Mark St. John, former lead guitarist for Kiss, died Thursday morning of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 51.
He played on Animalize, where I loved what he did with “Get All You Can Take,” and he appeared in the video for “Heaven’s On Fire.” He played three shows on the Animalize tour before Reiter’s syndrome sidelined him, and Bruce Kulick took over temporarily, then permanently, in November 1984.
RIP, Mark. Go have a beer with Eric.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gjw0vz5qco
Mark St. Who???. I was a huge KISS fan in high school and for me band peaked with the “Destroyer” album. I was even a proud member of the KISS Army. I went on to purchase “Rock and Roll Over” and “Love Gun” but “Love Gun” was the last album for me. Once I started attending college I hung around with new friends who turned me on to prog rock. Jethro Tull, ELP, and Camel were my new favorites. So when you wrote that Mark St. John was a member of KISS I was at first taken aback because I had never heard of him. I never knew the band without the makeup and the picture of Mark St. John wasn’t looking too familiar to me. I had to go check out wikipedia to see if Ace Freely or one of the other band members had been using a stage name. Wikipedia schooled me on the considerable changes the band went through. These days I only have two KISS CD’s, “Destroyer” and “Alive” from 1975. My vinyl LP’s are long gone. I still occasionally listen to them but it’s becoming more and more occasional each year. I just don’t have the youthful energy anymore that went so well with the band’s early work. Anyway, rest in peace Mark.
Yup, Kiss has actually never broken up at all since the beginning. To be sure, there have been lots of personnel changes, always with Paul and Gene as the constants.
Of the early non-makeup albums, Lick It Up and Animalize are generally much better regarded than the following two albums, Asylum and Crazy Nights. The former had some great songs (“Tears Are Falling,” “Who Wants To Be Lonely”), but it’s horribly uneven. The latter was pretty much a third-rate Bon Jovi record, though that didn’t stop me at the time. Neither gets much front-to-back play for me today.
It’s been seven years since I’ve seen Kiss–by more than double my longest gap since I first saw them. I was rather disgusted with the “forever” farewell tour, particularly when they started swapping guitarists and drummers around so rapidly.
But, I’ve got a reason to hope they’re together a while longer now; if there’s still a tour in another two or three years, I’ll take my son Nathan to see them. At least with Thayer and Singer on guitar and drums, it will probably be tighter musically than it’s been since the Carr/Kulick or Singer/Kulick lineups.
Thanks for commenting, and (first) anonymous, thanks for the link to “Heaven’s On Fire.”