By BRENDAN CRABB
THE descriptor “prolific” is utilised far too liberally in writing circles – but Canadian author Martin Popoff fits the bill. At approximately 7900 [with more than 7000 appearing in his books], Popoff claims to have written more record reviews than anybody in the history of music writing across all genres.
Additionally, he’s penned approximately 135 books on hard rock, heavy metal, classic rock, prog, punk and record collecting. Among his latest works is KISS ’76: Twelve Months That Defined the Hottest Band in the Land. The book covers perhaps the most significant 12-month span in KISS’s career, 50 years on, as the hard rock superstars toured extensively and released landmark albums Destroyer and Rock and Roll Over.
Popoff gave us the lowdown on the book, why 1976 was such a pivotal year for KISS, the group’s recent End of the Road tour and more.
Hot Metal: The new book celebrates 1976, which was a monumental year in the band’s history. Were you already a fan by that point? What are your recollections of that year in KISStory?
Martin Popoff: “Yeah, I was already a fan. I got the debut album as a new release. I remember getting it, not knowing anything about this band and it turned out to be pretty heavy. Because in ’74, I would have been 11 years old, and we were already – me and a few buddies – …pretty heavy-duty music fans by that point. And there wasn’t much of it to get. This was a pretty heavy album and of course the make-up and everything was crazy. But that album is pretty uniformly hard rock and heavy metal throughout the whole thing. There weren’t very many heavy American bands, that’s for sure. You’ve got your Montrose, Aerosmith starting out and you’ve got some early Blue Oyster Cult but basically the best stuff at that point was Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Nazareth and all those kinds of bands. I was already a fan by ’76, getting everything as a new release. Now ’76 is a great year because Alive!, that happened, they were already a big band by this point. Destroyer had that great title, that great album cover. On the inside, you could apply and join the KISS Army. I did that as well. But I do remember that album being what we call a peaks and valleys album, where there were songs on there that were completely dead to me because they were just completely mellow songs, like ‘Great Expectation’s and ‘Beth’. So those were total throwaways to us as kids. And then some of their most sophisticated, coolest, heaviest songs that they ever did, like ‘Detroit Rock City’ and ‘King of the Night Time World’, ‘God of Thunder’. So, it had better songs than most old KISS songs and it had worse songs than most old KISS songs. It was a huge year. I had a Circus subscription by that point – and they were all over Circus – and we were always buying Hit Parader and Creem. KISS was kind of the biggest band, the hottest band in the land, but not particularly our favourite band. I remember loving Aerosmith possibly more,and better albums – mathematically or objectively – were things like Rainbow Rising, Sad Wings of Destiny. We loved Sabbath, of course, as well. But yeah, KISS was still a big deal.”
HM: You have written other books about KISS. What motivated you to focus on this particular 12 months?
MP: “There are so many books out on KISS and KISS fans are very demanding and scholarly. And it was just a fresh approach. I think this was my idea actually, but [publisher] Quarto is always looking for different ideas. They had the illustrated history. I did KISS at 50 and I’ve done Guns N’ Roses at 40 and Bowie at 75. So, they have these nice encapsulated, cool, different ideas. And I also wanted to point out the fact that if you’re growing up as a KISS fan, there’s all kinds of great other pop culture stuff going on and other music going on. And I wanted to remind people, tap them on the shoulder and say, obviously, there are much bigger bands than KISS, even at that time. KISS did not sell a lot of records particularly, but they sold a lot of tickets and they were on the covers of magazines because of the way they looked, they looked bigger than they kind of were. But I want to remind people that there’s other things going on as well.”
HM: You referenced it there: the sections of the book investigating what else was happening in the world – musically, politically, in sport – at the time are an interesting touch. Was it important to place the band’s achievements in context?
MP: “Yeah, what I like about it – and what KISS fans are saying – it’s a different, fresh approach and it’s something they haven’t read before. But I think fans really get into it because they’re reminded of what movies they were into, what TV shows were on, and who won the World Series and the Super Bowl, and up here in Canada, the Grey Cup. I think that was a cool thing about it, that it’s a love letter to 1976 and if you were growing up through that era, KISS was just part of the whole thing and this is a reminder of all those other cool things you were into as a kid – the toys, all that kind of stuff. What tragedies were happening, what’s happening a little bit in politics and whatnot.
HM: KISS has now released an official recording [with accompanying merch, of course] of the Anaheim stadium show from August 1976. Obviously, this show has been heavily bootlegged over the years, but what do you think of the finished [official] product?
MP: “It sounds great. This is a really good use of AI and – more importantly – it’s kind of been an accepted use of AI. So, this has been cleaned up by using AI apparently, and it sounds amazing, and it doesn’t sound forced or weird or anything like that. There’s such a backlash against AI music and AI art, and that typical illustration aesthetic we get. It’s a really cool use of AI, and I think this is one area or another area, I suppose that KISS has been ground-breaking. So yeah, it’s pretty useful.”
HM: Listening to that live album, they sound full of energy and fire. Were the band perhaps never that truly invigorating a live spectacle ever again?
MP: “I don’t know. I think they had some fire in them when Bruce Kulick was in the band, and Eric Carr. I think those guys helped Gene [Simmons] and Paul [Stanley] stay current and stay young. I think they had that fire later on as well. I mean, definitely there’s going to be tensions in the band with Ace and Peter and I think their skills probably degraded a little bit. But yeah, this is at the height of just before everybody was starting to get kind of tired, so this is probably that excitement, the excitement of the first major fame and they’re still young. The band’s only three years old at this point, and that’s pretty cool.”
HM: To use an outdated expression, was there a time after 1976 whereby you feel KISS “jumped the shark”? The telemovie? Solo albums? Releasing a disco-influenced track? Ace Frehley and Peter Criss’ departure?
MP: “Yeah, all of those things. The movie was kind of a fail. Nobody particularly liked it. The solo albums were kind of a fail too; all these guest stars and everything and not particularly heavy. You add it all up and it sounded like a pretty poppy KISS album, essentially. They spent almost too much time being pretty much the quintessential hair metal band. They had the grunge album eventually. The reunion album wasn’t very good, so they jumped the shark lots of times, I suppose. If I had to pick one, it would be the solo albums. That seemed like a pretty crazy, bombastic thing to do.
HM: In more recent times, did you see KISS during the End of the Road tour?
MP: “I’m not a big concert guy. I don’t go to a lot of shows but I did see them on the ’96 reunion tour and that was pretty cool. Don’t remember a lot about it but I watched a lot of video and it gets depressing watching these guys get old and puffy and faking the vocals. That was such a distraction, just watching them all talk about, or watch the fans grouse about recording to tape and finding the flubs and stuff like that. I essentially see bands, I find my curiosity level goes after two, three, four times seeing a band. I don’t even care where it is, or when. I’m into seeing them on YouTube. You get better views; you get better sound. Concert sound is horrible. I always liken it to driving a car with the gas floored and the brake floored at the same time, because you’re in there, the gas is floored because of how loud it is, the brake is floored because you’re putting in earplugs. So, the sound is never good, as compared to what you can regulate and get on YouTube, and often just off of an iPhone sounds better.”
HM: How do you view the band’s sale to Pophouse and continuing to exist as an entity that performs at fan events such as the one in Las Vegas?
MP: “Yeah, I’m not crazy about the fan event thing. I’ve often said that a good thing that bands should do is go out and do the interview circuit tour and that’s really happening a lot. You look at Geddy Lee, who was super successful at that, Bruce Dickinson. But I think selling your catalogue is a prudent thing to do at some point. I hope they do a good job of being an AI band. That would be kind of cool to see as well and be ground-breaking in the legality of it and be one of these sanctioned AI bands where you’re in there making the stuff yourself using AI. That would be kind of cool to see.”
HM: You’ve been a prolific writer of books and other content related to hard rock and heavy metal for decades now. Does it ever feel like a “job”, or do you feel akin to a lucky fan who caught a break?
MP: “Yeah, it’s definitely a very fun job. I often say I’m just somebody scribbling about other people’s accomplishments and that’s not a great thing. I want to do more art. Strangely, I suppose I missed my calling where I could have been very fanatical about being a musician myself but I feel like along the years I’m kind of being that way about art too. I never really thought, it’s never crossed my mind to really want to do fiction writing. So, it is a great job. It’s a cool job. You get to meet your heroes and interview them and all that stuff and I like books more than magazine journalism or web journalism because you get something evergreen that lasts forever, so it’s there. [Some] people think it’s more important and kind of is I suppose, because it does have this lasting thing and you can reissue it and update it and all that stuff. I also often say that I’m just somebody who ran a fan club and then managed to turn it into a job. Only my fan club is for all of these bands a little bit, rather than one band a lot, kind of thing. Or you could say I’ve been somebody who’s been able to turn something everybody would do for free – being a fan of music – and making it a paying job. So that’s kind of cool too. It has been a cool job, but in perspective… It is just talking about other people’s accomplishments, but it’s kind of cool. When I look at my big rack of 140 books done in a bunch of different languages, I think, ‘wow, it wasn’t a complete waste of time’.”
HM: [Laughs] Can you tell us about any other book projects you’ve currently got in the works?
MP: I just had Metallica: Album by Album come out and I just had Unchain Your Brain! The Gillan Story come out. Also, right as I’m speaking now, a new Aerosmith book is coming out, Aerosmith ‘72 to ‘82 – The Colombia Years, and Punk and New Wave Record Ads. I love the ads; they’re throughout all my books. I even have cut out ads and gone in record shows with [them] just alphabetised and put in plastic sleeves with cardboard backing ads, and so I love ads. I’ve had them in dozens and dozens of my books, but now I’ve got a series of four of those coming out. And that’s all I can really mention because often I allow the publishers to announce things when they want. But I do have about another five or so in the works that are coming out, and some really big, really nice things like this KISS ‘76, essentially that are still to come out.
