KISS Pose for a Portrait Photo Session for the Cover of Their Self-Entitled First Album, 1974

Kiss released their self-titled debut album, Kiss, on February 18, 1974, by Casablanca Records. Much of the material on the album was written by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, as members of their pre-Kiss band Wicked Lester. Simmons estimated that the entire process of recording and mixing took three weeks, while co-producer Richie Wise has stated it took just 13 days.

The cover art for the album Kiss (1974).

The album was recorded at Bell Sound Studios in New York City, which was owned by the company that owned Buddah Records. Neil Bogart, the founder of Casablanca Records, was an executive at Buddah before forming Casablanca. Casablanca Records held a party at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles to celebrate the West Coast release of Kiss (February 18) and to introduce the record company to the press and other record industry executives.

The album’s photoshoot took place on January 31, 1974 by Joel Brodsky at his studio on 57th Street in Manhattan. According to Paul Stanley, everybody except Peter Criss did their own makeup on the shoot. The makeup personnel did Criss’ makeup, as Stanley described, like a “tribal lion mask.”

In keeping with the Casablanca theme, the party included palm trees and a Humphrey Bogart lookalike. Kiss performed their usual loud and bombastic stage show, which turned Warner Bros. Records (Casablanca’s record distributor) against the group. Soon after the show, Warner Bros. contacted Neil Bogart and threatened to end their deal with Casablanca if Kiss did not remove their makeup. With manager Bill Aucoin’s backing, Kiss refused. Shortly after the release of Kiss, Warner Bros. released Casablanca from their contract.

The album’s cover showed the group positioned against a black background in a pose visually reminiscent of the Beatles’ With the Beatles album. Three of the four band members applied their own makeup for the album cover photo, as they usually did, but Criss’s “Catman” makeup was applied by a professional, whose work came out looking quite a bit different from the look Criss had established, and to which he would return immediately afterward. Ace Frehley, wanting to impress the other members of Kiss, dyed his hair with silver hairspray, which easily came out with shampoo. According to Criss, photographer Joel Brodsky thought Kiss were literally clowns and wanted to place balloons behind the group for the shoot. Brodsky denied this, chalking it up to their imagination.

“I shot between 500 and 1000 album covers including The Doors’ Strange Days and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks,” said Joel Brodsky. “I was given the assignment to shoot the Kiss album cover by Casablanca. I had done a lot of stuff for Buddah Records and Neil Bogart. The shoot was done at my studio in New York City on 57th Street. They had a guy who helped them with their makeup, a painter named Mario Rivoli. The makeup was unique at the time, it was the beginning of glitter. It was a basic four heads on a square picture, a little like the Meet The Beatles cover. I’ve done that cover a number of times with other people like Nazz, Todd Rundgren’s band. My philosophy of album covers is if people knew the music they were going to buy it in a brown paper bag. If you were brand new like Kiss, and you needed to attract attention, the cover did it. And that’s a cover that attracted attention. The photo session lasted a little less than an hour, but the makeup session probably lasted three hours. They were draped in black velvet with a black background. It was really Simmons and Stanley who were most concerned with the visuals of the shoot. Kiss were reasonably cooperative. I remember the other guys were all on the set waiting for Gene to come out. I couldn’t get Gene out of the dressing room, I was getting aggravated. He wanted his makeup to be perfect. I told him, ‘If you’re not out in 15 minutes, there’s not going to be anyone here to take the picture!’ The story about me wanting to put balloons behind them, thinking they were circus clowns, is not true. That’s someone’s imagination. Years later, I’m still proud of that Kiss album cover.”