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PAUL STANLEY: What puts the biggest smile on my face thinking about Ace is how unique he was in the beginning, and how perfect he was for the band and what we were trying to do. Ace was one of a kind, and he had a different way of thinking about everything. He was so unique and very, very funny. He not only knew volumes of jokes, he also just did things that were so bizarre and disconnected to what was going on around him. He was so unique. I can’t even begin to put it in words, but when we saw eye to eye on certain things, we shared them like that photo of us in Australia laughing together. We would just crack up and laugh until we fell down. We bonded over a lot of things. I think a lot of times it was absurd situations or people’s behavior, girls. Really, it was times where we would look at each other and without words, just see the insanity or the absurdity of things that were going on or how people were acting.

PAUL STANLEY: For me, a favorite top of the mountain moment that I shared with Ace was getting our first gold album for Alive!. That first gold album was something that we dreamed of. Gold albums were reserved for Elvis Presley and for the Beatles. It was great that Alive! went on to platinum and double platinum but that climbing Everest for the first time was something that we all shared. It was something that we all dreamed of and worked hard to achieve. That was one of those bonding moments where we were aware that it’s the team and the teamwork that got us there. The team got us to live the dream.

PAUL STANLEY: The last thing Ace and I did together musically was “Fire And Water” (from his Origins Vol. 1 solo album). I think that Ace was surprised not only that I said yes, but I was eager to do it. I knew it would be fun. When I sent him the vocal, he was thrilled. I may have reached a point, as we did, that there was a reality to the limits of our relationship. But it didn’t negate that common bond and the things that we loved. And when he asked me about doing a Free song, I was absolutely down to do it. I was very, very happy, and I was very excited to shoot the video. Ace was family. You can fall out or have ongoing long-term disputes with family, but they are family. And what we created together made everything else in our lives possible so that’s a bond that I think can’t be broken. As much as I could take potshots, it was sometimes out of frustration, hurt and anger. But we did this together. The foundation of KISS and the foundation of our lives was the four of us. All of us in the band escaped as much as our fans escaped. We probably felt that symbiosis, that synchronicity because we all left together.

PAUL STANLEY: Without really verbalizing it or going into it, Ace came up with a smoking guitar. He built it himself. He put a fake pickup with a spring that folded it back, and had a smoke bomb in it and a light to make it look like there was a fire inside. It was brilliant. And he conceived it, but he did more than conceive it, he built it. Ace was a very creative, talented guy. The original idea for the KISS logo with those lightning S’s was Ace’s.

PAUL STANLEY: As a songwriter, Ace’s chordal approach was very based in Free. He loved the song “Mr. Big.” He loved big, big A chords, and that was really the basis of “Cold Gin.” I think as time went on, Ace’s writing at times got a bit left field for me with songs like “Torpedo Girl.” His writing became very, very, very much a reflection of his quirkiness. As he became quirkier, I think his writing became quirkier. Out of Ace’s songs, “Cold Gin” was a great one, and by far my favorite.

PAUL STANLEY: Working in tandem as guitar players, Ace and I didn’t toil over it. We didn’t struggle through it. It was very much our chemistry, and perhaps our roots, which made it effortless. It always sounded right. We just played so well together. Ace’s solos, whether it was “100,000 Years,” which is a crazy good solo, and how he’s playing against the beat, “Got to Choose,” “Two-Timer,” all these songs. He really had something very, very special. Ace and I played well together. We really did. We didn’t have to work at it. It was intuitive, and we were both capable of playing rhythm, and that gave us the flexibility and the ability to pretty instinctively play different inversions of chords and do things that at least to our ears were sonically pleasing.

PAUL STANLEY: Ace was happiest in the band in the beginning. And dare I say, I was happiest with him in the beginning. Fame, fame and adulation, and finances affect everybody, and affect everybody differently and in positive and negative ways. So when Ace first joined the band, I had the most fun with him.