Rare Outtakes of KISS From the Photoshoot for the Album Cover of “Dressed to Kill” (1975)

Dressed to Kill is the third studio album by Kiss, released on March 19, 1975. It was produced by Casablanca Records president Neil Bogart and the band itself as the label’s financial situation at the time did not permit the hiring of a professional producer.

The album cover was photographed on October 26, 1974 by Bob Gruen. While the cover depicts Kiss in business suits, the only member of the band who owned one was Peter Criss. The suits worn on the cover by the rest of the band were owned by manager Bill Aucoin. The original vinyl release of the album also had the Kiss logo embossed around the picture. The photograph of the band on the album cover was taken on the southwest corner of W23rd Street and 8th Avenue looking North in New York City.

The name Dressed to Kill was come up with after Gruen’s photographs. Up to then, the third Kiss album was going to be entitled Kiss at Midnight.

“We were working on a photo novella for Queen magazine (now Harper’s Bazaar UK),” said Bob Gruen. “The story was about Kiss in their secret identities going to work in the morning. You can see that they’re wearing suits, so no one would recognize that they were Kiss. Nobody knew who they were, it was still early days, and Kiss wasn’t well known at all, even in New York. You have to be more than weird to get attention here. People kind of glanced at them, they may have thought it was a little early for Halloween. It takes a lot to shock a New Yorker.”

“Two things really distinguish Dressed to Kill,” said Ace Frehley. “The first was the album cover, which featured the four of us standing on the corner of 8th Avenue and 23rd Street wearing suits and ties in full makeup. We’d done something similar for a Creem photo shoot and liked the concept so much that we went with it for the album. Here we are world; just regular guys going to work!”

“We were in the subway,” Gruen added. “We took one picture where they’re going into the phone booth pulling off their coats and ties. And then, we actually went to a different subway because I didn’t want the picture to go backwards in the page. I wanted them to run into a phone booth and then run out in the same direction – so that they weren’t running back towards themselves. As we came out of the subway, I said, ‘Why don’t you stand over by the lamp post, let’s take a couple of pictures.’ We had no thought that it was going to be an album cover. It was really just part of this comic book. If you look at the suits, Gene is wearing my suit – which is why it’s three sizes too small for him. And he’s wearing my wife’s clogs – which is why his feet look like a monster. He looks like he’s got hoofs instead of feet. Ace is also wearing my suit and my shoes. Had I known how much they’d be worth, I would never have given those shoes away to Goodwill 40 years ago. I remember the white shoes, they had a stain on them and I wasn’t going to wear them, so I gave them away.”