Ace Frehley on a potential future Kiss reunion: “Anything's possible”

Kiss founding guitarist Ace Frehley has spoken of his keenness to reunite with the band’s original lineup, saying that “anything’s possible”.

In a new conversation with SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk, the guitarist speaks on the potential reunion, and offers an update regarding his relationship with co-founding members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.

“That’s the first question so many people have asked me over the years: ‘Would you ever consider doing a Kiss reunion?’” Frehley says. “I said, ‘I never closed the door on anything.’ If the money’s right and it’s presented to me in the right way, anything can happen.”

He continues: “I’m on good terms with Paul [Stanley, guitar/vocals] and Gene [Simmons, bass/vocals], which is nice, because we created something really special in the early ‘70s that has outlasted so many other bands.

“And God bless ‘em. They’re still doing it; I’m still doing it. Peter [Criss, drums] is still around. I’m not quite sure why Peter hasn’t toured over the years as much as I have, but it is what it is.”

When Kiss announced their End of the Road farewell tour in 2018, fans speculated as to whether Ace Frehley and Peter Criss would take part. In a 2018 interview with VintageRock.com, Frehley said that the “only way” he would consider taking part in the trek is “if I took back my make-up and costume and my character – which I designed”.

He also spoke of current Kiss lead guitarist Tommy Thayer. “[He’s] not a bad guitar player,” he said, “but he basically just mimics everything I wrote, and tries to imitate my persona. He’s been doing it for 15 years. But the reality is I’m the original guy. And nobody can really copy the way I play guitar.”

The End of the Road tour isn’t the first farewell trek Kiss have embarked upon. Speaking on the band’s 2000 farewell tour with Guitar World in 2019, Gene Simmons explained that “the circumstances were so different”. 

“I was short-sighted and it wasn’t too long after we finished with it we realized we didn’t want to say farewell to Kiss, we wanted to say farewell to the two people [Ace Frehley and Peter Criss] who had become a ball and chain on Kiss.”