Thank you, Ace.

Blog manager Tom thanks his childhood guitar hero, the one and only Ace Frehley, for being real.

Paul “Ace” Frehley, KISS’s founding lead guitarist, passed away yesterday. Last week he fell in his studio and never recovered. He was 74 years old.

I thought about how to approach this, and there’s only one way, and that’s to thank Ace. You see, much like Ozzy (who we lost earlier this year), we had an extended period of time with Ace. He should have died decades ago. His battles with substance abuse were no secret, and ultimately led to his dismissal from the band that made him a guitar hero. But his fans never waivered, and stood behind Ace, literally, until the day he died.

In order to truly understand the phenomena that was ACE FREHLEY, you have to understand that most of Gen X was preteen when they discovered KISS, and in turn Ace. We didn’t know what made a person a good or great guitarist, we only knew KISS. They were one part superhero, one part rock star, and the enigma around their identities enamored us. The band played catchy songs we could sing along with, and Ace looked cool as fuck with that spaceman outfit.  Oh, and his guitar spit sparks and smoke (#TalkAboutThisMoreLater).

Ace Frehley wasn’t a hero because he did good things. You see, there was a time when Ace was a drunken fool who initially didn’t truly appreciate his position in pop culture or that he was a role model to thousands of young people. He was an admitted sloppy guitarist who abused not only drugs and booze, but his fan base as a result. Ace was a hero because he did everything wrong… and lived to tell about it. In turn, he gave us the example of what NOT to do. Thank you, Ace, for taking one for the team and showing us what could happen if we did these things.

Ace was the epitome of the rock star out of control. Live television interviews often featured him drunk and incoherent. He was so hammered during the filming of KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, his screen time was cut to a minimum. He chronicled this reckless alcoholism in the song Rock Soldiers, telling the story of his wrong way trip down a one-way street in Manhattan, and the alley wall he rammed into. Ace survived the crash, much to everyone’s surprise. I reiterate, thank you, Ace, for showing us what would happen if we did these things, without fucking dying as a result.

Ace never took his status as a guitar hero seriously. If he had, he might have tried to grow as a guitarist and song writer, as he told GUITAR WORLD in an interview last year. And this was part of his appeal, I think. He was sloppy, he was raw, and he approached each song like a self-taught kid in a garage band might… because fundamentally that’s what Ace was. Which made him like all of us who adored him. Thank you, Ace, for simply being a real person in spite of the over the top rock persona you had.

Frehley’s ability to write a simple riff, his presence on stage, and his gimmick guitars directly influenced many guitarists from the late Dime Bag Darrell Abbot to myself. I finally got to see him live last year, a bucket list show to be sure. He relied on his band to cover up his flaws, and that was okay by me. At 73 years young, shaking from years of alcohol abuse, he still rocked hard, and gave me one last life lesson as a pop culture hero… thank you Ace, for never giving up.