For most rock bands, there’s usually one pivotal year that really rockets them and their music to breakthrough fame and recognition. Think 1964 for the Beatles, 1980 for AC/DC, and 1992 for Nirvana.
For KISS, that annum mirabilis was 1976. Building on the popularity of their live disc Alive! (after three commercially unimpressive studio albums), the group broke out huge with popularity and media exposure largely based on their distinctive makeup and costumes. That year they also put out two albums (career-peak Destroyer and Rock and Roll All Over) and toured throughout the U.S. and Europe.
The four struggling New York City musicians who had rechristened themselves the Demon (Gene Simmons), the Starchild (Paul Stanley), the Cat (Peter Criss), and the Spaceman (Ace Frehley) had arrived.
With 135+ books and thousands of record reviews under his byline (not to mention the magazine articles, podcast, and YouTube program), Martin Popoff is likely the world’s most prolific music journalist. In 1976 he was also a 13-year-old serious hard rock fan and especially besotted with KISS. And that love is strewn across the pages of KISS ’76: Twelve Months That Defined the Hottest Band in the Land (176 pp., $40, Motor Books).
“This is the story of 1976 by someone with way too much KISS on the brain,” Popoff writes, adding that it was also “the most magical year in KISS history.”
KISS ’76 is kind of a companion piece to his previous book on the group, 2023’s KISS @ 50. “This one was a different kind of idea. I remember years ago being in a bookstore and there was a whole book just about Led Zeppelin’s 1975 tour. I thought ‘Wow, people are going to start writing about micro kinds of things now,’” Popoff notes (the book he’s likely referring to is Stephen Davis’ LZ-’75).
KISS ’76 breaks down the band’s entire schedule that year, including recording the tracks on Destroyer (where we learn of 15 songs originally demoed, only three made it to the final product) and Rock and Roll Over. Then there’s stories about touring and everything else in KISStory for the Bicentennial.
One question that has always understandably dogged KISS and their legacy is this: If you took away the makeup, the costumes, and the merchandising, would anyone still be talking as much about KISS in 2026? Or would they have just been another solid-but-of-their-time hard rock band like Blue Cheer, Grand Funk, Humble Pie, or Sweet?
“Nobody was really making music like KISS. It was big stacks of power chords. Other bands at that time were more riffy and progressive. I always struggle with coming up with what the [comparison] is. Like the heaviest Slade stuff or the heaviest Bachman-Turner Overdrive. But they don’t sound like Aerosmith or Ted Nugent,” he says.
“So, they had an interesting lane. It was modern moving away from the British blues boom bands like Mountain and Cactus and the Amboy Dukes. It was heavy metal and pop at the same time. And four singers in the band is pretty interesting. So, they had some different things going for them.”
In addition to Popoff’s commentary, quotes in the text come from archival interviews with band members, producers, managers, musicians, and journalists. As well as original interviews Popoff conducted with figures like Ace Frehley and producer Bob Ezrin.
The book is written for a general fan. But this is a Martin Popoff production, so the level of some details—even for the superfans—can go deep.
Like how in PR photos taken early in the year, Ace and Peter are still wearing their “old” stage boots from their Alive! costumes because the new ones hadn’t arrived yet. Or how a “guy named Vinnie” designed the second and still-used logo for the KISS Army Fan Club. Or how the car sound revving up heard on the Destroyer song “Detroit Rock City” came from engineer Corky Stasiak’s Toyota SR5 pickup truck.
Running across the bottom of each page is a sort of companion timeline of 1976 in hard news, pop culture, and music activity. Gen Xers will certainly break into a smile of remembrance seeing the Evel Knievel doll, ad for TV show Welcome Back, Kotter, cover of Dynamite magazine, movie poster for The Bad News Bears, and portrait of Gerald Ford.
Well, maybe not so much that last one.
“It’s also a love letter to the year,” Popoff says. “I lived through it, and the cool thing is there are a lot of KISS books out there, and fans are pretty demanding about what they know. There’s even a lot of big, self-published books out there. But I knew this would warm the cockles of people who lived through that year and see all this other stuff that was part of the culture at the time,” he says.
As with most of Popoff’s other “coffee table” tomes, KISS ’76 is chock full of photos (mostly live shots) along with publicity stills, backstage passes, album and single covers, magazine advertisements, and other ephemera.
Houston is mentioned once when KISS played a show at the Summit on August 13, and a backstage pass or ad is shown.
“The confluence of events made 1976 the year for KISS. It was just a momentous year that they broke. And the KISS Army was formalized. And all those TV appearances. Which you had to watch when it was on because there was no taping and no reruns!” Popoff sums up. “It was relentless, and there was so much excitement about the band.”
Next up on his release horizon is Popoff’s Metallica: Album by Album. And then it’s on to the next book. And the next. Though he doesn’t think his productivity is especially noteworthy.
“I’m one of the few guys for who this is my full-time job. I’ve also probably done 2,500 interviews over the years,” he sums up. “Plus, I’m a fast writer!”
For more on Martin Popoff and his books, visit MartinPopoff.com
