Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / How Bob Ezrin Turned 'Destroyer' Into KISS’s Breakthrough [Highlight From Episode 360]

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How Bob Ezrin Turned 'Destroyer' Into KISS’s Breakthrough [Highlight From Episode 360] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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  Speaker 1: Here's a quick highlight from our latest episode of Booked
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  Speaker 1: on Rock. Martin Popoff, the author of Kiss seventy six,
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  Speaker 1: twelve months that defined the hottest band in the land.
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  Speaker 1: Let's get to Ezra now. March of seventy six, Kiss
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  Speaker 1: released Destroyer. You're right, the Kiss came into the sessions
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  Speaker 1: with a large batch of songs. Ezren rejected most of them.
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  Speaker 1: The result is a batch of songs created under his vision.
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  Speaker 1: Could Destroyer have become such a landmark record without Ezrin's
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  Speaker 1: heavy handed guidance.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean, it is my favorite
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  Speaker 2: Kiss album. It's a lot of people's favorite Kiss albums,
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  Speaker 2: but it is a bit of a loved and hated album.
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  Speaker 2: And interestingly, when it came out, there were some bad
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  Speaker 2: reviews and to the point where Kiss fired ezran Off
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  Speaker 2: of the next album blamed him for this crappy album
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  Speaker 2: quote unquote. But of course now it is the most
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  Speaker 2: celebrated Kiss album. I think it's the one that people
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  Speaker 2: think has the most brains behind it. It's got the
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  Speaker 2: most dynamic range all the way from you know, the
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  Speaker 2: super quietness of Beth with no drums whatsoever, to some
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  Speaker 2: of their heaviest songs certainly probably most of their heaviest
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  Speaker 2: songs yet in Uh Gott a Thunder Detroit Rock City,
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  Speaker 2: King of the nighttime World mainly, and that and the
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  Speaker 2: heaviness was advanced by this this slightly wider, more exciting range,
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  Speaker 2: even to the heavy end of things. But it had
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  Speaker 2: a lot of ear candy on it as well. Uh
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  Speaker 2: critics still they didn't particularly like it. But now but
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  Speaker 2: now they weren't calling Kiss a boy band. They were
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  Speaker 2: calling them pretentious, you know, as as if like this
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  Speaker 2: is almost too smart in a way. But but but
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  Speaker 2: it was like fake smart. So that so so that happened.
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  Speaker 2: But as we know, and then you know, the deep
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  Speaker 2: angry headbanger fans revolted big time against great expectations, and
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  Speaker 2: Bath hated them, as I did, but I but I
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  Speaker 2: I realized, you know, Detroit Rock City is clearly the
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  Speaker 2: most sophisticated, cool new song that they ever did. And
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  Speaker 2: and just the production in general is really good. You know,
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  Speaker 2: Kiss had kind of an odd seventies glam production. Hodd
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  Speaker 2: and Hell had that turgid, obscure sound muddy, and then
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  Speaker 2: you know, people think dressed to kills a little bit
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  Speaker 2: too to clean and neat and polite, and then people
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  Speaker 2: think a live sounds great, but this sounded like properly
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  Speaker 2: dynamically great, like just good highs and good lows. It
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  Speaker 2: was just a good sounding record. And yeah, a lot
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  Speaker 2: of this came down to Bob Azron. He did a
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  Speaker 2: lot of this kind of thing with Alice Cooper. Not
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  Speaker 2: the greatest sounding albums, the Alice Cooper albums, but the
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  Speaker 2: first really good sounding Alice Cooper album to my ears
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  Speaker 2: is Welcome to My Nightmare and Destroyer to me feels
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  Speaker 2: almost like Welcome to My Nightmare Part two. It just
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  Speaker 2: there's just so much about it that you can compare.
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  Speaker 2: And I believe how did that some podcast maybe one
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  Speaker 2: of my own podcast episodes are our video Channel Contrarians.
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  Speaker 2: I did a whole comparison between the two, and they
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  Speaker 2: just seem really, really really alike.
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  Speaker 1: Oh I gotta check that out. Yeah, well, this is
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  Speaker 1: probably a good time to ask you about Kim Fowley.
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  Speaker 1: He's among the exclusive interviews for this book talk about
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  Speaker 1: his contributions to the Story of Kiss in nineteen seventy six.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a crazy guy. He seemed a little
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  Speaker 2: bit mentally ill. I interviewed him and he is a
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  Speaker 2: very boastful guy as well, and you know, wanted to
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  Speaker 2: make sure his legacy was in kind of on it.
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  Speaker 2: So there's just the elliptical do you Love Me story
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  Speaker 2: co write Kim Foully and stuff. He's not a big
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  Speaker 2: part of this, this whole thing, and he's part of
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  Speaker 2: the Runaways of course, as well as a manager of
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  Speaker 2: that band and then what Venus and the Razor Blade.
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  Speaker 2: So he's got his hands in a few things here
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  Speaker 2: and there, more as a co writer or almost like
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  Speaker 2: shilling this song and trying trying to get it over
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  Speaker 2: over into the band. So yeah, he's he's just one
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  Speaker 2: of these strange guys along the way. You know, Kiss
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  Speaker 2: Kiss has an interesting history. So you know, if you
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  Speaker 2: if you go through the credits all throughout that there's
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  Speaker 2: all like who was that guy? Who's that guy?
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  Speaker 1: They care?
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  Speaker 2: Who's Stan Penridge? You know who, what's Vinnie Pozzia, what's
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  Speaker 2: the what's he all about? Where are all these people are?
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  Speaker 2: Seon Delaney? What is that? You know? Uh? And and
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  Speaker 2: so it's he's just another one of these characters along
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  Speaker 2: the way.
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  Speaker 1: Who's the guitarist that was with Alice that was on
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  Speaker 1: some of the Kiss Records O Dick Wagner, Yeah, Wagner's
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  Speaker 1: some yah're in here.
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  Speaker 2: So Bob Azron has this has this good thing about
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  Speaker 2: him is like he will he will crack the whip
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  Speaker 2: if you're not if you're not doing well, he will
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  Speaker 2: just say I'm going to replace you, and it'll he'll
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  Speaker 2: threaten you with that. And so he made all these
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  Speaker 2: guys work hard, and uh, you know, I think I
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  Speaker 2: think everybody in the band appreciated it after the fact,
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  Speaker 2: but during you know, it's more like it was more
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  Speaker 2: like the guys with their head screwed on straight, I e.
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  Speaker 2: Gene and Paul realized this is good for us, and
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  Speaker 2: and you know, As and Peter were more of the complainers, thinking, oh,
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  Speaker 2: this is too much work. You know, we we'd rather
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  Speaker 2: we we rather drink and do drugs kind of thing
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  Speaker 2: and and not not work this hard and let's be
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  Speaker 2: a little more spunk taneous. But after the fact that
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  Speaker 2: you know, everybody kind of spoke well, the experience, Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: we kind of needed that, we kind of needed to
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  Speaker 2: be whipped into shape a little bit.
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  Speaker 1: Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.