The Örebro band Millencolin’s singer Nikola Sarcevic once told about how he discovered Kiss as a child. He saw a picture in a newspaper and thought, “This must be porn.” He had never heard Kiss. But he had heard about porn and he knew it was dangerous.
The journalists Alex Bergdahl and Carl Linnaeus, who just published their third book about the band: “The Last Dynasty”, know all the more about Kiss. In the autumn, Bergdahl gave a lecture at Zita in Stockholm. He began by showing a transcript of a meeting of the band’s management company in 1978:
“As you can see, at this time Kiss had started investing his fortune. During the oil crisis, Jimmy Carter made it deductible to invest in domestic fossil fuels. This would lead to financial difficulties for Kiss in the eighties when Reagan repealed the law and … “
The audience (middle-aged men in Kiss shirts) listened devoutly to the auditor’s report. At the end of the lecture, I was deeply fascinated by the fact that Kiss in 1978 intended to include the Marvel villain Dr Doom and a living lion in his show. I met the punk musician Inge Johansson who said that he thought it was “a little overpriced” to, like Alex Bergdahl, visit the office on East 23rd Street where Kiss had his first rehearsal room. “I have only been outside and taken pictures,” said Inge.
Alex Bergdal’s and Carl Linnaeus’ activities are usually called kissology. They have also been accused of engaging in “buttonology” (a term coined by August Strindberg and meaning systematization of uninteresting facts) and “minutiae” (Latin for “insignificant details”). They like both words and write: “We live for insignificant details about Kiss. Trivia is our lifeblood. There may be a disease picture hidden in it all, but that we are obsessed with futility is due to the fact that the kicks are harder to find the older we get. ”
Explosions, fireworks and roaring rock’n’roll – what attracts the audience to the Kiss concert at Tele2 Arena tomorrow – are for the two buttonological kissologists not by far as exciting as forms, minutes and documents. The obsession is contagious when you read “The Last Dynasty”, an extremely detailed review of the years 1979 and 1980 when Kiss with the albums “Dynasty” and “Unmasked” tried to make a comeback after moderately successful solo albums and a disastrous feature film.
The authors highlight an unsung hero in the band’s history: Peggy Tomarkin, copywriter at Howard Marks Advertising. She wrote background stories for the members’ characters: The Catman (Peter Criss) had been raised by saber-toothed tigers in the jungle, The Spaceman (Ace Frehley) came from another planet and needed special magnetic shoes because he was not used to Earth’s gravity and The Demon (Gene Simmons ) had not been born but hatched.
Peggy Tomarkin used the pseudonym Bob Steele because it was not thought that fans would appreciate that a woman was involved. In “The Last Dynasty” she is interviewed for the first time. When she describes sexism at the advertising agency in New York, she is reminiscent of her fictional name Peggy Olson, copywriter in the TV series “Mad men”.
Peggy Tomarkin helped to make Kiss superheroes. Thanks to her, fans – at least if they squint – do not see The Starchild (Paul Stanley) as a 70-year-old who mimes old rock, but as a medieval prince reincarnated into an immortal god of love, a generator of unbridled passion.
“Love for both sexes,” wrote Peggy Tomarkin, which fueled rumors that Paul was bisexual. “He was definitely not gay,” she says. “I remember when he put his tongue down my throat so I could go and wash my mouth with soap.”
Read more chronicles and other texts by Fredrik Strage