Overview
Frehley's Comet is the second solo album by Ace Frehley, former lead guitarist of Kiss. It was also the first album that Frehley released after leaving Kiss in 1982.
Background
Frehley formed his solo band in 1984. He went on tour to perform his Kiss classics and some new material, which was recorded with his new band. The original Frehley's Comet lineup consisted of Ace Frehley (on lead, backup vocals and lead guitar), Richie Scarlet (on lead, backup vocals, lead and rhythm guitar), John Regan (on bass guitar and backup vocals), Arthur Stead (on keyboards), and Anton Fig (on drums). Fig also played drums on Frehley's 1978 Kiss solo album, as well as Kiss's Dynasty and Unmasked albums. In 1985, Richie Scarlet left the band to focus on a solo career. Scarlet's departure led to another lineup change with Arthur Stead being dropped and briefly replaced by Rob Sabino before Tod Howarth joining the band, handling the rhythm guitar, lead and backup vocals duties. The original Frehley's Comet lineup recorded various demos and songs around 1984 and 1985, and many of them were performed live; however, the songs from that era are still officially unreleased, and only a few of them made it to the final recording of Frehley's Comet. Notably, "Breakout", "Into the Night" (which was a cover of Russ Ballard), "We Got Your Rock", "Love Me Right", "Dolls", & "Stranger in a Strange Land" are the only songs on the record which were previously performed live in the band's early career and finally made it to the album.
Songs
"Rock Soldiers" Ace Frehley wrote this with Chip Taylor. Among the other hits Chip Taylor has penned are "Wild Thing" and Angel Of The Morning". Frehley explained to American Songwriter magazine March/April 1988 how their collaboration worked: "Chip wrote most of the lyrics and I wrote most of the music because I've known Chip for years and he was aware of the incident that went down in the summer of '83 when I had the car accident and he thought it would be a great idea to write a song around it."
"Breakout" was co-written with Kiss member Eric Carr around the Music from "The Elder" recording era. The song, however, was not used on the record and was later released by Kiss on their Revenge album, with the title "Carr Jam 1981".
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).