You Pulled The Trigger Of My Love Gun, Pt. 1
You Pulled The Trigger Of My Love Gun, Pt. 1
Kicking off a short series exploring the quiet days just preceding KISS's reconquest of the world
Fantasy artist Ken Kelly passed way last week. Among many other career highlights, he was responsible for one of the greatest album covers ever created in terms of pure visual impact and visceral marketing magic.
I’m speaking, of course, of DESTROYER, the 1976 audio comic book that enlisted me into the KISS Army (we’ve been down this road before; see also KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, and We Meet Ben's Creepy Guy).
How do you not get sucked in to something like this when you’re eleven years old?
So, prompted by the great work left for us by artist Ken Kelly, here is a revisitation of a revisitation of KISS.
Down, But Not Out
This is a tale originally told in the quiet days just preceding Kiss’s reconquest of the world. We’re talking about the mid-90s — the just-this-side-of-tragic no makeup period.
Try to get your head around the numbers. A quarter century ago, KISS — a band that is, as of this writing, on a very successful world tour — was washed up; a “blast from the past” joke. Their very first album came out in 1974; by the mid-90s they were nostalgia. There wasn’t much of a “warm and fuzzy” vibe toward a band largely perceived as shallow puppets going through the motions, complete with “Starchild” Paul Stanley resorting to onstage profanity in order to appear “edgy.”
So, imagine it’s 1995, and you’ve been called upon to write a magazine feature about the underground phenomena that was KISS collectibles and fandom. Apparently, there were people out there who still dug the band in this fallow period — or at least their merch.
An odd thing happened as I did my research for the article. At one point, Karen Lesniewski,
who ran something called the New England KISS Collector’s Network with her then-husband, John, and was co-author of Kiss Collectibles: Identification and Price Guide (which you can get on Amazon for a mere $185 as of June 5th, 2022), mentioned offhandedly during a phone conversation that “Gene will want to talk to you.”
“Gene… SIMMONS?” I laughed.
“Yeah,” she answered, completely unphased. “He likes to get involved in these things. So, we’ll set up a time that works for both of you.”
This was… interesting. I’d talked to plenty of famous people before — heck, I chatted with Donny Osmond about GI Joe— but this was somehow different.
It was as if Batman was planning to call.
Let’s travel back in time even further…
Pivotal Life Moment: The Needle Drops
1976. My family is at my aunt and uncle’s house visiting, and I’ve brought along a Ringo Starr greatest hits 8-track tape. My older cousin, Larry, has always liked Ringo and the Beatles, owns an 8-track player, and I’m thinking trade for some vinyl to spin on my spankin’ new Realistic stereo.
I’d been through Larry’s record collection many times on past visits; Partridge Family, Elton John, even some Davy Jones. One cover popped out at me time and time again, however—a painting of four costumed, white faced demons rising from smoking rubble. It looked ominous and creepy in the way a Warren comic book cover would, on the drugstore rack that also contained National Lampoon and Playboy. I could scarcely imagine what kind of music could be contained inside, and figured it had to be way over my pre-pubescent head.
Ringo meant nothing to me, and Larry didn’t seem attached to the strange “demons” album; a swap was made. When my family returned home very late that night, my dad insisted that I put the platter on the living room console stereo. This was not a matter of censorship or screening; he simply liked to guffaw at “hippie music.”
I was a little nervous as I dropped the needle on side one and took a position on the floor between the speakers.
Out came the sounds of what I took to be dishes being washed; then, a radio news voiceover (“...And in Detroit, a Pontiac, Michigan youth was reported dead at the scene of a head-on collision on Grand Avenue this morning....”).
Was this going to be some sort of scripted audio drama?
Now the sounds of a car being started. It seemed very quiet, hard to hear, so my dad turned it up—way up.
We heard the car accelerate; the driver appeared to hum along to a song coming from his radio.
Electric guitars snuck up to true, monstrous fidelity.
The room shook. Bashing cymbals. A galloping riff. Classic tension-release.
“Get up!” roared our old Zenith, accustomed to issuing the contents of laid back country albums and 8-tracks.
“Whoa...” my dad muttered as he reached again for the volume, his curiosity quenched.
“Whoa…” I thought to myself. That little burst was all it took—I needed the volume back up there. My ears were still tingling as I plugged in the headphones.
“...I got to laugh ‘cause I know I’m gonna die. WHY?”
Get up. Get down. You gotta lose your mind in Detroit. Rock City.
I stared at the cover of the album. In my head the four white-faced demons flailed away at guitars and drums, flying over a burning landscape while never touching the ground.
The first track ended with a car crash. Then, another song buzzed into being.
“It’s so bad going to school, so far from me and the dirty things that we done...”
Yeah. “Long live your secret dream.” Fade out.
And then, another incongruity — a child’s voice:
“Okay, now start singing.”
Plodding, thudding riff (honestly - thud is the first thing that comes to mind).
Squealing noises. Sound effects — was that a… hockey puck being launched in an echo chamber?
A voice from the pit of darkness:
“You’ve got something about you. You’ve got something I need....”
Drums rolling like thunder. A snare snapping martial rhythm. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.
“Daughter of Aphrodite, hear my words and take heed...”
Born in a wasteland. Raised by the demon. A modern day man of steel.
“The spell you’re under will slowly rob you of your virgin soul.”
Indeed.
Rock and roll!
I had been delivered… and side one wasn’t even over yet.
On to Part 2 …
She unfortunately passed away after a battle with cancer in 2011, and her post-divorce name was Karen Hatch-Taylor.