An Eric Carr Halloween
Like a majority of KISS fans,
my favorite holiday when I was growing up was Halloween. A holiday
where you can dress up in crazy make-up and costumes and have
a party? The description sounds like the definition of KISS itself.
My best friend Dino and I had a yearly ritual to dress like KISS
every Halloween. He was always Peter Criss and I was always Gene
Simmons. We would recruit from a number of friends to fill the
Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley spots. We took our KISS seriously.
Halloween was a big deal to us - we didn't just dress like KISS,
we would put together a replica of the latest KISS tour stage
setup. Well, we did our best for 13 and 14-year old boys with
what we had in our parents' basements. We would lip sync to a
recorded concert with the exact set list KISS was using that year.
The Halloween of 1980 was going to be our biggest production yet.
In July of 1980 I went to see KISS at the Palladium in New York
City. It was the debut of KISS's new drummer, Eric Carr. The next
day I told Dino that Eric Carr was the character of the Fox and
he was a solid drummer and fit the KISS music very well. Dino
decided that day to retire his Peter Criss costume (like the real
Peter did) and be Eric Carr for that year's Halloween concert.
We had to do a lot of research and start building the set that
summer if we were going to be ready for Halloween. First I went
to the camera store to develop my 110-camera film of the pictures
I took at the Palladium. But 110 pictures taken by a 14 year old
from the mezzanine section of the theater with the flash on didn't
turn out to be much help. We could tell from the pictures that
Eric Carr had black make-up over his eyes, but not much more.
But in August relief came in the form of a cover story that KISS
did for People Weekly. There on the cover we could see
Eric Carr's make-up and costume perfectly. Eric's make-up had
a bandit-type fox mask of black over his eyes, a red jacket with
brown fur around the collar, silver sequins at the end of the
sleeves, a fox head belt buckle and towering black platform boots.
Dino asked his Aunt Bonnie, who knew her way around a sewing machine,
if she could make a replica of the jacket Eric was wearing on
the cover of People. She was a busy mom of three young
boys, but she knew what KISS meant to us and agreed to make the
jacket. She even had enough red material after she was done with
Eric's jacket to give my recycled 1979 costume the new long red
cape that Gene had added for KISS's 1980 tour. Aunt Bonnie spent
all her free time that summer on the jacket and cape.
Once the costumes were finished we had to take care of the make-up.
Our friend Toni always applied our make-up for us and was as involved
in the annual KISS creations as we were. That summer we showed
her the People magazine and told her to practice the Eric
Carr make-up as much as she could. She drew and painted Eric's
face on paper, rocks, the playground she even handled a small
crisis when KISS appeared on the kids' TV show Kids Are People
Too and we discovered that Eric had changed his make-up from
what he was wearing on the People magazine cover to a new
design. We scrambled to our local magazine store and bought a
copy of Circus magazine showing Eric Carr in his new make-up
so Toni could practice the updated design.
Dino and I spent hours in my parents' basement putting together
our new stage set-up and by Halloween the stage, the make-up,
and the costumes were ready, including one great Eric Carr red
jacket trimmed with Dino's late grandmother's fox stole.
Getting through the school day that Halloween felt like an eternity.
Three o'clock finally came and we headed for Dino's aunt's backyard
where the concert would be performed. Toni showed up on time and
we got to work on the make-up. In one hour Dino was transformed
into Eric Carr and I became Gene Simmons. Manny, who was our Paul
Stanley, and Steve, who was one of our regular Aces, were on time
and ready to go. Just as dusk set over the backyard on Halloween
eve, "Detroit Rock City" blasted out of the tape deck
and our ritual was underway. All the kids from the block were
crammed in the yard to watch us perform. People took pictures
and my brother, Louis, filmed the show with his 8mm camera.
The soundtrack to our lives blared from the radio speakers as
we all took on the personas of our designated heroes. Manny pouted
his lips, Steve stumbled around in a spaced out way, and I stuck
out my tongue and walked around like a monster. Dino had not seen
Eric play live yet (although that would soon change), so he just
channeled Peter Criss. Cheering us on from that very first number
was a Halloween crowd filled with clowns, ninjas, Indians, soldiers
and a few house wives.
After "Detroit Rock City," we ran through the full set
list from the 1980 Unmasked tour, including KISS classics
such as "Calling Dr. Love"; "Strutter"; "God
of Thunder", complete with blood-spitting and drum solo;
"Shock Me", featuring a smoking guitar; "I Was
Made for Loving You"; and "Shout It Out Loud."
Ninety minutes later the last of the smoke bombs had faded in
to the crisp autumn night as "Black Diamond," lip synced
by Dino as Eric Carr, came to a close. We had made it through
another Halloween, keeping our ritual alive.
Nick Clemente
EricCarr.com Contributing Writer