Copyright Parade
When KISS first hit the music scene in the early 1970s, fans were mesmerized by their larger-than-life personas, complete with glittery outfits, platform shoes, and glam face makeup. Paul Stanley was The Starchild; Gene Simmons, The Demon; Ace Frehley, The Spaceman; and Peter Criss was The Catman. Frehley, who died Oct. 16 at age 74, once told KISS Fanzine that “the characters were a collaborative effort, but Paul and Gene had a big hand in the concept.” “I was inspired by the Spaceman persona because I loved sci‑fi and wanted to bring that energy to our shows. Each character represents a part of our personalities,” the late guitar legend added of his own look. But Frehley once took credit for Stanley’s signature Starchild child look as well. In a 2024 interview on the Guitar Tales podcast, Frehley claimed he helped Stanley with his makeup design after the rocker started out looking like Pete the Pup from the Our Gang comedies of the 1930s. “Very few people know this, and he’ll probably deny it, but when we were playing the Daisy in Long Island, it was a club where we developed our makeup, he had white face on with the red lipstick, and he used to have a circle around his eye like the dog from The Little Rascals,” Frehley said on the podcast. “And I had developed the silver stars, which I was really happy with. And Gene’s makeup was coming along great. Peter needed a little help. But I said to Paul one night, ‘Instead of the circle, why don’t you put a star… I think it would look cooler.’” “And he tried it out, and he liked it, but he never gave me credit,” Frehley alleged. “I’ve never heard him mention that story in an interview, and he’d probably deny it if somebody brought it up to him today. He has an ego the size of [Manhattan].” Stanley was known as the Starchild for the bulk of his KISS career, but in 1974, he briefly changed to “bandit” makeup. In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, he explained that Casablanca Records boss Neil Bogart wanted the whole band to remove their makeup when they signed their record deal in 1973. The band fought Bogart on the idea, but Stanley listened to the executive’s suggestion that the Starchild character was “kind of feminine” and that he should be “more macho” onstage. Stanley then switched to “bandit” makeup— but barely. “I just came up with this Lone Ranger bandit, as it became known, and it lasted maybe a month,” Stanley told Yahoo. “But I just went, ‘You know what? My gig, my face, my makeup.’ And I just went back to [the Starchild].” Ace Frehley Explained His Space Ace Look As for Frehley, he fully embraced his Spaceman look from the first time the band took the stage. “The first night, I painted my face silver,” the rocker recalled in an interview for KISS: Behind the Mask, per The New York Times. “The second night, I thought, ‘That’s boring. I’ll have to think up something more imaginative.’ I started painting stars on my eyes.” Early in the band’s career, Frehley told Rolling Stone, “I eat, sleep, and drink my character.” “It is my fantasy to go to another planet,” he added in the 1977 interview. “By the time I’m 40, interplanetary travel will be common.” Frehley also said the KISS characters were “an extension” of the person behind them. “I was always fascinated with science fiction and space travel, it was a natural extension of my personality,” he said in an interview with Newsweek. “You know, Gene was always fascinated with horror films, he became the monster, so on and so forth. Every character we created was pretty much an alter ego of the person.”
