U.K.’s Total Guitar magazine has uploaded a special edition of its “Me And My Guitar” video segment, featuring Tommy Thayer of KISS. Check it out below.
Thayer, who joined KISS in February 2003, stepping into the boots the band’s original axeman, Ace Frehley, had been occupying for the KISS reunion that lasted from 1996 to 2002, refused to criticize his predecessor, insisting in an interview that he wishes “all the best to everybody.”
In 2014, Frehley spoke out against Thayer in an interview, describing him as “just a guy up there copying me and trying to move like me and trying to sing like me and trying to play like me.”
But Thayer declined to fire back at Frehley, telling Australia’s The Herald: “I don’t want to get into a back-and-forth, but I’m sure you can kind of assess what you think when you hear all that.”
He continued: “I think [Ace] had every opportunity in the world to continue in KISS and be in KISS as long as he did the right thing, but it worked out better for me and he has to lead his life.
“As far as the jabs and all that, he can say that stuff and I’m not going to say anything bad about him.”
Thayer added: “I just wish all the best to everybody in whatever they’re doing.”
Thayer told Rolling Stone magazine that he had no discomfort about wearing Ace Frehley’s makeup. He explained: “First of all, I didn’t have any input on that. That was a decision that those guys made. There was not even a conversation about it, because I think it was so obvious, that they weren’t going to introduce new characters 30 years into the band. I never thought that there should be some new designs or something. I thought that would have been ridiculous. And the only thing is, you’ve got a lot of push-back from some of the diehards. And that’s understandable. Hey, you know, if you lived in the Seventies and KISS was your favorite band, and that’s what you grew up with, and suddenly there’s another guy wearing that makeup, I can understand how some people, it might not have appealed to them as much. But as time as gone by, a lot of people have changed their mind.”
Source: Blabbermouth
