Pick Collecting Quarterly

By far, the most colorful picks in KISS’s history are the Ace Frehley Farewell Tour city picks. The history behind this 142-pick set is every bit equally as colorful.

The Last Hurrah 

Contrary to the claims of the conspiracy theorists that would have you believe the “Farewell” tour was a mere ploy to sell more tickets, it wasn’t. Many of the same demons that had plagued the original band in the late 1970’s quickly began to resurface following the wildly successful Alive/ Worldwide Reunion tour, which was the top grossing tour of the year. Those within the inner circle saw the problems much earlier, but when Paul Stanley suddenly and abruptly announced he was leaving the Psycho Circus tour to perform in the “Phantom of the Opera” in Toronto, Canada, it was apparent to the rest of the KISS Army that all was not well in the KISS camp. The original four members were all miserable, each for different reasons, and soon came to realize they just could not successfully continue. In 4 short years, they had gone from “The magic is back!” to “I can’t wait until I am out of this [expletive] band”. 

Prior to the Reunion, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss both languished through lackluster solo careers that led to personal bankruptcies and both had long sold away their rights to the KISS empire back to Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley.  For Gene and Paul, taking the makeup off again and starting anew yet again had little to no appeal or marketability. So, the four of them agreed to put their differences aside for one last retirement fund nest egg: a Farewell Tour. It really was to be Farewell and the last hurrah.

During the final month of the U.S. tour it was rumored that Peter Criss’s contract had expired, and there seemed to be genuine concern within the tour camp whether or not Peter would even finish the tour. Peter began painting a silver teardrop on his cheek. Fans debated whether the teardrop was a sign of his unhappiness that the band was coming to a close, or that contract negotiations were not going well. Whichever was the case, clearly the belief was the end was near. And when the final U.S. date in North Charleston, South Carolina concluded, Peter kicked apart his drum kit and threw the pieces flying off the drum platform where they crashed down upon the stage. Everyone wondered if this was indeed the end of KISS.

The U.S. tour was a huge financial success monetarily. Peter’s frustration was mostly about money and wanting what he felt was fair. Management had already booked a Pacific leg for the tour to visit Japan and Australia. Gene and Paul knew that despite Peter’s unhappiness over his salary, it was more money than Peter had ever seen since leaving KISS the first time back in 1979. Peter was receiving counsel to continue to hold out because the band couldn’t possibly continue the tour without him. The Catman and mouse game was on.

As negotiations continued to languish, the idea of continuing with a replacement to fulfill the concert date commitments surfaced. And when the contract negotiations reached a final stalemate, former band member Eric Singer was contacted to fill in. The future fate of the band (if any) was still very much in doubt and the idea of creating a new character for a handful of dates did not seem to make sense at the time, hence was born the ever controversial makeup replacements.

Ace would attend a couple of KISS cameo appearances in February, 2002 for a Lane Bryant fashion show and the Olympics in Salt Lake City, UT. But the Farewell tour was indeed his final tour and last hurrah with KISS. After turning down an offer for a 2003 tour, Tommy Thayer was tapped to replace him. Tommy had already filled in for a private Jamaica gig and a Dick Clark Special which Ace also refused.

The Great Debate

When KissShop.com first began offering these picks for sale, it caused quite a quandary and controversy amongst collectors. For reasons I will cover a bit later in the article, Ace did not receive his first batch of picks until the back-to-back May 11th and 12th Chicago shows. So fans that had already seen any of the first 40 shows of the tour never saw these picks.

Ace decided that rather than placing these city picks on his microphone stand, he would have a small pouch sewn onto the back right hip of his costume belt and keep the picks in there. This would ensure their exclusiveness as he would not have to worry about them disappearing from the tech station.

 

From all the shows and video footage from the tour I saw, Ace tended to only use the city picks toward the end of the show and during the encore songs. And it wasn’t the most convenient access either, so he only dug into the pouch between songs and during Paul’s stage raps. So unless one specifically watched him at those moments, it wasn’t difficult at all to miss him reaching into the pouch altogether.

Lastly, 21 of the 101 city picks actually used on the tour since the May 11, 2000 Chicago show were either white or transparent blue, the same colors as the standard KISS tour picks on his mic stand. Unless you either caught one or saw whether he plucked it from his pouch or his mic stand, it would be indistinguishable from the audience for 20% of the shows whether the pick in his hand was a city pick or the standard band issue.

For all of the above reasons, many collectors initially questioned whether Ace was even using these picks at all as claimed. But these doubts were quashed when fans who had attended shows began to report catching them and/or people got wise to watch him between songs.

I was fortunate at the time to have been told about the pouch and the encores, so I kept a keen eye. I can say with 100% certainty I personally saw Ace use these special picks during at least 4 of the Farewell shows I saw. I also received a handful of well used picks from a crew member who picked them up each night off the stage during tear down:

In some collectors’ eyes the fact that the picks were not ordered along with the band’s other picks through the techs dismissed them from being official tour picks. Others believed since the picks did not contain the KISS logo, they should not be considered official tour picks. And some argued that since the picks were made primarily for sale and that Ace used a few of them during the last few songs of the night was not convincing enough argument to consider them official tour issue either.

But the largest lament was cost. The complete set of 142 picks was, and still is, very expensive.  Despite discounts offered by KissShop to those looking to buy the complete set, the cost was still extremely high. They were offered at $22 each through KISSshop with discounts to $20 each in a purchase of multiple picks. Collectors that bought the complete set at the original price received Ace personalized mini Gibson guitars that were sent out to them as a bonus item.  Sets of autographed guitar strings were added as a bonus if someone purchased a larger number of picks in one order.

A full set in today’s market still costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,200. Many collectors that aren't able or interested in a full set try to get shows they personally attended and/or one of each color pick.  A good number of them then go on to slowly add picks and eventually make the quest to obtain the complete set for their collections.

For me personally, the only debate surrounded the picks for the shows prior to the May 11, 2000 Chicago show. Obviously Ace did not have them yet, so he obviously did not use them. I finally settled on displaying them in the Prototypes section of Kissonline Picks-N-Sticks to separate them from the tour used ones.

Initial Concept and Design

During the 1996-1997 Reunion tour, Keith Leroux (fan, fanzine publisher, merchandiser and now current webmaster for Kissonline) had brokered a deal between KISS and Houston-based prepaid telecommunications company, Creative Communications to sell Officially Licensed $10 prepaid 30-minute KISS KOLLECTABLE and KISS MY ACCESS phones cards. And somehow, Keith convinced Gene it would be a great marketing idea to supply replica guitar picks (known to most KISS pick collectors as “the phone card picks”) of nearly identical design to the picks the band used on the tour. Keith later went on to form the web store, KissShop.com with partner Jeff Stouder. By the end of the Psycho Circus tour, Keith and Jeff were backstage regulars and had befriended Ace.

Jeff is an avid pick collector and suggested the idea to Ace to have a different pick for every show as a final souvenir for the fans on the Farewell tour. Ace loved the idea.

Shown at right are Jeff's original sketches, presented to Ace, showing a number of ideas for both the signature and city sides of the picks. A few sample picks were produced at Legend Picks to demonstrate the pick and print colors that were available to choose from. Only about four to five of each of the 10 sample variations were made.  While the backsides of these prototypes were blank, the idea was always to include the individual cities and show date on the picks.

“Move over, Rover. Let the Spaceman take over.”

Ace was accustomed to D’Andrea picks and really liked the various pick color choices and exotic prism choices they offered. He wanted the picks to be special, and from a mere practicality standpoint, in order to produce 142 different picks, they were going to need a wider availability of print and pick color choices than Legend Picks could offer, so the decision seemed obvious to have D’Andrea produce the final product.

Ace wanted to personally design the signature side of the pick.  He also made the final decision on the city side of the pick and what would be included after reviewing Jeff’s initial suggestions. By the time Ace was finished, there was no room left for the KISS logo.

With the final design artwork now ready, D’Andrea was asked to produce some test prints in various styles and colors. Ace was already familiar with their Mylar prism print from prior years’ tours, but now they offered new exciting prints such as oil slick, confetti and rainbow as well.

To keep things simple, all of the D’Andrea test prints used the Virginia Beach, VA mold. Approximately three to four of each of the 45 prototype variations were produced.

Production

As I mentioned earlier, the first of these picks to be used were at the May 11, 2000 show in Chicago.

Ace had many things going on at the start of this now historic tour. And it took a while to finalize artwork, work out logistics of the agreement between Ace and KissShop, and then work out the production logistics with D'Andrea.

The picks for the shows prior to Chicago came a few weeks later as D'Andrea got time to catch up.  It was no small feat to try and nail down confirmed final dates and cities as the tour was being planned and routed. As confirmations became available, artwork and color choices for each city had to be quickly created and batches of cities sent to D'Andrea to work into their production queue in time to have the picks ready by the needed dates. “What a mess” is how Jeff recalled those early orders.  But things seemed to go much more smoothly after the initial orders as everyone experienced the trial and error of the process. Shows were being added/changed all the time, so there was still a very delicate balance to try and get the cities into the production queue as soon as possible, but without jumping too far ahead to avoid printings erroneous picks.

Ace personally decided all the color combinations. In order to keep logistics somewhat simple, Jeff’s original thought was to have 10 to 15 different color combos and then just rotate through them. But Ace envisioned something different for each and every city. For the most part, Ace was able to achieve this, although it was easy to loose track of what color combinations he had done so some cities share similar colors.

The initial agreement was that Ace would have 44 picks for each city to throw out from the stage and the remaining 244 for each city would be offered as souvenirs through KissShop, so two gross of picks were to be made for each city. But the minimum production run at D'Andrea at that time was 720 picks.  So in reality, 5 gross of picks were made for each city, with the extra 3 gross going to Ace.

Everyone involved wanted to ensure the picks would remain limited edition, so part of the agreement included having D’Andrea ship the city print die molds to Ace with each shipment of picks. Ace would destroy the molds upon receipt. This would completely prevent additional picks from turning up later on.

For the Pacific Leg of the tour, naturally the year was updated to 2001 for the Japanese and Australian dates.

“Ack!”

The complexities of producing 150 different styles, colors and designs in such a short period of time, coupled with an every changing tour schedule, posed some challenges and unwittingly caused some mistakes to be made on some of the picks:

The dates for the Calgary and Edmonton shows are reversed on the picks compared to the actual show dates as proved by the ticket stubs in this photo.

The Birmingham, AL pick mistakenly has the state of Arkansas in the background instead of Alabama.

The first two Australian shows (Perth and Adelaide) mistakenly have the state of Louisiana in the background.

Many of the cities tended to have inherent defects of missing or crooked print.

Changes in tour routing also produced some abnormalities:

The Lake Placid, NY show was cancelled completely, leaving this beautiful metallic red on transparent blue pick to go unused altogether.

The first Minneapolis, MN pick (the band would play the city again later as the tour was extended so a second separate pick was created for that show) is dated 5/17 based on the original scheduled date for the concert. But due to poor weather, the band could not get out of their Chicago base so the show had to be rescheduled and was actually played the next night on 5/18.

Reprise!

In 2008 Ace embarked on the Rocket Ride Tour, his first full fledged solo tour since leaving KISS in 2001. Fans attending shows during the first half of the tour were treated to a second opportunity to obtain a few of the Farewell city picks. Remember, Ace had approximately 3 gross of picks for each city leftover due to the minimum production run standard at D'Andrea. By the middle of the tour, as the Farewell city picks he brought out with him ran out, Ace had new picks made in white, black and transparent blue with just the signature side.

As far as I know, these were the only city picks used on the Rocket Ride tour. All 6 of these picks came from a good friend of mine who also happened to be a crew member on the tour, and he kept tabs throughout the tour for me. I believe them to be shown here in chronological order as they were used. I was advised Ace used the silver on yellow Montreal pick for the tour finale at Rocklahoma (not shown). There was no intended rhyme or reason to which of these city picks were used for the Rocket Ride dates. Ace merely grabbed a random assortment of leftovers and his tech just put out a particular city until they were gone. Each Farewell city pick usually lasted only 2 or 3 shows.

I’d like to personally thank Jeff for his role in bringing these wonderful picks to us and for his most valuable contributions to this article. It is a rare treat indeed for us collectors to learn the entire history a pick, from its initial concept through prototyping and into final production.

And now that you know all the intimate details, if you are interested in obtaining of these gems for your own collection, Jeff still has a few available. You can contact him at TJTraders@aol.com for details.

I hope you found this installment of KISS Korner informative, enjoyable and useful.

Please feel free to send me comments, feedback or suggestions for future articles.

 

By Ken Rodenas

Ken Rodenas is the Assistant Editor of PCQ.  Ken has been collecting guitar picks, drumsticks and other stage used items for over 25 years. Along the way, he came to realize the bands and manufacturers kept very little records. So a large part of his collecting involves tedious research where he interviews fellow fans & collectors, current and former road crew members, as well as band members themselves...building many industry friendships along the way. 

 

As a champion of the hobby, his online catalog of work include KISS Picks-N-Sticks, Trick's Picks, The Guitar Picks and Drumsticks of ZZ Top which are dedicated to his 3 favorite bands, KISS, Cheap Trick and ZZ Top.  He also contributed to the official websites of Starz, Bruce Kulick, Eric Singer, and Changes. 

 

His knowledge and collection have been published in printed form in volume 5 of "Official KISS Quarterly magazine", Warmam's KISS Collectibles Field Guide by Tom Shannon (KP Books, 2005), The Official Price Guide to KISS Collectibles by Ingo Floren (Random House, 2004) and Guitar Picks of Rock & Roll by Brian Bouchard  (Gateway Press, 2008).

Please login to post your comments.