On October 16th, 2025, rock and roll lost a legend Ace Frehely who is the Former founder of KISS and lead guitarist of the group. Why should we care, you may ask? Because without him or KISS the world would see rock and roll differently and artists who became rock stars or music artists in general would never come to be. Ace, born in the 1950s, under the name of Paul Daniel Frehley, his entire family was talented with musical instruments.
Ace never officially learned how to play the guitar like many. He was Self-taught and that is what made him so unique in Rock N Roll. He was always into space and science fiction from an early age. He got the nickname Ace from his friends for landing them dates and getting dates with any girl.
At 14, ace went to his family cabin and tried alcohol for the first time, starting his prolonged battle with alcoholism. According to Ace all he uses to Drink is Alcohol till he quit in the 80s. He saw a Add in a newspaper for someone who can play lead guitar. He remembers his mom driving him there and him Carrying his amp and guitar up two flights of stairs. He had different shoes on and when he plugged in and played, it was a click, and he became the lead guitarist of KISS.
They worked on their album KISS, and ace had Cold Gin on the album. This is one of the most popular KISS songs to date. The second album hotter than hell, he crashed a car and walked to the studio with a huge gash on his head and played guitar for the album. He had parasite on the album and strange ways which he later gave to peter Criss. Parasite being another hit from ace and the bass guitarist Gene Simmons’ favorite KISS song.
The next album Dress to Kill he had no songs he made off the album, but Rock ‘N’ Roll All Night came off the album. Alive! It is the album that puts them on the map. This is the first live album from the group and ace became a staple from listening to it. From his guitar playing and solos off the albums. KISS has always been a better life than Recording.
Destroyer is the next album, which is their most popular album. It had songs like Detroit Rock City, Beth, God of Thunder. Ace did not have songs off the album same with the next album but in the Destroyer Tour in 1976 in Lakeland Florida he was walking down a stair on stage playing Detroit Rock City his Guitar malfunctioned and shocked him with 10,000 volts of electricity. He fell backwards, which saved his life.
He continued to play through the entire concert with his finger all black and no feeling. He wrote the song called shock me which is the first time he sang the album is called love gun it was released in 1977 it became a hit off the album the same with love gun and it was the first song a had a long solo almost 10 minutes long where he did all his tricks with the smoking guitar then using a pulley system he brought his guitar up in the air and shot it using his firework guitar and continued to play the song has become a staple and became one of the greatest hits albums of kiss.
During the 80s leading up to the 80s they released the album called dynasty where is had a song called 2000 man it was given to him by The Rolling Stones and it became another classic hit of his. During that time the kiss members decided to make solo albums of each of them and is was the one that everyone in the group thought he wouldn’t do well on besides Peter Chris and gene and Paul made fun of it saying if he needed help just ask because ace was always drunk and high so they thought he could never make an album.
So on the back of his solo album he wrote to gene and Paul and his album became the most successful in outselling the rest of them he had songs like New York groove RIP it out speeding back to my baby off of it New York groove being the most popular one which when they did a reunion tour they shut down the Brooklyn Bridge just so kids could perform a few songs on it on TV and New York group was one of them and it became a staple everywhere.
Angels on alive 2 had rocket ride which became another one of his big staple songs which was supposed to be on his solo album but he put it on a live too. Facebook dynasty wasn’t a good album to put out around that time June was working on a book and they decided to turn that book into a rock album which is highly disagreed with but he had no say in it became their worst album to date.
When a mask came out he had songs like torpedo girl and talked to me on it which led album did way better then oath which was the book album moon creature the night came out it’s never was part of that is left by then because he had two near death experiences with kiss and he felt like if he stayed with kiss he would have died even though the gene and Paul begged him to stay so they could make money.
Because he was the most popular member and everyone wanted to come to kiss just because of him so they kept him on creatures night picture for the album. Peter left around that time too so they put a different drummer called Eric Carr he did the album Ace loved Eric so when a user left it broke apart the group and they went unmasked which means they took off their makeup for the first time and the group did not so well without a face.
Ace would only have like successful solo career he got drug free and alcohol free around that time during the solo career it stated in his book that they put so much sedation into him to get him off the drugs and everything that it would have been enough to kill 2 elephants that told you how much abuse his body had been through since the age of 14.
He also would get in constant crashes while in kiss in DeLorean he would make interviews funny and joke around and movies such that he was on with chaos was as gene put it with Paul completely unprofessional because of ace and Peter joking around and making a joke out of everything which made everyone love the group more even though Paul and gene hated it ace became the most fan favorite.
His solo career was completely successful having songs that Electric Light Orchestra gave him call do ya and other Hibs. When the group decided to get back together in 1995 they did a live performance acoustic and from there 1996 at the Grammys my favorite rapper Tupac Shakur introduced kiss and it became a pivotal moment in rock history.
For the greatest rock performance band they come back every show that they listed from there on immediately sold out in seconds who sold out Madison Square Garden for four nights in a row every rock band and every rock star said when they heard kids came back they stepped down from their throne to let kids pass them.
Ace sadly got back onto his addictions which led him to quitting kids again in 2001 Peter stayed until 2004 those two weren’t on good terms at all due to the fact that they were under contract with kiss and is being paid more than Peters so they had a falling out.
Paul and gene tried to cover up as left by replacing them with Tommy Thayer who put on Ace’s outfit and makeup and people were outraged when they found out it wasn’t ace because they paid the see him not someone else.
When Peter left he Peter tried to renew his contract Paul would not let him renew his contract so Peter left and kiss fell apart from there. Gene and Ace kept in contact and they did vault experiences together where they would do charity and they would play together and have a good time.
Paul did not have such a good relationship with ace due to when ace released his book called no regrets where he went over his entire life and how he had to get people to help him remember his life. He said he destroyed enough furniture to furnish three whole houses.
Ace also went over the horrible stuff that Paul did with Jean to Peter and him and the rest of the members released their own books Paul being the last one where Paul painted himself as the perfect member and he did nothing wrong and he put the blame on everybody else but himself.
So when kids did the reunion tour AKA their last tour ever the fans wanted to see the original 4 together but Paul would not let Ace come back or Peter to come back because he felt that they weren’t worthy of that because of the stuff in the past.
He only let aides come back for a final show just to play 3 songs then leave 8th declined because he did not want to be near a person who copied everything we did which he’s meaning Tommy Thayer because he did not want to do the fans disrespect.
Ace continued to have a wonderful solo career gene let him take over his spare band that Jean used to play with and they got to play with Ace and they became Ace Frehely band.
They continued to release albums in cover songs of different bands he’s had his most popular album release in 2024 called 10,000 volts where he had songs like 10,000 volts, cherry medicine back in my arms again which was supposed to be on his original solo album.
Recently aids had a brain bleed in the studio and fell he was rushed to the hospital where hours later they pulled the plug on him the only people that were in the room when that happened was his daughter his old ex-wife Peter Chris and his wife in there kid with A’s daughters kids so his granddaughters were all there when they pulled the plug.
This hit the world hard because of how influential he was ace will always be remembered as a rock God and an inspiration to many of the rock’n’roll people we have today.
A lot of people still talk about his death he has books coming out everyone in the rock world paid respects to their fallen God it will be in the hearts of many and many more to come.
As people said is most likely in heaven playing rock’n’roll to the angels and a quote that he always said to himself is he lived life without a regret and you should always that is the best way to live life is not to regret anything in life because it slows you down.
This hit me the hardest because he helped me get through tough times I’ve met him in person as well as got my guitar signed by him and he was the reason why I picked up a guitar and fell in love with old music.
Ace will always be an inspiration no matter how far in the future it is as long as his music is still around he will always be with everybody.