My First Metal Album As A Kid
KISS’ Destroyer was the best Valentine’s Day gift!
I got introduced to the band KISS when I was about seven years old. We had moved into a subdivision that didn’t sell well and fill up at first, but eventually there were two other boys, Jeff and Jay, a year older than me and a grade higher than me in school, and we would play, ride bikes, and range over acres of farmland that had reverted back to prairie and woods. We also hung out at each other’s houses, and Jeff had two things in his room that are key to this story. He had a decent turntable, and among the many records he owned, there was one in particular that we listened to over and over. This one:
KISS Alive! The very first of their live double-albums. Not just two records worth of classic KISS songs drawn from their first three albums (which Jeff didn’t have), but also images and album notes. We would listen to the songs — which frankly we only half-understood! — and pore over the pictures and those notes on the liners. Those were our window into “the hottest band in the world”.
We were, like a lot of kids back then, KISS-crazy. I expect that it was the combination of heavy, hard-edged songs that we could all belt out together along with imagery that was amazing to us, and of course the fact that KISS was a merchandise machine — I remember how thrilled I was to bring my lunchbox festooned with their logo and likenesses to my elementary school.
At our house, where we had a big tub containing hundreds of of crayons — I’m not sure where my parents gathered them from — and Jeff, Jay, and I would draw all sorts of KISS-related stuff. The band logo with those jagged Ss, who knows how many times? Sketches of the band and its members — Ace the Spaceman was my favorite, and I’d draw him shooting lightning out of his guitar. We’d sing as much as we knew of their songs while we ran those crayons down (silver in particular). I think those drawing sessions might be where my mom got her idea for Valentine’s Day.
A Valentine’s Day Gift
Since I think I was in second grade at the time, still in a little 4-room schoolhouse, Wales Elementary, it must have been early 1978. It was a dark, cold weekday in the middle of winter, with snow piled up in all the yards and along the roads. I’m not sure why we were coming home rather late. School would have been over while there still was some light left. It was Valentine’s Day. It was also the middle of tax season, so it was just us three — my Dad would still be in the heart of Milwaukee, working away, likely coming home after we were asleep in bed.
When we rolled up the driveway and as she was parking the car, my mom said to my sister and I: “I’ve got a surprise for you”. We went inside and took off our coats, boots, hats, putting them in the hall closet, and went over to the living room. There were two wrapped presents, which from their perfectly square shape and thinness could only be albums. She picked them up and handed one to each of us. “Happy Valentine’s Day! I got these for you.”
We were both surprised, not just because albums were definitely not something we would have ever expected to get as a present on that holiday, but also because of the expense. We weren’t the kind of family where you just got unexpected gifts like that.
My sister’s album was one by a Canadian country singer, Anne Murray. In the years ahead, it would get played a lot in her room, and I remember hearing some of those songs on the radio.
The album I unwrapped — really more tearing the paper off as soon as I even glimpsed a bit of it — was this one: KISS Destroyer!
“I knew you really like these guys, and this is their newest album, so I thought you’d probably like it,” my Mom said, and then asked “Do you like it? Is it the right one, you think?”
I was ecstatic., that’s all I remember. I have no idea what I actually said in response. Really, for a kid like me, any KISS album at that point would have been the “right one”. It could have been any of their earlier ones, and I would have done the same thing. I do remember kissing my mom on the cheek and running up our staircase to head to my room, where I had the same model of cheap portable record player that my sister had in hers. I had to hear what this new album sounded like.
Back then, it would be a rarity to hear KISS on the radio in our neighborhood. Most radios were in the hands of the adults, and none of them were into the kinds of music that we were. Frankly, we didn’t even know what we were into, other than the term that we’d hear “rock and roll”. There were the older kids in the neighborhood — middle schoolers and even high schoolers — and they most likely had some way more developed musical tastes and experiences, but we generally steered clear of them.
Destroyer starts out strong with a song that assumed central place in KISS’ playlists ever since, some solid storytelling with heavy unforgettable riffs, and those awesome twin guitar parts — “Detroit Rock City”. That one was followed by “King of the Night Time World” and “God of Thunder”. What else is on that album? The ballad “Beth”, which is pretty good in its own right, but had all sorts of associations for me, given my longstanding crush on a girl one year older than me who had that name. And of course, the anthem “Shout It Out Loud”. There’s really not a bad song on the entire album, in retrospect, and as a kid, I found of them amazing!
Loving Heavy Metal Before I Knew What It Was
When heavy metal as a genre drastically expanded and intensified in range, scope, and sheer numbers in the 1980s, there would be occasional but heated debate about whether KISS ought to be considered a heavy metal band in a full sense. That still goes on to the present. Hashing that out in full is a topic for another day.
Suffice it to say that there were plenty of people in the 1980s who did consider KISS to fit solidly within the scope of the genre. They might not have been the heaviest, hardest, or most extreme metal band, but they easily made it into compilations like Masters of Metal (with “Lick It Up”). They got about as much space in metal magazines like Circus and Hit Parader as bands whose metal credentials were never called into question.
I didn’t know the genre called “heavy metal” existed back in the 1970s, but it was there, recognized by fans, loved by them or hated by critics, its demise predicted at the same time at its main bands kept churning out albums, finding new fans on tours, evolving their sounds. KISS definitely has a place in that movement, from their debut 1974 album onward.
If there’s one band that drew me explicitly and consciously into the ranks of metalheads in the 1980s, it was Iron Maiden, specifically hearing their song “The Trooper” off their 1983 album Piece of Mind. My already metalhead classmate Walter added that song as an extra on a 45-minute cassette when he dubbed Van Halen’s 1984 on it for me. After that, I rapidly acquired album after album, was introduced to one new band after another, started reading the magazines monthly, and sought out many others equally excited (and often more expert) about that music.
Before that, through the 1970s and into the early 1980s, I was listening to and enjoying hard rock, as well as what I would later learn to be classic heavy metal. Some of these bands we heard on certain radio stations, at least some songs. Others depended on someone having an album, an 8-track, or a cassette we could listen to — oftentimes that someone being a friend’s older sibling.
The bands that stick out most for me, as I look back on that era — the ones whose songs we got into were: AC/DC, Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith, Rush, Triumph, Ted Nugent, UFO, Nazareth, Deep Purple, Rainbow, and the Scorpions. I might be misremembering, of course — we’re talking about more than 40 years past
There were a very few albums by heavy metal bands that I got my own hands on before I began consciously and massively expanding my collection from 1984 onward. I’ve already mentioned Van Halen’s 1984.
Prior to that I had saved up and purchased a cassette by another classic metal band, Def Leppard’s Pyromania, the year it came out, 1983. I played it over and over again, to the point that I had to repair the tape more than once.
But it was KISS arguably that dominated my early, not-realizing-what-it-was, growing interest in heavy metal music. Having that 1976 Destroyer ever-ready to play, and then sing, dance, and strum air guitar to whenever I wanted, set that specific album and that band at the core of my developing musical interests. In fact, until Iron Maiden came to my attention and captivated me, KISS was my absolute favorite band.
KISS, as well as Ace Frehley’s solo band, remain among the musicians I joyfully return to over the years. I’ve seen them several times in concert — KISS three times and Ace Frehley once. I early on passed on my love for them to my oldest child, who already as a babbling toddler was singing along to their music as we listened while driving in the car, and who could correctly answer the question: “Who’s the hottest band in the world?” “KISS!”
If you’re relatively new to classic heavy metal, and looking for some suggestions where to get started, then you’ll want to check out this set of solid recommendations! (KISS Destroyer is among those albums)
I’m Greg Sadler, the Heavy Metal Philosopher. I’m also the president of ReasonIO, the editor of Stoicism Today, a speaker, writer, and a producer of highly popular YouTube videos on classic and contemporary philosophy. I teach at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and offer classes to the wider public in my Study With Sadler online academy. I also produce the Sadler’s Lectures podcast and co-host the Wisdom for Life radio show
