to Jane Right. No, this is my real last name.
58:37
That's not his real last name. Janet, thanks so much. It's
58:42
great that you're such an Eric Carr fin and I think it's great that people
58:45
are still interested in him thirty three years after his death. So thank you
58:50
so much. That's it. It's in the books.