Rolling Stone Australia — June 2017

After a career stretching over 50 years, former

Kiss drummer Peter Criss is getting ready to

hang up his sticks, and on May 12th will perform

his second last concert ever in Melbourne,

before a final farewell in New York in June. “I’m

still kicking ass, I’ve been rehearsing my butt

off,” says the drummer. “I’ve had the best of the

best times on stage, but you’ve got to face that

[it’s coming to an end]. Those who don’t it’s

sad because you’ll die up there, or people start

saying I wish he’d leave. I never want to hear

those words. So I’m leaving on my terms.”

Peter Criss Prepares

For Retirement

As for why he chose Melbourne for his pen-

ultimate show? “Australia’s been amazing,” he

says. “I had a ball playing with the Melbourne

Symphony [forKiss Symphony: Alive IV], it was

like, wow, a kid from Brooklyn, being a drum-

mer in a 60-piece band!”

Despite retiring from touring the 71-year-old

will make cameo appearances, and a long-

gestating solo album will also be released. “It’s

a rocker,” he offers. “I played it for Johnny 5

and Rob Zombie, they loved it.”

Ask what emotions he feels when he thinks of

Kiss – and his fractious relationship with found-

ers Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley – and he’s

philosophical. “I was part of a band that went

beyond our expectations. So I look at it that

way and I think, thank God. I learned to forgive

and forget. You’ve gotta let it go, man. You

can’t carry that around.” R.Y.

C

itycalmdownvocalistjack

Bourke is calling from Rich-

mond’s Bakehouse Studios, where

he and bassist Jeremy Sonnen-

berg are doing some additional tracking

onasongfromtheiras-yet-untitledsec-

ondalbum.TheMelbournequartet’sfol-

low-up to 2015 debutInaRestlessHouse

is,hethinks,about“80percentcomplete”,

saying that “all the songs for the most part

arewritten,sowhatwe’reworkingoutis

just production elements and how we want

them to sound”.

Earlierthisyear,thebandspent10days

at Soundpark studios in Northcote and an-

other10atRollingStockRecordingRooms

in Collingwood with producer Malcolm

Beasley(whohelmedtheirdebut),laying

downthebonesofthealbum.Allthat’sleft

nowistofinesseandfleshouttherecordat

Bakehouse and in their home studios.

Given that it took them seven years from

formingin2008toreleasetheirdebut

album, work on the follow-up has been

surprisingly swift. “One of the things we

wentthroughwiththefirstalbumwasjust

learning to write songs,” says Bourke. “We

spentsomuchtimedickingaroundonthe

computer,wewereobsessedwithsounds,

butwehadn’treallyworkedouthowto

writeasong.Throughputtingthatfirstre-

cord together we realised there’s a method

towritingsongs,andthere’sanapproach

youneedtotakewhereyou’retryingtocre-

ateanarcofasong,andwejustgotbetter

at feeling our way through those arcs. Our

intuition is better, so things have come to-

getherabitfaster.”

Song titles are yet to be determined,

though lyrically Bourke says themes con-

cerningthe“paceofmodernlife”and“ex-

pectations that what we’re doing should be

verymeaningful,[driving]youtogoabit

too hard and put too much on the line” are

emerging. One song also essays a “bike ac-

cident happening in slow motion”.

Musically, Bourke promises a few tracks

that are “very different from the first

album”, while he refers to one song in par-

ticularthatwasa“monster”towrangle,

with the band spending “at least 30 or 40

hours trying to work out the instrumental

arrangementforthefinalpart”.

“It turned into a nightmare, we kind of

went off the deep end,” he laughs, “but now

we’vebeenabletohearitcometogether,so

we’re all pretty stoked with how it’s sound-

ing.” ROD YATES

IN THE STUDIO

Ju ne, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 17

Criss

City Calm Down’s Return

The Melbourne quartet are busy working on the

follow-up to ‘In a Restless House’

COURTESY,

City Calm Down at

work: “Things have

come together a

bit faster.”