Gene Simmons Delivers Emotional Speech About Ace Frehley At ‘Love Ride’ Charity Event (Video)

During a performance with the Gene Simmons Band at the 34th Love Ride charity motorcycle event on November 9th in Castaic, California, KISS co-founder Gene Simmons delivered a moving tribute to his late bandmate, original guitarist Ace Frehley.

Frehley, who passed away on October 16th at the age of 74 due to blunt trauma injuries to his head from a fall, was remembered by Simmons just weeks before KISS is due to be honored at the Kennedy Center Honors.

Before the band launched into the KISS classic “Cold Gin,” Simmons addressed the crowd, speaking directly about the band’s original Spaceman and the enduring impact of his death.

The full speech delivered by Gene Simmons was (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “I wanna take a moment just to tell you that somebody I’ve known for many decades who started the band with us, a guy named Ace Frehley…” After the audience cheered and chanted the late guitarist’s name, Simmons continued: “Very sad. Paul [Stanley, KISS frontman] and myself and Peter Criss [original KISS drummer], we went to Ace‘s funeral. He sadly passed. And the saddest part of all, besides the pain and suffering to his friends, family, his daughter, his wife, his whole family, is that Ace didn’t live long enough to be with us on December 6th when the president and everybody’s gonna get up there and honor KISS in entering the Kennedy Center Honors. And the first person who’s gonna walk out there and talk about how KISS changed his life is [country star] Garth Brooks, who’s gonna host a little bit. Then he’s gonna play ‘Shout It Out Loud‘ and knock it out of the park. And in Ace‘s memory, we’re gonna make sure one of the four chairs is empty with Ace‘s name, because he deserves to be there in spirit, even if he can’t be there physically.”

Simmons then introduced the song they were about to play, which marked Frehley’s earliest contribution to the band: “So, one day Ace walked in. The very first song he ever wrote we’re gonna do now. It’s called ‘Cold Gin‘.”

The upcoming Kennedy Center Honors ceremony, which will be hosted and produced by President Donald Trump, will recognize KISS alongside other distinguished individuals for their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts. Frehley will become only the third person to receive a Kennedy Center Honor posthumously, joining Glenn Frey of Eagles and Phil Lesh of Grateful Dead.

The gesture of leaving a chair empty for Frehley is a tribute to the lasting legacy of the founding guitarist, whose work profoundly shaped the sound and image of one of the world’s most successful rock bands. Upon the initial announcement of the honor in August, Frehley himself had called it “a dream come true that I never thought would materialize.”