I can vividly recall the first time I heard this song. I was cruising the streets – yes, cruising. It’s a thing in small midwestern towns in the US of A. It was the summer of 1977 – the summer between Sidney Lanier Intermediate School (7th and 8th grades) in Fairfax, Virgina, and Desert High School at Edwards Air Force Base, California. I was working my very first job that summer – as a farm hand on the Van Pelt Farm in Beloit, Kansas.
At the age of 14, I was driving pickups (“pick ’em up trucks”) and tractors, as well as walking along and moving irrigation pipe, and generally doing the work that needed to be done.
It was the same farm my dad grew up on (in the 40s and 50s) and it was located just outside the town of Beloit, where my parents met (at Beloit High School). Just as the teenagers did in the 50s, they did in the 70s – cruising the streets. I’d have to ask my cousins if they still do this in the 20s. You had to have a car, but there were a few miles of streets that went through the middle of town and its cobblestone streets, making round (or square) after round. You’d pass by people you knew. You’d wave, you’d roll down your windows and talk at intersections, and you’d sometimes stop at the Banner Burger Stand and hang out for a while or maybe pick up a pop (I think that’s the term they used there, if it wasn’t “coke” or “soda”). It’s just like in the movie American Graffiti. This was cruisin’.
And also just like in American Graffiti, you’d have the radio on this whole time. I have no idea where the radio signal was coming from – possibly Kansas City. It was later in the summer before I was leaving my first job and moving to California and starting high school. It was probably one of my last nights of cruising with my cousins on those streets.
I was staying in one of my cousin’s rooms in the basement of my Uncle Jerry’s house. I had my small vinyl collection with me, which included Kiss Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over, and the Alive albums. I think the only other albums I had was the Now Explosion (a sampler of radio hits from ’72), Eagles Greatest Hits, and the debut from Wild Cherry (which had “Play the Funky Music” on it). I was really digging Kiss and was in the peak of my Kiss fandom, which later gave way to Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin. I was anxiously awaiting a new Kiss album, that I knew was on the horizon.
When I heard it, the song was in the middle. At least I don’t remember hearing a DJ introduce it. But once I heard the chorus, I had the feeling that I was hearing a band I was familiar with. “Is this Kiss?” I asked aloud, though I was the preeminent Kiss fan in the car at the time. I had never heard the song before, but that chorus rang with the identity of Kiss.
I remember not totally liking it, but I did love the fact that new Kiss music was now out there. I had to wait a few weeks or a month later to get my hands on it. These were the days where vinyl was king. Sure, you could buy cassettes or 8-Track tapes of any major album that was out, but the record album was the total experience. You’d remove the shrink-wrap … although some people wanted to keep their albums wrapped, so they’d just splice the shrink-wrap in the open side of the record, sometimes cutting yourself on the sharp edge of the cardboard. Once it was open, there might be surprises inside, like the love gun prop that would go “Bang!” making a noise when you opened it with air and motion, underlined by the word “Bang!” printed in color. This was a toy that you’d have to put together with glue or tape.
I guess Kiss knew that their demographic reached back to young pre-teen kids. Why else would they sell Kiss lunch boxes and include gag cardboard guns in their albums? They were genius at marketing and merchandising. That’s the truth.
Once I had the shiny new album in my hands, I was most impressed and interested in their new uniforms. They updated their stage costumes from the Destroyer and Rock and Roll Over digs. The mysterious women surrounding the band with white faces reinforced the myth that chicks dug rock musicians. It’s funny, that part of the album cover went over my head a little bit. I was still part adolescent. I remember doodling on my notebooks at school different fictitious stage sets for Kiss.
It’s too bad I didn’t have the foresight to ask my parents if they’d take me to the LA Forum to see Kiss on one of their three nights where they recorded the Alive II album. I did have one friend (George Brooks) who was lucky enough to go to one of those shows. He came back raving a little bit about the opening band, Cheap Trick. He quickly bought their In Color album that was out. I was not impressed with them until the next album, Heaven Tonight, had come out (with better songs). Lucky guy, George.
I knew my parents would have said no, but I didn’t even ask. Maybe, I think all these years later, they might have taken me to give me a chaperoned experience of the big bad rock and roll concert monstrocity they’d heard so many rumors about.
Looking back, I wish I would have begged them to take me to the same Forum to see one of about a week’s worth of shows (June 21 – June 27) that Led Zeppelin had played that summer. Now that would’ve been a (3-hour) show to see!
Anyway, getting back to Kiss, my early teen progression into hard rock music consumption… It’s funny how brash, bold, and bawdy those lyrics were. They would receive a firestorm of pushback from cancel culture, I think, if they tried to get away with that today.
“I don’t usually say things like this to girls your age,” the creepy Gene Simmons says mid-song.
(Christine, sixteen)
But when I saw you coming Out of the school that day
That day I knew, I knew. I’ve got to have you, I’ve got to have you”
Whoa nelly! That’d surely get them in trouble today, would it not?
“She’s been around
But she’s young and clean
I’ve got to have her
Can’t live without her, whoa no.”
I wonder what kind of discussion I would have had with my parents had I asked them about what those lyrics meant.
The song “Love ’em, Leave ’em” came on my iphone shuffle play today, and I was reminded how Grand Funk Railroadian this band was, telling of their exploits in their songs.
Kiss played a role in my upbringing. Were they good role models? No.
All that aside, that night in Kansas was a true rock and roll moment for me then and a nostalgic one for me now that’s tied up in a little bit of youthful innocence (in spite of and in futile resistance to these rock and roll role models. That spark of excitement about a brand new song was special for its time.
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