Year:
November 11, 1976 (LP 2014)Label:
Casablanca Records (Europe), 06025 377 882-4 (8)Style:
Hard Rock, Glam RockCountry:
New York City, U.S.Time:
33:25Format:
Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHzSize:
255 MbWith
1976's Rock and Roll Over, Kiss successfully managed a tricky balancing
act between their own desires for creative growth and the demands of a
fan base eager to see them stay true to their original sound.
After
the commercial breakthrough of the 1975's Alive!, the group solidified
their place atop the rock and roll world with 1976's highly polished
Destroyer, a deliberate attempt to dramatically improve the production
values of their first three studio efforts.
While the hit ballad
"Beth" brought the group increased radio airplay and a legion of new
followers, some old-school Kiss fans thought the band had lost a bit too
much of their original raw edge with that Bob Ezrin-produced album.
They
were joined in that feeling by at least two of the group's members,
drummer Peter Criss and lead guitarist Ace Frehley. "We wouldn't have
done another album like Destroyer," bassist and vocalist Gene Simmons
explains in Kiss: Behind the Mask. "We had gone through our Bob Ezrin
phase. Ace and Peter, in particular, kept saying we shouldn't be doing
that kind of music, we should be more of a rock and roll band."
So
Kiss decided to record their fifth studio album in the empty Nanuet Star
concert theater, 20 miles north of their hometown New York City, hoping
to capture the live sound which won them their original and most loyal
audience. "Thanks to the return of Eddie Kramer, my favorite producer
and engineer, Rock and Roll Over was a more enjoyable experience than
Destroyer had been," Frehley recalled in his 2012 autobiography No
Regrets. He also credits Kramer's back to basics style with helping to
"placate some of the fans who were angered by the studio gimmicks" of
that previous album.
In one of the early signs of the dissension
which would ultimately tear the group's original lineup apart, not
everybody in Kiss was sure they were doing the right thing. "We wanted
to retain some of the stuff that Bob had taught us, but get a little
more raw," guitarist and singer Paul Stanley recalls, again in Behind
the Mask. "When Destroyer met with kind of quizzical response from
people our first thought was, 'Let's go back in on the next album to
what's more familiar,' which is chicken – and a matter of
self-preservation."
Stanley also expresses displeasure with the
finished album's production values. "I like Rock and Roll Over very
much. It's a great album. I just think it's so unfortunate that the
recordings are so marginal. I was constantly disappointed with what
those albums ended up sounding like. I wanted them to sound as good as a
Zeppelin album. There's no reason we shouldn't have sounded ballpark to
some of the heaviest bands out there."
Regardless of Stanley's
reservations, there's much to love and nothing worth hating on Rock and
Roll Over. It not only features one of the all-time best Kiss album
covers, its the home of longtime concert staples "Calling Dr. Love," the
dynamic Stanley vocal showcase "I Want You," "Makin' Love" and the
hysterically outrageous "Take Me," which features some of the band's
most unabashed sexual come-ons: "Put your hand in my pocket / Grab onto
my rocket / Feels so good to see you this evening." (And if you are
worried about the production, these songs all sound even better on Alive
II.)
It's also home to the Criss-sung Top 20 hit "Hard Luck Woman,"
which Stanley originally created as an attempt to write outside the Kiss
mold, specifically, for Rod Stewart. "When I heard 'Maggie May,' 'You
Wear it Well,' 'Mandolin Wind,' I said, 'I think I can do this,' so
that's what 'Hard Luck Woman' was. And once it was finished, it
certainly wasn't for Kiss. But when everybody heard it and we had a hit
with 'Beth,' we didn't know where to go from there. The safest route
was, 'Let's have Peter sing a song.'"
Rock and Roll Over quickly
became another big success for Kiss, just missing the Top 10 on the
album chart, getting certified platinum about a year later, and spawning
another massive sold-out arena tour. But the end of their golden era
was closer than anyone could have imagined at that time. After one more
classic studio album, 1977's Love Gun, internal tensions, addiction
battles, an over-saturated market and changing musical tides would send
the group into a tailspin from which it would take them years to fully
recover.
(ultimateclassicrock.com/kiss-rock-and-roll-over-turns-35-years-old/)
01. A1 I Want You (03:04)
02. A2 Take Me (02:55)
03. A3 Calling Dr. Love (03:45)
04. A4 Ladies Room (03:28)
05. A5 Baby Driver (03:41)
06. B1 Love 'Em And Leave 'Em (03:46)
07. B2 Mr. Speed (03:20)
08. B3 See You In Your Dreams (02:35)
09. B4 Hard Luck Woman (03:35)
10. B5 Makin' Love (03:11)
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