10 Musicians Who Decided To Quit Huge Bands
8. Ace Frehley - KISS
KISS, from day one, has always been a band with a business mentality. Make no mistake, their songs are some of the greatest of the hard rock genre, but at the end of the day, the music of Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons seems more in tune with running a brand rather than a musical ensemble. It’s great if you know that going in, but Ace Frehley was the true musician lost inside the KISS madness.
Though Frehley started off pretty well on the band’s first few releases, he started to get more and more agitated with Stanley and Simmons’ approach to the music. While albums like Destroyer and Love Gun had some of his best music, Frehley himself stated that he noticed cracks forming during the disco years. With drummer Peter Criss on the way out soon afterward, Frehley often found himself being outvoted on every major band decision.
By the time the band got around to making their conceptual flop Music From "The Elder", Ace was so unhappy that he ended up leaving before the band went into the studio to record Creatures of the Night. Rock’s favorite superheroes were always thought to be immortal, but it was time for this Spaceman to go searching for new lands.