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DARRELL What exactly were you doing when you crashed your DeLorean in 1983?

FREHLEY I was going 100 miles an hour against traffic on the Bronx River Parkway in New York.

DARRELL Were you loaded?

FREHLEY I was beyond loaded. [laughs]

DARRELL How hard were you hitting the booze back then?

FREHLEY Pretty hard. But today I don’t need it—it’s fucking great being sober.

DARRELL Snake and I both like to drink. Now that you’ve lived through having an alcohol problem, what advice can you give us?

FREHLEY It’s really a personal decision. Some people can handle it, some people only drink on weekends—but when I was drinking, I wanted to drink every day. But I know that I can’t do that anymore. Basically, I just couldn’t handle the hangovers anymore, and I knew I’d end up killing myself. Plus, my daughter becomes a teenager this year, and how can I tell her not to drink or do drugs if I’m high all the time? You know, she was listening to my solo album for the first time the other day, and she keeps playing “Ozone” over and over again. [laughs] I feel a little weird about it because I talk about getting high in that song, but I’m also happy that she’s finally discovering who her dad is and where he’s been.

GW What about Paul and Gene? Is it true that they’ve never tried alcohol or drugs?

FREHLEY Paul used to drink wine occasionally, but not in excess. But to my knowledge, Gene never drank or smoked pot. I don’t trust people who’ve never had a drink. [laughs]

SABO What was it like making the movie Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park?

FREHLEY Actually, I really didn’t enjoy it that much. A lot of that had to do with the shooting schedule because I was a night guy— I liked to hang out and go to clubs around L.A. at night—and we had something like an 8 a.m. makeup call. And since my hotel was about an hour from the set, I had to get up at like seven in the morning with a fucking hangover, go to the set and start putting on makeup at eight. By nine I’d walk on the set, and the director would go, “I think we’re going to do close-ups of Gene today. We won’t need you until after lunch, Ace.” He did that to me a couple of times, and one day I just snapped and took off in a rented Mercedes.

DARRELL Do you see a Kiss reunion in the future?

FREHLEY That’s really in the hands of Paul and Gene. They own the name and they’d have to propose it to me in the right way. And would I consider it? Yes. It could be a great thing.

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