Tommy Thayer recorded ‘Psycho Circus’ album but not credited due to KISS’ “transitional” time

Tommy Thayer recorded ‘Psycho Circus’ album but not credited due to KISS’ “transitional” time

KISS guitarist Tommy Thayer was recently interviewed by Music Radar and asked to provide his top ten KISS songs. Thayer‘s picks were sometimes quite interesting given that he chose a rather obscure song from KISS‘ Monster album to include in his top ten list. Thayer also spoke about his contributions to KISS‘ Psycho Circus album, which was released in 1998 and saw the original line-up of Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley recording an album together for the final time.

Thayer’s Top Ten KISS songs:
01. Rock And Roll All Nite (1975 – Dressed To Kill)
02. Shout It Out Loud (1976 – Destroyer)
03. God Gave You Rock And Roll (1991 – Revenge)
04. Detroit Rock City (1976 – Destroyer)
05. I Was Made For Loving You (1979 – Dynasty)
06. Got To Choose (1974 – Hotter Than Hell)
07. Outta This World (2012 – Monster)
08. Psycho Circus (1998 – Psycho Circus)
09. Black Diamond (1973 – KISS)
10. Love Her All I Can (1975 – Dressed To Kill)

With respect to the song “Outta This World”, Thayer opined (with slight edits): “I’m a little biased, but I think ‘Out Of This World’ is a cool tune. It’s on Monster. But I think there is a lot of great stuff on Monster – and Sonic Boom, too…. The thing that happens with records like that, that you put out in later years, is that you are competing with the legacy of these huge albums that came out 30, 40 years before, y’know, like Destroyer, KISS Alive!, and it is just hard. It takes time. Songs have to stand the test of time before they become that classic where everybody knows it. So it’s harder for those newer songs on those newer records…. But, of course, we do ‘Hell Or Hallelujah’. We do ‘Say Yeah!’, which is great. We were doing ‘Modern Day Delilah’. We do ‘Psycho Circus’!”

In terms of his contributions on the Psycho Circus album, Thayer advised: “Umm… One tune that is pretty obscure, and it’s not an older song either, but on the Psycho Circus album there’s a song called ‘I Pledge Allegiance To The State Of Rock And Roll’…. I actually recorded that album but wasn’t credited because it was [pauses] a transitional time! [Laughs] I played all that stuff, and ‘I Pledge Allegiance To The State Of Rock And Roll’, I think that’s a cool one… really high-energy, up-tempo, very loud and ballsy tune.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Tommy Thayer at Music Radar.