Compelling guitarist with the rock band Kiss whose ‘Spaceman’ persona matched his otherworldly performances
In May 1983, the guitarist Ace Frehley was driving his DeLorean sports car along the Bronx River Parkway in New York when he was asked to pull over by a police officer. In an intoxicated state, Frehley “sped off”, as the charge sheet later phrased it, reaching 90mph and colliding with four other cars. He was caught, arrested and charged with drunk and reckless driving.
“My licence was revoked, I had to pay a large fine, and I received a bunch of negative publicity,” he recalled, adding: “The other consequence was a court-ordered two-week stint in a hospital detox unit, and some mandatory AA meetings.”
Frehley, who has died aged 74, led a life punctuated by similar incidents, whether self-inflicted or inadvertent, such as a life-threatening electrocution that he narrowly survived on stage in 1976 with Kiss, the American rock band with whom he is most closely associated.
In December that year the group – then Frehley plus the drummer Peter Criss and bassist Gene Simmons, who shared lead vocals with the guitarist Paul Stanley – took to the stage at Lakeland Civic Center in Florida. Walking down a flight of steps, Frehley – somewhat unsteady on his feet – clutched a metal railing for balance. As was frequently the case in the pre-health-and-safety era, the railing was unearthed: a connection was made with his electric guitar and he suffered a serious shock, falling several feet to the ground. Recovering, he wrote the song Shock Me for Kiss’s 1977 album Love Gun.
