What is going on my fellow rock n' rollers. Don't orget to hit the bell notification icon
to be notified everytime i put out a new video on my channel. Few fan clubs are as notorious
as the Kiss Army, but the idea for the fan club didn’t come from the band themsleves
or their manager or even record label, People can thanks two loyal teenage fans from the
midwest. How did this happen stay tuned to find out.
The story of the Kiss army began with two teenage fans from Indiana. They were named
Bill Starkey and Jay Evans and they lived in the Indiana City of Terre Haute
Starkey came from a family who supported his love of rock n’ roll taking him to KiSS’s
conerts in 1974 and his father also worked at a warehouse as an expeditor for Columbia
Records. His father gave Bill his first Kiss record, their self titled debut album from
February of 1974. Starkey’s father liked Kiss, but he would tease his son about what
he saw as a band without a future telling his son, 'Your band isn't doing it,'. " 'They're
playing shows, but the sales are bad. We're not shipping anything.' he'd say He wasn’t
far off from the truth The band's first three albums — Kiss, Hotter Than Hell and Dressed
to Kill —didn’t dominate the rock charts initially.
It didn’t matter to Starkey who still followed his favourite band and his friend Jay Evans
made bootleg copies of Kiss albums, which he shared with the people with people at school.
Starkey and Evans worked at a place called Wayne's World fashion, where they would decide
Starkey would become the commander-in-chief of the Kiss Army, while Evans would take the
title of field marshal. And you’re maybe wondering why did they call it the Kiss Army
and not just the Kiss fan club? According to Evans he would say “it sounded too wimpy.”
Prior to the band getting any airplay on radio, Starkey and Evans would be teased mercilessly
by their school mates over being kiss fans. Evans would remember
"We all showed up at school in our Kiss T-shirts and got taunted. Still, it didn't really dampen
our enthusiasm. Usually, in high school, anything you get taunted for, you want to shy away
from. But we just didn't." According to Starkey the kids would say to the them "Kiss? Kiss
my ass. Starkey, if they're so good, why aren't they on the radio?" Starkey for his part couldn’t
come up with a good response and he wondered yeah why aren’t they on the radio.
in January of 1975 Starkey and Evans wanted to get their favorite band Kiss played on
the local radio so they started calling the radio station WVTS, but the program director
Rich Dickerson ignored their request referring to Kiss as a and i quote “mediocre Bachman
Turner Overdrive” Rather than give up they called back into the radio station claiming
to be the KISS Army. They would continue to badger the station going as far as sending
in letters threatening to blow up the station unless they complied with their request. Their
perseverance seemed to pay off as by the summer of 1975 the local radio station started playing
KISS' music often referring to the Kiss army live on the air. Also helping things was that
Kiss’ live album Alive was released around this time and the band was scheduled to play
the City that fall. And it wasn’t long before the radio station was inundated with calls
from people asking how they could enlist in the Kiss army.
When WVTS decided to play KISS on their station, they had to reach out to Starkey to bring
in his recordings from the band as the station had previously thrown out their singles for
Rock N’ Roll All Nite and Strutter.
Soon enough the program director who initially ignored the teens would team up to help promote
an upcoming Kiss concert in Terra Haute. Soon enough Kiss’ publicist would reach out to
Starkey and Evans to discuss the Kiss Army which wasn’t an official fan club just yet.
The teens found themselves going live on WVTS to recruit as many members as possible ahead
of their scheduled show.. Abd Kiss would perform in Terra Haute on November 21, 1975 and to
recognize the efforts of Starkey, he met the band at the airport, was brought on stage
that night and given an honorary plaque as well as ate dinner with the band at a chinese
restaurant following the show and had breakfast with them the following morning. Starkey initially
thought that he would continue to run the Kiss army from his home in Indiana and in
november of 1975 Kiss management company got in touch with him and said the group was looking
forward to the band having their fan club headquarters in Indiana The following year
his dream would be dashed as Starkey received a letter from Boutwell Enterprises from Woodland
Hills, California informing him that they would be running the Kiss Army.
And Kiss manager Bill Aucoin would procure Howard Marks Incorporated to create the logo
for the fan club. And the band’s 1976 album Destroyer featured order forms to sign up
for the Kiss Army Ron Boutwell who was the head of merchandising at the time for Kiss
claime that at its peak the kiss army was bringing in almost $5,000 per day and had
almost 100,000 members. But, by the 80’s the Kiss Army seemed to fall off the band’s
radar and for Starkey’s part he was never compensated financially for his work, but
he would get complimentary tickets to the band’s shows. In August of 2007 the band
announced the reactivation of the Kiss Army. One of the band’s higher profile members
was former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who enlisted in the army in May of 2008.
In celebration of the Kiss Army's 35th anniversary, November 21, 2010 was declared "Kiss Army
Day" in Terre Haute. And Starkey served as a guest DJ for the local rock radio station
WWVR that day. So you guys are maybe wondering what is Starkey up to these days? Well he
would end up going to college and becoming a teacher and he currently teaches at an inner
city school. So that does it for today's video guys thanks
for watching be sure to hit the like button and subscribe. If you guys have suggestions
for future topics let me know in the comments section below. Take care.