Drummer Anton Fig reveals that Ace Frehley asked him to join KISS on two occasions

Drummer Anton Fig reveals that Ace Frehley asked him to join KISS on two occasions

Former Frehley’s Comet drummer Anton Fig was recently interviewed by Andrew Daly for Vinyl Writer Music.

Fig played the drums on three KISS albums — Ace Frehley (1978), Dynasty except for one song (1979) and Unmasked (1980).

In terms of whether KISS mainstays Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons ever entertained the idea of having him become an official member of the band, Fig noted (with slight edits): “I knew very little about KISS then. To me, they were a band that I saw advertised on the side of a bus in New York City. I had been so into jazz at that period of my life that I was not following a lot on the rock side. Through a mutual friend I was connected with Ace [Frehley] and I did his record. The record came out great and I was asked to do Dynasty. At the time, Peter [Criss] had broken his arm and they needed to get the record out on schedule. I was not star struck but I new it was a big time rock band so that was exciting, and I was confident enough in my playing to just play the songs as I heard them. They never asked me to play like Peter and pretty much let me do whatever I wanted to do. After both albums, Ace did ask me if I wanted to join. I had a band called Spider that had a song in the top 40 and wanted to pursue that. So I agonized for a bit but knew I could not do it. Later, Gene and Paul said they thought that Ace and I might be too much of a team and so not an ideal situation for them.”

With respect to what it was like working with Frehley and whether he’ll ever work with him again, Fig advised: “It’s always great working with Ace and we have made some great records together. There was a period of time when I saw him and worked with him a lot. When I got the [David] Letterman show, it precluded me from going on tour for long stretches, so after a bunch of albums, we haven’t seen each other as much. However, very recently, we emailed and decided to do some new recording in the near future.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Anton Fig at Vinyl Writer Music‘s website.