Things can always get worse. Just ask Kiss. As their glory days receded in the rearview mirror, Kiss flailed about looking to turn things around. First they released 1979’s Dynasty, a crass attempt to cash in on the disco craze. Then in 1980 they teased baring faces and asses both on the tragically misguided Unmasked. Finally they released 1981’s Music from “The Elder,” a progressive rock concept album complete with orchestra and choir. Sales were so abysmal the band chose not to tour, presumably because they feared being tarred and feathered in every stop on the itinerary.
Music from “The Elder” was primarily the lizard brainchild of Gene Simmons—it was he and he alone who came up with the LP’s hackneyed plot, which centers around a boy who is recruited and trained to combat evil by the Council of Elders of the mysterious Order of the Rose. We’ll never know what the finished product of Spinal Tap’s proposed musical Saucy Jack would have looked like, but it most surely would have bettered this musical vomitorium.
Kiss defenders will no doubt lay blame for Music from “The Elder” on the fact that Kiss was in a state of chaos at the time–drummer Peter Criss was out the door and guitarist Ace Frehley would follow shortly thereafter. But personnel changes didn’t account for this abrupt turn towards orchestral prog rock, which was doomed from the start given Kiss made its reputation (and a sizeable fortune) on simple three-chord rock and roll classics like “Strutter,” “Detroit Rock City,” and “Love Gun.” An expedient punk rock move would have made sense. Going Emerson, Lake & Palmer on the rock kids who made up their fanbase was commercial and artistic self-immolation.
The 1997 remaster opens with “Fanfare” as performed by the American Symphony Orchestra. It sounds like something the orchestra pulled from a Fanfare cut-out bin, and proves that symphony orchestras can be whores just like anyone else. “Just a Boy” is a Kansas-school howl, complete with acoustic guitars and a chorus that goes, “I’m no hero, though I wish I could be”—sung in a falsetto of course.
“Odyssey” features swelling strings and the portentous vocals of Paul Stanley, and is a deep meditation along the lines of Homer’s original. “From a far-off galaxy,” sings Stanley, “I hear you calling me/We are on an odyssey.” On has to wonder whether Kiss borrowed the starship in Styx’s “Come Sail Away” to get there. “Only You” features a solid guitar riff and strays into Rush territory, which is a compliment depending on your opinion of Canada’s most annoying band. The lyrics are as dumb you would expect.
Ballad “Under the Rose” is Medieval twaddle complete with portentous monk vocals by the not-famous-by-any-means St. Robert’s Choir. Frehley plays more Rush guitar—Frehley does more than just steal liberally from Alex Lifeson, I suspect he stole his hands. On “Dark Light” the band cuts us a break and returns to pop-flavored hard rock. Frehley’s talk-sing vocals are alarmingly catchy, even if his guitar solo is composed entirely of cliches.
Simmons goes crooning soft rock on “A World Without Heroes”—the keyboards are bright, the strings are laid on thick, and I like to imagine Gene in full pre-Unmasked regalia on a yacht off the Bahamas, serenading the ladies, girly drink in hand. “Mr. Blackwell” is some horrifying strain of club-footed funk metal and there is no escape from instrumental “Escape from the Island”—the siren that opens the song sounds every time some poor fool tries. It’s followed by “The Oath,” a rip of Heart’s “Barracuda” that, while derivative, is far from embarrassing.
Like “The Oath,” “I” is proof that Music from “The Elder” isn’t pure prog rock. “I” is an old school Kiss hard rocker and would have fit quite nicely on another Kiss album. The lyrics are inspirational balderdash, and one can only wonder what the hard-partying Ace Frehley made of the lines “Don’t need to get wasted/It only holds me down.” The LP closes with “Epilogue,” a brief slice of pastoral puffery complete with footsteps and some conversation by the elders along the lines of “I think you’re going to like this one. He’s got the light in his eyes and the look of a champion.” Too bad the same can’t be said for the album.
Had Kiss known what it was doing—fat chance of that—they’d have scrapped the whole damn concept, said fuck it to their prog pretensions, and salvaged the one or two songs on the album that don’t cause me to throw up in the nearest empty fishbowl. But desperate people will do foolhardy things, and in Kiss’ case the only person who might have stopped them was legendary producer Bob Ezrin, who would later lay the blame for his participation in this fiasco on the fact that he was snorting so much coke his nose nearly had to be amputated due to frostbite.
In Magnum Force Clint Eastwood says: “A man has to know his limitations,” and Music from “The Elder” was as much a case of hubris as it was panic. Gene Simmons was clearly delusional when he devised this landmark in dumb, and he didn’t have drugs to blame.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D-
