Free Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley

a relief for him in some ways not to be playing with us anymore.
    Of course, I wanted to keep playing, and since I’d been turned down when I went solo to the publishing companies, I felt a band was the right way to go again. Neal, who was working part-time at a recording studio by now, heard from a friend of his about a guy named Steve Coronel who played lead guitar. So we called Steve and got together, worked out a few covers, played a few of my originals, and started booking gigs.
    The band with Matt had never had a bass player, but Steve wanted to bring one in. “I know this other guy,” Steve said.
    The guy’s name was Gene Klein, and he and Steve had played together as teens in a band called the Long Island Sounds. Gene was living somewhere out of town now, Steve said. He was apparently a few years older than I was and had already graduated from college. I didn’t care whether he lived in Sullivan County or Staten Island; if there was a possibility that we’d be moving toward creating a real band, I was all for it.
    One night I went over to Steve’s Manhattan apartment in Washington Heights, not far from where I had lived as a little kid. Steve’s room was painted black. And in the room was a big, burly guy.
    “Stan,” said Steve, “this is Gene Klein.”
    Gene had long hair and a beard under his double chin. He was very overweight. I was pretty stocky back then, but this guy was huge. He was wearing overalls and sandals and looked liked something from the then-new country music TV show Hee Haw.
    Gene made it clear right away that he didn’t see us as his musical equals. He played some songs for us that I thought were sort of goofy. Then he challenged me to play one of my songs, so I played something called “Sunday Driver,” which I later retitled “Let Me Know.” He seemed completely thrown that someone besides John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Gene Klein could write a song. It was a moment of realization for him—here was another guy who wasn’t famous who could actually write a song. He was visibly taken aback. He mumbled, “Hmmmm.”
    I was annoyed that he saw himself as operating at a level that qualified him to pass judgment on me—as though all that mattered was his approval. Particularly because I hadn’t thought much of his songs, the idea that he was judging me seemed arrogant, condescending, and ludicrous. He made it clear that he felt himself to be judging from a higher plane, and I didn’t like that at all. Gene, of course, had no clue about my ear, which was covered up by my hair, but I was preprogrammed to dislike being scrutinized and judged. It wasn’t a nice thing to do as far as I was concerned, and I wasn’t eager to work with the guy.
    Another night, Steve, a bass player named Marty Cohen, and I played a free gig at a coffee shop on Broadway and 111th Street called Forlini’s Third Phase. The place was lined with Styrofoam, and we played with a bunch of amplified gear. We played some originals and some covers, including Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen,” and the crowd got into it. Gene came to that gig, too, because Steve had borrowed some of his gear, and he was clearly impressed.
    At some point after that, I answered an ad in the alternative weekly the Village Voice for a guitar player. When I rang the number, I found out the guy who had placed the ad, Brooke Ostrander, was the keyboard player in a band looking for a lead guitarist, not a rhythm guy like me. That was the end of that.
    But not long afterward, Gene called me and asked whether I would come over to New Jersey and work on a demo tape his group was trying to finish. He wanted me to come for a day or two. I agreed. Strangely, it turned out the group was working at the home of their keyboard player, Brooke Ostrander, and this was the same band Brooke had placed the ad about. Brooke was already a school music teacher. Gene, too, bragged about some white-collar job he had that paid five dollars an hour—a fortune