On September 18, 1983, the unfathomable happened. After a decade of Paul Stanley playing Starchild, Gene Simmons as the Demon, Peter Criss the Catman, and Ace Frehley’s Spaceman under sheets of makeup, KISS finally revealed their faces.
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By the early ’80s, the band had experienced a slump in their career, despite success with their 1982 album Creatures of the Night and hit “I Love It Loud,” and were looking for some kind of renaissance. On that fateful day, they revealed themselves during a press conference on MTV.
“To me, it doesn’t feel all that different,” said Stanley, “because I’ve seen these guys more often without makeup than I have with makeup.”
Simmons added, “It feels very very comfortable. I hope it seems that way. I feel fine about it.”
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‘Creature’ Comforts
Prior to their unveiling, by the late 1970s, each band member released an individual solo album in 1978, which was followed by three lackluster KISS releases—Dynasty in 1979, followed by Unmasked in 1980, and the more experimental Music from “The Elder” in 1981.
Original KISS members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss had also left the band before by the early 1980s and before the makeup came off. Frehley was already replaced by guitarist Vinnie Vincent on Creatures of the Night and drummer Eric Carr had already replaced Criss on Music from “The Elder.” Carr remained with KISS for nearly a decade through the band’s 1989 album Hot in the Shade before his death from heart cancer in 1991 at age 41.
‘Lick It Up’
When the band released Lick It Up in 1983, it was time to come clean, so to speak, and reveal their faces. “‘Let’s prove something to the fans. Let’s go and be a real band without makeup,'” said Stanley, according to Simmons in his 2001 book Kiss and Make-Up.
“I reluctantly agreed,” added Simmons. “I didn’t know if it was going to work, but I heard what Paul was saying. There was nowhere else for us to go. We did a photo session just to see what it would look like. We looked straight into the camera lens. We were defiant. I made one small concession to the fans: I stuck out my tongue, to try to keep something that connected us with the past.”
Stanley recently told American Songwriter why Simmons was more reluctant to wiping off the makeup at first.
“It was more difficult for Gene to take off the makeup because he was lost without it,” said Stanley. “He had created such a strong persona that it took another album and the lack of embracing of ‘Creatures’ by the public to make him realize that people were listening with their eyes and were tired of what they were seeing, and we needed to do something drastic.”
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In the end, Stanley’s inclination was right. Lick It Up sold three times more than Creatures of the Night and went gold in 1983 and eventually platinum by the end of the decade. Lick It Up peaked at No. 24 on the Billboard 200, and the band’s subsequent unmasked albums remained in the top 40 on the charts, including their 1992 album Revenge, which went to No. 6.
Making Up, Again
Throughout the remainder of the 1980s and most of the ’90s, the band had several lineup shifts during their bare-faced era. Guitarist Bruce Kulick also joined the band from their 1985 album Asylum through Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions in 1997, while Carr was replaced by Eric Singer, who has remained with the band since Revenge.
In 1998, the band returned to their painted faces on their 18th album Psycho Circus, a one-off album featuring all four original members. The album peaked at No. 3 on the 200 chart and KISS’ other personas have remained painted on since, through KISS’ 2009 album Sonic Boom and the band’s 20th and final album Monster in 2012—both featuring current guitarist Tommy Thayer—and through the closing of their farewell tour in 2023.
Photo by Robert Knight Archive/Redferns
