— Rock band KISS star Gene Simmons has expressed his wish to help his former bandmate Ace Frehley
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LOS ANGELES — Rock band KISS star Gene Simmons has expressed his wish to help his former bandmate Ace Frehley.
The 76-year-old rockstar has opened up about his longtime friend, who died last year at the age of 74, and said that he is filled with regret over missed opportunities to help Ace when he was battling addiction issues at the height of KISS' fame revealing he should have staged an intervention "decades ago", reports ‘Female First UK’.
During an appearance on the ‘Inside Of You With Michael Rosenbaum’ podcast, Gene said, "I should have, and could have, but I should have, a long time (ago), when you see the disease starting to get ahold of him, I should have, decades ago, took, took him aside, it's called an intervention, and forced him to understand he's not just hurting himself by his lifestyle choices, but his family, his child and the fans”.
“It was a stupid and shameful decision on all our parts, I know mine too. 'No, you don't wanna get the fans upset. Let's make believe he's in the band and everything's okay at home’. And it's tough. It's really tough”.
As per ‘Female First UK’, Gene said that Ace who left KISS several times over the years before departing for good in 2002, will always be respected as a talented musician but he really suffered after the group shot to fame.
He said, "It's been up and down for 50 years with Ace. If you would've met Ace at the beginning (of KISS), God bless him, you would've fallen in love with the idea, who he is and all that. And then (as historial Italian figure Niccolo) Machiavelli (said), (when you) have power, (you must sometimes) abuse it. It affects all of us in different ways. Me too”.
“But Ace turned to beverages and chemicals. Early on, he wouldn't show up. He'd be late and all this stuff. And Peter (Criss, original KISS drummer), we love him, and God bless, he's still around, but really from the early days, as soon as the money and the fame came in, it was like the dark cloud came over. And they were both in and out of the band three separate times. And the fans just couldn't understand it”, he added.