Ace Frehley, Kiss Guitarist and Founding Member, Is Dead at 74

Music|Ace Frehley, a Founding Member of Kiss, Is Dead at 74

Ace Frehley, the original lead guitarist of the hard-rock band Kiss, who often performed in white-and-silver face makeup and sold millions of records during his two tenures with the band — from 1973 to 1982, and then from 1996 to 2002 — died on Thursday in Morristown, N.J. He was 74.

A statement from his family said the cause was a recent fall at his home.

A consummate showman, like all the members of Kiss, Mr. Frehley was known for playing guitars rigged with pyrotechnic effects and for his distinctive stage persona: He was known as “the Spaceman” or “Space Ace” because of the silver stars on his face. He also designed the band’s logo (with assistance from the guitarist Paul Stanley).

The other founding members of Kiss, in addition to Mr. Frehley and Mr. Stanley, were the drummer Peter Criss and the bassist Gene Simmons. Mr. Simmons was hospitalized this month after a car crash in Malibu, Calif.

Kiss was initially dismissed by many rock fans as gimmicky charlatans — the band members weren’t photographed without their stage makeup until 1983 — but its energetic live shows built a following of devoted teenagers, known as the Kiss Army. The band placed eight singles in the Top 40 during Mr. Frehley’s tenure; he played on seven of them, including “Love Gun,” “Christine Sixteen” and “I Was Made for Loving You.” (He was absent from the band’s biggest chart hit, “Beth,” a ballad with orchestral backing that reached No. 7 on the Billboard chart in 1976.)

With the passage of time and the enduring popularity of its party anthem “Rock and Roll All Nite,” the band’s critical reputation gradually improved. Kiss was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.

“Out of the four founding members of Kiss, I definitely have been the most successful solo artist,” Mr. Frehley bragged in a 2024 interview with the website Antihero. That was true largely because of his single “New York Groove,” a Top 20 hit in 1978 that is now played at Citi Field after every Mets victory. His other solo projects included the band Frehley’s Comet.

Paul Daniel Frehley was born in the Bronx on April 27, 1951, and began playing guitar at age 13. He was given the nickname Ace when he was 16 by the drummer in one of his early bands in gratitude for setting him up with attractive dates. In the early days of Kiss, Mr. Frehley started using the nickname full time to avoid confusion with Mr. Stanley.

During Mr. Frehley’s original tenure with Kiss, the band released 11 albums, both studio and live, that went gold or platinum in the United States.

He is survived by his wife, Jeanette; his daughter, Monique; his brother, Charles; and his sister, Nancy Salvner.