When The Earth Was Young, They Were Already Old

40 Years Of Music From The Elder

I remember it as if it were only days ago. It was November 11 1981 and my last day of school before summer holidays. It had turned out to be a good year for yours truly and I was excited to kick off the summer holidays with the brand new KISS album. Even at this early point before the fans had even heard the album, it was mired in controversy, rumour and a foreboding sense that all was not right over at KISS HQ.

In Australia, the band had just come off the biggest tour of their career. Throughout 1979 and 1980, KISS was the biggest thing to hit Australia since The Beatles. The level of fandom was quite overwhelming so by the time the 1980 tour had finished, most of the fickle KISS Army had jumped ship. The plethora of KISS merchandise was relegated to bargain bins even tho today, some of these bargain bin items command serious dollars amongst collectors.

Whilst the mania of 1980 had faded, there was still a buzz about what KISS was up to and the forthcoming album called ‘Music From The Elder’. Reports were coming through that the band were to remove the makeup. Or that they would now appear with only half their faces made up. Or that they had now cut their hair and were doing softer music.

Some of those rumours turned out to be true.

The new KISS look in 1981. Lean, mean and… different!

The first taste we in Australia got off The Elder was the song ‘I’. A great rocking tune that was pretty typical of KISS. Softer music indeed! ‘I’ was moderately successful and managed to reach number 1 on the request charts before the album’s release. The song was received favourably by both fans and media, but with no video to promote it, the momentum it was gathering soon waned. I loved the song and the singing verse switching by Gene and Paul rekindled memories of ‘Shout It Out Loud’.

I intently listened to the drumming wanting to hear how Eric sounded on record. Years later we found out that Eric’s drumming on the track was not by Eric but by Allan Schwartzberg. The band citing that Eric just couldn’t find the right groove for the song.

The video for ‘I’ was shelved and remained in hoarder heaven for decades only surfacing recently to fans and the general populace. It is a strange video and one that doesn’t really make any sort of sense. One can understand why the band had shelved it for all these years.

After the initial buzz of the first single, the album landed and for the most part, was a resounding commercial failure on a global scale.

To further confuse matters, the album had different sequencing on the Australian pressing and the US pressing. The Australian track sequencing is what I first heard and got used to over the years. Anything else and it begins to sound like a record on shuffle. For mine, The Elder will ALWAYS be:

SIDE A

1. The Oath
2. Fanfare
3. Just A Boy
4. Dark Light
5. Only You
6. Under The Rose

SIDE B

1. A World Without Heroes
2. Mr Blackwell
3. Escape From The Island
4. Odyssey
5. I

Whereas the International version was sequenced like this:

SIDE A

1. Fanfare
2. Just A Boy
3. Odyssey
4. Only You
5. Under The Rose

SIDE B:

1. Dark Light
2. A World Without Heroes
3. The Oath
4. Mr Blackwell
5. I

left to right: US Pressing and Australian Pressing Track Sequencing

I guess the correct sequencing is what is ultimately on the US and global pressing but as stated, I just cannot get used to it like that so whenever I spin the album, it is always the Australian Pressing.

The Australian Pressing also was the only one that came with an inner sleeve featuring photos of the band and their new look. Early pressings also had a KISS Army Membership form but by they time the album reached the hands of the fans, the KISS Army is Australia was dead and buried being replaced by the Countdown Club. KISSTERIA was over. Below is my personal copy of the album which I bough back in 1981. (see below)

Australian pressing with the inner sleeve and the KISS Army Membership form

 

The US Pressing featured a plastic inner sleeve with all the album credits featured on it. A handy guide of all who worked on the album and this information is nowhere to be seen on the Australian pressing. (see below)

The US Pressing with the plastic credits sleeve.

The Japanese version of the LP had an outer full sleeve OBI sheet with pictures of the band. The album also came with some promotional stickers. (see below)

Japanese Pressing with full OBI sheet and promotional stickers.

The Elder reunited KISS with legendary Destroyer producer Bob Ezrin  and it featured lyrics by none other than Lou Reed on “Mr. Blackwell,” “Dark Light,” and “A World Without Heroes.” It was even intended to be a fantastical feature film starring of-the-moment Meatballs/My Bodyguard teen actor Chris Makepeace as the Boy and possibly Patrick Stewart as Morpheus, according to Simmons. But the album, KISS ninth, wasn’t at all what fans wanted from the band, and it utterly bombed upon its release on Nov. 10, 1981.

KISS did not tour Music From “The Elder” — the first KISS album to not go gold in the U.S. — and they have rarely performed any of its tracks in the years since, aside from a memorable “A World Without Heroes” on MTV Unplugged in 1995. Original guitarist Ace Frehley, who reportedly hurled a tape of The Elder against a wall after his solos were edited out of the final mix, left the lineup soon after the record’s failure. And needless to say, that Elder movie never happened. Makepeace did record some spoken dialogue for the album, but his contributions also didn’t make the cut, and all he got was a mysterious “thank you” in the sleeve’s credits.

Paul Stanley: We were lost. We were delusional. We had become complacent and kind of ungrateful for the success that we had and what it was based on. So, we were lazy, and I think we had all become very comfortable in a rich, so to speak, lifestyle, and became more concerned with how our contemporaries viewed us rather than our fans. And I think the fans were forsaken. We couldn’t make a rock album. We had no teeth. We were gumming at that point.

Gene Simmons: When you do anything, you want authenticity and honesty. That was a dishonest record. … The Elder was misdirected. We were very popular and played stadiums and stuff. And when we had a change in the lineup — [Peter Criss] had succumbed to some of the cliches and the rock ‘n’ roll, and all of us, Ace and Paul and myself, voted for him to be out of the band. So we got a new guy, Eric [Carr], God bless him, who unfortunately passed away. And we had some time off. And I was at the Beverly Hills Hotel, of all places, because I started to fool around with movies and meeting those kinds of people — going to Paramount, all that stuff. And eventually I’d wind up doing a few movies and producing some, but it wasn’t the real thing for me. And I started writing. And the first thing I wrote was on the Beverly Hills Hotel stationery: “The Elder, when the Earth was young, they were already old.” It started with a story treatment that I wanted to turn into a movie — a Tolkien-esque of a thing, with inspiration from The Watcher from Marvel and so on. … We brought Bob Ezrin back, who had produced possibly our best record, Destroyer, up until then. … It was Bob Ezrin who said, “Let’s do a concept record. Gene, I like your story. Let’s craft songs based on your story.”

Stanley: When we got together with Bob Ezrin, I’m really hoping that he would help us save the ship, so to speak. We all just jumped on this idea of, “Well, we’ll show people! We’ll show them how smart and musical we are!” That really came from going, “Well, we can’t at the moment — we can’t rock.” … You can’t get away from Bob’s discography and his credits, whether it was really shaping Alice [Cooper] and the band into what they were. I mean, I saw that firsthand when we worked together on Destroyer. … Bob was intrinsic and so important, certainly to Alice. And, The Wallis a testament to his brilliance, and Destroyer was a real boot camp for us. Quite honestly, I think we were all hoping to do something great. And when you fall, and you fall off eight-inch heels, you fall hard.

Simmons: We actually had Chris Makepeace. He was an actor at the time who had just come off My Bodyguard. … And he was actually cast in the lead role and we started to actually cast it. I don’t remember if Patrick Stewart was involved as Morpheus; he might’ve been. But, it started to get some legs. And we were going to do a motion picture, but like most movies now, over 95 percent never get made, even though there are scripts and everything. So, we had a treatment based on — I mean, my treatment — but it stopped there and we kind of gave up on it.

Stanley: That’s how delusional we were. We could just as easily talk about launching a rocket to Mars, you know. I mean, you can talk about it, but actually there’s so much that goes into it. And quite honestly, if you were going to send a rocket to Mars, you need a rocket and fuel. And as far as The Elder, I don’t think we had either. … It was forced, and I think the songs were not great. And we were full of ourselves.

various pressings: Japanese, Canadian, US, Australian and bootlegs

For the most part, the album has been ignored by KISS but today we were greeted with the news that the band would be celebrating the record’s 40th anniversary with some exciting new picture disc releases. (as well as some other merchandise)

Check out the new KISS Elder items here.