When Kiss suited up to shoot the iconic cover of the band’s 1975 album “Dressed to Kill” on the southwest corner of 23rd Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, there were no stylists or tailors involved.
“I did not own a suit or a tie, so I had to borrow our manager at the time Bill Aucoin’s suit,” Kiss co-frontman Gene Simmons, 75, exclusively told The Post.
“He was a much smaller man … So I put on his suit and nothing fits. If you look at the album cover, the sleeves were short, and the pants didn’t go all the way down.”
Plus, Simmons had to finagle his footwear from one of his bandmates.
“I didn’t have dress shoes,” he said, “so [Kiss guitarist] Ace Frehley had a pair of white clogs that he used to walk around with, and for no reason at all, I put on the clogs that are on the cover.”
It all made for a classic album cover in rock history that is revisited on a new audio walking tour of NYC spots that shaped Kiss and the group’s third LP that inspired generations to “Rock and Roll All Nite” after it was released 50 years ago on March 19, 1975.
Along with Simmons and his Kiss co-frontman Paul Stanley, photographer Bob Gruen — who shot the cover of “Dressed to Kill” — shares his makeup-covered memories in the 60-minute tour that takes you from 23rd and 8th to Greenwich Village’s legendary Electric Lady Studios, where the LP was recorded.
Gruen was shooting Kiss for a Creem magazine story — in which his photos would be used in a comic-book treatment on the band — from which the cover pic was born.
“It was just a whim. I just thought we’d add another frame to the comic,” he said. “So it almost wasn’t even part of the script, but it was just an idea. I had to just have them stand on the corner, you know, dressed in those suits.
“And in those days, they were not well known at all,” Gruen continued. “And in New York City, you have to be more than weird to get attention. So we were standing on the corner, and basically, nobody stopped to talk to us or look at them or anything like that.”
Simmons also remembers just how much of a scene it wasn’t for New Yorkers on the go with their lives.
“There we are on a street corner, and the people who are walking by are going on about their day, not even looking at us twice,” he recalled.
Gruen’s Creem magazine photo shoot would also take the band to two subway stops — 23rd and 8th, and 14th and 8th — which are featured in the audio tour. They go from being dressed like businessmen in suits — “like Clark Kent,” said Gruen — to rockers in Kiss costume who are out to “save the world with rock ’n’ roll.”
The tour also takes you to 10 East 23rd St., the site of the rehearsal loft space where Simmons and Stanley shook off their old band Wicked Lester and built Kiss with drummer Peter Criss and Frehley, who auditioned for the group there in 1973.
And just outside of the loft, there’s Madison Square Park, where Kiss was famously photographed in front of the Roscoe Conkling monument.
Then there’s a stop by the former Academy of Music site on 14th Street between 3rd and 4th avenues — which is now NYU Palladium — where Simmons’ hair caught fire in a New Year’s Eve 1973 show where Kiss opened for Blue Oyster Cult.
The tour ends at Electric Lady Studios, where Simmons and Stanley once did background vocals for other artists before they made a deal to record their first demo there.
“They said, ‘We owe you a few 100 bucks. You can have the money or you can have some free studio time,’ ” said Simmons. “And we went, ‘We’ll take the studio time.’”
It would also become the studio where “Dressed to Kill” — and its signature anthem “Rock and Roll All Nite,” which blew up with a live version released on the “Alive!” LP later in 1975— took Kiss to superstardom.
“Kiss was the biggest band that ever came out of New York in any genre,” said Simmons. “We played stadiums around the world. And we all love the Ramones and Blondie and Talking Heads and everything, but they never reached those heights.”
