Ace Frehley, who played lead guitar as a founding member of the face-painted, blood-spitting, fire-breathing hard-rock band Kiss, died Thursday in Morristown, N.J. He was 74.
His death was announced by his family, which said he’d recently suffered a fall. “In his last moments, we were fortunate enough to have been able to surround him with loving, caring, peaceful words, thoughts, prayers and intentions as he left this earth,” the family said in a statement.
In his alter ego as the Spaceman, Frehley played with the original incarnation of Kiss for less than a decade, from 1973 — when he formed the group in New York with Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss — until 1982, when he quit not long after Criss left. Yet he was instrumental to the creation of the band’s stomping and glittery sound as heard in songs like “Detroit Rock City,” “Rock and Roll All Nite,” “Strutter” and “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.” In the late ’70s, those hits — along with Kiss’ over-the-top live show — made the group an inescapable pop-cultural presence seen in comic books and on lunch boxes; today the group is widely viewed as an early pioneer of rock ’n’ roll merchandising.
A member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Frehley rejoined Kiss in 1996 for a highly successful reunion, then left again in 2002 to return to the solo career he’d started in the early ’80s. In 2023, Kiss completed what Simmons and Stanley called a farewell tour with a hometown show at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
This obituary will be updated.