Former KISS Guitarist Bruce Kulick Hits The Right Notes on ‘Got To Get Back’

“This music represents a time in my career that I feel helped define the potential of my guitar playing.” Bruce Kulick is not talking about KISS or Grand Funk Railroad. He is talking about the time he spent in 1974 with a couple of best friends in a basement in New York, playing and creating music, when that was all that really mattered. “To think that so long ago I was involved in something this powerful that sat in my closet unheard for nearly thirty-five years made me furious,” Kulick stated upon the release of Got To Get Back. “Play it loud and imagine three young men pouring their hearts out making music, never concerned about anything but the music. That was the intention. It was pure, it was real.”

Kulick, vocalist/bass player Mike Katz and drummer Guy Bois were fresh out of high school and just getting their feet wet in the real world when they formed KKB. They recorded some songs but before they knew it, life began moving them in different directions and the tapes were stored away for many years. Kulick came across his tape in 2008 and released a limited-edition CD but it wasn’t till Katz found the originals that they decided to give the old songs a new lease on life. After a remix and remastering, KKB is seeing the light of day once again, if only for a short shining moment. The CD contains the six original compositions, plus a brand new track the trio wrote and recorded, keeping it true to the early 70’s sound of the band. It has a funky feel with some hippie-psychedelia undertones. It’s fun and it’s rocking.

Kulick would continue his journey into music, spending twelve years in a makeup-less KISS and now fifteen years and counting with Grand Funk Railroad. In between, he was in Blackjack with a pre-pop Michael Bolton, in Union with Slash drummer Brent Fitz and current Dead Daisies vocalist John Corabi, as well as touring with Meat Loaf on his Bat Out Of Hell tour. Kulick has released three solo albums, not to mention contributing his guitar magic to many projects by other artists.

In our recent interview with Kulick, the well-known Beatles fan talked about those heady times when KKB was the whole world, his years in KISS and Union, why music fans should come see bands like Grand Funk, and having The Knack’s Doug Fieger sing on his 2010 solo record shortly before the “My Sharona” singer passed away.

You have a wonderful career going with Grand Funk Railroad, you’ve been doing solo projects, so why revisit KKB?

Well, honestly, something as unique as music when I was twenty years old, from forty years ago, that still sounded relevant to me, I definitely had a passion to want to share it with the fans. This isn’t something I’m going to make money from. I’m hoping to actually break even cause I’m only doing a limited edition of it. But I didn’t realize when we worked really hard rehearsing these songs how good they were. I don’t know why we didn’t try to do some more, you know, or have managers or auditions for labels and stuff like that. But it all just kind of fell apart and I think with my reputation and resume that by shining a light on it and giving people a good glimpse into something I was doing a long time ago, in addition of course to recording a brand new song, would certainly be something I think fans would enjoy. And so far the reaction, I mean it’s still brand new so it’s just getting out there, has been great. Everybody is really digging it.

What happened to you guys after you recorded this?

You know, it’s a great question and of course that’s come up a few times and I’ve been trying to think about it. All I know is that we were very dedicated to get these songs tight. Mike Katz, the singer and the principle songwriter, was a very talented, confident guy that was able to kind of direct the music that he heard. I only co-wrote one of those vintage tracks. I don’t know why after we recorded it we didn’t think about, alright, let’s book a gig and play this stuff and then we can do some Cream covers or whatever, a band that we liked. I have no idea why it kind of just didn’t happen.

I know I did work with Guy, the drummer, in some kind of Top 40 cover band and I remember Mike going off to do something in Greenland, like for the USO or something with the military. I know Mike continued to write some songs and demo them whenever he could find a studio, even if it was like an educational place, cause there was another song I remember I recorded some guitars for him. But this was more like a band, where the three of us were tightening up arrangements of original songs that all have a common vibe to it.

But the big question of why we didn’t, I can’t remember a real reason except that it just didn’t happen. It wasn’t until me hearing the tape – I knew the tape existed, I just didn’t know really where it was – but once I started to listen back to what we did I was very pleased. Obviously just two years ago having Mike find the original tracks from the studio as opposed to just my copy of the mixed tapes from our session, Mike gave us a real opportunity to do something special, which is what this release is about.

How old were you then?

I was twenty

Who were you back then – what were your dreams, what was important to you?

I definitely loved guitar and music. I immersed myself in playing guitar, practically slept with my Gibson SG. I know I was going to Queens College, which had a music program, which was like the community college near where I grew up, so I definitely saw myself in music, though I didn’t know what that would mean or what would happen. I call this kind of my woodshedding period, if you know what I mean, because that’s what we did. To play that kind of material you really did have to focus and practice. We weren’t just a jam band, even though we used to improvise within the songs.

There is kind of a funky vibe going through the songs. Do you think if you guys had stayed together that would have been the direction you would have kept going in or would you have veered off to another sound?

I don’t know. Usually when bands change direction it’s because of some record company, and this is back in the days when there were record companies (laughs). The industry now is completely upside down. I can’t really put up a crystal ball and say, “What would have happened to the three of us if …?” But I do know that back then labels and producers and managers did take sometimes a very active role in opinions of what a group should do, and that’s one thing I could tell you we were never exposed to anyone IN the biz. We totally were just doing what we heard and what we enjoyed. We didn’t know. We didn’t have bills to be stressed by or mortgages so it was very innocent in our passion of doing it.

Do you remember the first song that you guys wrote together and how that happened?

I don’t really know which one we started with. All I know is I thought they were all equally cool. I enjoyed playing them. Some were more of a challenge than others doing a live recording, cause basically we didn’t have the luxury of, “Okay, well, punch me in here on the second verse.” We didn’t do it that way. So it’s pretty remarkable that we were captured doing this and doing it live and then just overdubbing the vocals. It’s pretty amazing. I’m still very, very impressed with it, and I’m a perfectionist so I do hear every little, “Oh I wish I would have played that a little different.” I still could say that but I wasn’t going to fool around with this stuff. I wasn’t going to like, “Oh, let me replace the solo.” I didn’t want to do anything like that. I was actually quite proud of all of it.

What guitar were you playing then?

I only owned one back then and it was this Gibson SG from 1965. They call it an SG Special. It was a good guitar. Someone I know in New York bought it from me years ago and he still has it. I know he’ll probably go to his grave with it (laughs) but I do have another one that’s like a more original version. That one had a couple of modifications but that’s an iconic guitar, not dissimilar to something that Carlos Santana and Pete Townshend used to use back in the sixties and seventies.

When you went to record the new song, which guitar did you choose to use to record that song with to kind of keep the texture the same?

That’s a good question because obviously now from one guitar I now have super many (laughs) and as many choices as I could have had for what to play. But I did want to keep it, as you said, in some way connected to the past so the amp that I used was a bit similar to the amp that I probably was using during KKB. And the guitar was, once again, I had to go back to an SG so I only really brought two SGs and one was my cleaner version of the ’65 SG Special and the other one was the custom job Gibson SG in white. That one had the humbucker pickups but that’s the one you can kind of see on the CD package in some of the photos. That combination really got much closer to where I was at in 1974 than maybe some of the other choices I had that I could use so I was pleased about that.

The song “Someday” has kind of a smooth psychedelic sound to it. Is there anything you remember about that from back in the day?

Not really except for the fact that I know Mike sang it and that’s actually him playing the guitar on that track and we recorded it the same time as we did the electric stuff. The big update I was able to do for that one without hurting it in any way was a guy that I’ve worked with on my last solo record, this guy Jeremy Rubolino, is a string arranger too besides being a talented producer and songwriter. He wrote a chart and the quartet that was put on that, obviously in 1974, I didn’t know any string players, I didn’t know any string arrangers, I didn’t know anything like that. So I remember when I thought about that and realized this is going to make such a pretty song – it was already pretty – but to really take it to another level. I remember Mike was in New York and the strings were recorded here in LA so when I played him some of it he was practically crying he was so impressed with it. So that song had a nice little update.

Was it easy for the three of you to do a new song?

Well, that one was a bit of a logistical challenge. When Mike and I finally met up and I already knew that the original tracks that he found on tape sounded so clean and they were all really, really great quality, much better than the tape I found from 2008, I said to him, “Look, I know this could all be mixed and shined up a lot better than what tape I had in the closet from 2008 but I wouldn’t want to just put that out without us at least doing a new song.” So that was something that I really insisted on, cause that’s the right thing to do. People always do want to hear new stuff and I knew there would be a story there and a challenge.

I had a great riff that I thought, well, if I can put on my time machine helmet (laughs), I’d say these riffs are a little bit like something that maybe we would have rehearsed back in the seventies. I sent them to New York with all these ideas of this one song that I really thought could be something for the album. And sure enough, Mike really took those riffs and in some ways he turned them completely upside down. The version I gave him had kind of a little darker twist to it and he removed that and made it a little more pop and I didn’t mind it at all. Mike, I told you he was very creative and he sings great and he can play guitar as well even though his principle instrument is the bass, so he programmed drums, he played all the instruments and sent me the demo. And the first time I heard it I was like, okay, there’s the riff, but oh my God, it’s completely different, it’s upside down inside out. The first listen I had of it was really kind of like I didn’t know what to think and then I realized, alright, wait a minute, I got to listen to this with fresh ears. Then I realized it was amazing and my wife was just like, “I love that.”

Cause what happens when people, when writers co-write or if I share something with you and you’re going to interpret it and do something with it, generally the person that’s giving you something, he knows how that sounds in his head and that’s all he knows how it sounds. And it’s almost hard, just like the person that only wants to eat at that one Italian restaurant for them to go to a different Italian restaurant. They’re just used to that place, what the pasta is like, what the sauce is like, etc, etc. So it really turned me upside down but then I realized that he did a terrific job.

Then the challenge was, okay, we’re going to make this demo in Pro Tools, which I’m sure you know about. You can make that your guide and you can make a Pro Tools session where you’re not going to use anything from it but everybody is going to use that to overdub. So we sent it over to France for Guy to work on and then Mike did his stuff in New York and I did guitars in LA. We were never in the same room but I do a lot of sessions for people all around the world and you can do that with Pro Tools by just importing, you add your performance on top of their MP3 and then they put it into the big session and there you go.

I was really pleased and I’ve got to give some credit to Brian Virtue, who was the guy that I asked to mix the album and he helped record it as well, the new song, at least my parts, and I have to say that he got the vision. He was like the fourth member of the band because, you know, we really could have taken those tapes and turned them upside down and maybe gotten too far away from the spirit of what we did in 1974 and I wanted to be careful about that. But I know he really accomplished it and I’m really pleased with the result.

On your last solo album, BK3, Doug Fieger sang on the song “Dirty Girl.” He passed away not long after that yet his voice sounds so good.

I love that song. The record was released February 2^nd and he passed away twelve days later on the fourteenth of February, 2010. Fortunately, I had some advance copies before the release and I was able to get one to him. I know I saw his brother, who is a very famous Michigan attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, he’s the one that represented Kevorkian, but there was a memorial at Doug’s house within a few weeks after he passed and I remember the first person I ran into was his brother and he did tell me that Doug heard it and was very happy with it. He had it on his nightstand. I knew he was battling cancer, although he was in great spirits and he did an amazing job on the song and I was so proud to have him on my record. Being a Knack fan I know what a Beatles fan he is.

Then what’s really crazy is that because of Doug, I actually got to meet one of The Beatles. Ringo Starr came to his memorial at his home so that was really quite interesting cause I’m just like this huge Beatles fan. And he came in with Joe Walsh and Jeff Lynne. Apparently they were all AA members at one time and that’s how they all knew each other. I knew that Ringo had a drinking problem and he talks about it but I think that they were all supportive of each other and that gave me an excellent opportunity to meet some of my heroes.

Did you know how sick Doug really was when he recorded it?

I just know that he did some experimental-type treatments and anytime I saw him, we did some work together in the Rock & Roll Fantasy Camp, I really admired how well he was handling the disease and certainly that day there wasn’t anything that made me feel like, oh, this guy is very ill.

What do you remember most about the first live show you did with KISS?

My knees were shaking before we went on. They say that’s an expression but my knees literally were shaking (laughs). I actually wasn’t aware how intense Gene and Paul liked to, how do I say, how animated they got onstage, cause obviously when we rehearsed we weren’t running around. But they were so animated so I was pretty petrified. I wanted the guitar playing to be right and I did play well, even though I was very nervous. I knew that was a really big gig to be onstage with KISS. At the time I only thought I’d be filling in for two weeks or six weeks. It turned into twelve years but it still meant a lot to me, even if I was just a temporary musician. I knew that that was a very cool thing to be doing with KISS. So I have to admit that I got through it even though it was very, very nerve-wracking (laughs).

Do you remember where it was at?

It was in England, just a few hours away from London. I don’t remember if it was Brighton that might have been the first gig. I can’t exactly remember but I know there’s websites out there that have the Animalize tour of 1984 and the date will be there (laughs). But it was like the end of September or something like that.

You said you were a perfectionist. How do you compare your perfectionism in the studio as a producer compared with Gene and Paul in the studio?

They really work hard and I think the only difference between us is I may look for like even more musical perfection where that’s something that Gene, I know for example, he doesn’t mind that it sounds a little bit more like a garage band, you know. “Don’t play it too perfect.” Because if you think about some of the amazing bands, they could be a little ragged. The Rolling Stones are a good example. So they work really hard in the studio but in a way, I’m not sure how far I would push it but I could be really hard on myself. But that’s why I like to work with someone like Jeremy because he’s got perfect pitch and if I say something’s bothering me he’ll say, “But it’s okay. It’s not going to really matter.” I don’t want to, as they say, nitpick something to death. It’s not good.

How did you feel when the original KISS was getting back together and what did you think would happen with you?

When they had the reunion, I knew the timing was right. The MTV Unplugged performance where MTV kind of wanted to have Ace and Peter in the fold and then the fact that they would do that obviously meant that they would look at a reunion tour. And then the offers came in and they were very, very big. So I kind of knew that that would be very successful and that it wasn’t going back to what the band was before the reunion. It didn’t shock me. Of course I was a bit like the guy thrown out of the house or something (laughs) but I know I didn’t do anything wrong. It was really just a smart business decision because the world really did want to see the original guys and a makeup KISS again. So that’s what had to happen. I, quite honestly, was very surprised I got twelve years out of it.

You went into Union after that. After being in such a big band and starting up a new band, did you have high expectations?

No, I did have to start from the bottom, you know. Union was a brand new group but I didn’t have much of a choice if I wanted to stay creative and record. That’s what we had to do and I’m very proud of the music that we did.

You continue to work with Brent Fitz and John Corabi, and even Gene Simmons, on your projects. Why do you like working with these guys so much?

Well, you know, Brent is a fabulous drummer and I loved working with him in Union. And John’s a super-talented singer/songwriter. Gene, obviously, was just a real score to see if he’d be willing to sing a song for me and the fact that he did was great. I think he did a fine job. We wrote the second track on BK3 and then he offered his son Nick to do a song. So I have to admit that I was pretty fortunate with my featured guests on BK3.

For a band like Grand Funk Railroad that has been around for so many years, why should people still come to see you guys play live?

First of all, the band is excellent. The musicians, Don Brewer and Mel Schacher are of course incredible as a rhythm section and Don sings some of the hits that he’s known for – “American Band” and “Some Kind Of Wonderful” and “Walk Like A Man” and “Shinin’ On.” He’s just got a tremendous voice besides being one of the best drummers in rock & roll. That’s a fact. Mel still has that huge bass sound and he’s the God of Thunder but I think he weighs like a hundred pounds, okay (laughs). Then Max Carl, the singer, is just tremendous. He can hit all the notes and perform, probably the most consistent lead singer I’ve ever worked with, and it’s fifteen years now. I’m very impressed with the talent of Tim Cashion, the keyboard player, who has worked with people like Robert Palmer and Bob Seger. He’s got this incredible voice also, on the backgrounds. I think it’s a very formidable band and talented but most important, we have fun up there and we make sure everybody enjoys the set and what we’re doing.

Did you get to see them back in the day?

Only on video. I never saw them live. I saw Don in 1983 play with Bob Seger and I knew he was a great drummer and that’s a little connection that probably helped when he put the short list of guitar players into the mix. But I was very aware of them without ever seeing them live.

Who was the first real rock star you ever met?

The first real rock star I ever met, hmm. It really might be Paul Stanley. No wait, before that I remember meeting Lou Reed very quickly cause I worked with an artist that we toured up in Canada and the next thing you know Lou Reed is at the show. But I have a stronger memory of Paul, because my brother knew Paul and we would actually go into Manhattan and hang out a bit with him but I wasn’t like this crazy KISS fan. I was very respectful of it but he needed to hang out with the normal musicians, if you get what I mean. We’d go to a club or go to a movie. I remember I thought he was very not like his stage personality in person. That was probably important to him to have a good balance. Gene and Paul came to my wedding a year and a half ago and I’m still close to the guys.

Did your brother Bob get you into playing guitar?

Yeah, he did play before me but it was really The Beatles. Once I saw them on Ed Sullivan, I wanted to play guitar.

It seems everybody saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show

Yeah and everybody points to The Beatles as their inspiration (laughs). But Bob was really into the same stuff that I enjoyed but what was nice was him being older he was exposed to things I wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to. We both really loved the British Invasion. That was what was important and all those bands I mentioned and The Who and Zeppelin and Cream. All those bands meant so much to us and still do.

I just saw the Rolling Stones the other night.

Oh everything I have heard about them has been great, all the reviews I’ve been reading, and some of the video I saw they sound great and playing well and they’re really into it. I think it’s wonderful. That music is just going to be around forever, the way certain Classical music is around forever and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin will be around forever. The Stones and The Beatles, and McCartney is another one. He just keeps touring. The Who is touring. The music is timeless, it really is. I really think that a lot of what KISS does and Grand Funk and all that, classic rock is just always going to be around, which is great.

What would you say is your all-time favorite album and why is it so special to you?

I would probably say the first Jimi Hendrix record, Are You Experienced. I could easily say just about any Beatles record also but the thing that Jimi Hendrix created with primarily the guitar being the driving force of the music, I just think he was really a genius on the guitar and his creativity in the studio was really pushing all the boundaries. I remember when I heard Are You Experienced, that album, my head was like inside out. I went crazy for it and thought it was the most amazing thing I ever heard.

How has your relationship with the guitar changed over the years – do you find yourself moving away from certain things or moving towards certain aspects of the instrument itself?

If anything I just have a greater understanding of it all. I don’t think my love of the instrument or approach to the instrument has changed much. Owning a lot of guitars is a bit of a joy and a burden (laughs). Obviously, look, it’s my career but it’s also a hobby and where I was happy to have one or two guitars when I was younger, now I’m really happy with many and I’m always buying and selling and flipping one and trading one. I do a lot of that and there is some crazy joy in it and that’s why the guitar community is an interesting bunch. But anything that is kind of collectible of some sort or has that kind of interest to people, there is a real passion for it that occupies some fun part of your brain, I think.

And I hear you are a Star Wars fan

Oh yeah, I do like Star Wars (laughs). I like Sci-Fi. I’m not a big horror fan but I do like Sci-Fi and Star Trek and Star Wars and all that kind of stuff. Those movies, they’re great stories, great fantasy. I look forward to the new movie.

What are your plans for the summer?

Well, of course, that’s our busiest season with Grand Funk so I’ll be traveling almost every weekend throughout the summer. In between, I’d like to keep writing songs. I do have aspirations of another solo record. This year I really wanted to get KKB out and I released BK3 on vinyl, which did very well. So it’s time to start working on new music.

Live photographs by Courtni Meadows