During a new interview with the Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan Podcast, Gene Simmons said that Ace Frehley borrowed a solo from The Doors.
Simmons found that a Frehley solo was used by Mike McCready in a Pearl Jam song, and Frehley may have taken it from The Doors’ Robby Krieger. The bassist explained, “I remember Mike McCready was telling me that when he first started Pearl Jam, when he first started [playing] guitars and everything that he’d listened to Ace, and in particular, [sings the opening line of the guitar solo to Pearl Jam’s ‘Alive’] was one of the first solos he learned from a [KISS] song called ‘She.'”
Gene went on to say, “I said, ‘Mike, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that’s a note-for-note guitar solo from the Doors [‘Five to One’]. Ace liked it so much, he just reproduced it. He goes, ‘No!'”
In a recent chat with Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett, McCready talked about Frehley’s influence on him, explaining, “I’m doing this it’s I want to be Space Boy or I want to be the Starchild. I want whatever. KISS was such a huge thing to kids of the 70s. So I obsessed on it. It was exciting and then that turned me on to all sorts of other music out of that you know of the 70s. I just wanted to emulate that stuff.”
He continued, “I really gravitated towards his vibrato. My lead for ‘Alive’ is based on ‘She,’ and that’s based on ‘Five to One’ by The Doors. I remember we were in Surrey, England. I thought about it like, ‘I’m going to approach this like Ace did on ‘She.’ And I remember the chord pattern that Stone [Gossard] wrote lent it to that kind of a descending pattern. So I kind for went with it. And then I improvised from there.”
In 2017, Frehley and McCready performed together during Frehley’s three-week U.S. tour in Seattle. They played KISS’ ‘Cold Gin’ at the Neptune Theatre on February 11.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwRcOa7-qVg
