| "Rock and Roll All Nite" | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Kiss | ||||||||||||||
| from the album Dressed to Kill | ||||||||||||||
| Released | April 2, 1975 (US) | |||||||||||||
| Format | 7" | |||||||||||||
| Recorded | Electric Lady Studios, New York City: February 1975 |
|||||||||||||
| Genre | Hard rock, rock and roll | |||||||||||||
| Length | Live 3:20 (7") Studio 2:34 |
|||||||||||||
| Label | Casablanca NB-829 (US) | |||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons | |||||||||||||
| Producer | Neil Bogart & Kiss | |||||||||||||
| Kiss singles chronology | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
"Rock and Roll All Nite" is a song by Kiss, originally released on their 1975 album Dressed to Kill. It was released as the A-side of their fifth single, with the album track "Getaway." The studio version of the song peaked at No. 57 on the Billboard singles chart, besting the band's previous charting single, "Kissin' Time" (#79). A subsequent live version, released as a single in October 1975, eventually reached No. 12, the first of six Top 20 songs for Kiss in the 1970s.[1] "Rock and Roll All Nite" became Kiss's most identifiable song and has served as the group's closing concert number in almost every concert since 1976.[2][3]
In 2008 it was named the 16th greatest hard rock song of all time by VH1.[4] The members of Kiss were under intense pressure to put together their third album, 1975's Dressed to Kill. They were abruptly called off tour to work on a follow-up to 1974's Hotter Than Hell when the album began to die on the charts - even though they had no new songs ready. The sessions were being produced by the head of their label Neil Bogart, who was upset that the band had yet to successfully capture the excitement of their live act on record and wanted to correct the problem himself.
The band was being so rushed to come up with material that they dipped into their backlog of older songs, as well as write new ones during the day and record them immediately after. Bogart suggested that the band's head songwriters Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, come up with an anthem that would serve as a rallying cry for Kiss and their fans - suggesting something akin to Sly & the Family Stone's "I Want to Take You Higher." While writing back at the hotel, Stanley came up with the line "I want to rock and roll all night, and party every day." After showing the new line to Simmons, he added parts from an older song, reportedly titled "Drive Me Wild."
While it had a great singalong chorus, when the song was issued a single a few months later, it did not storm up the charts. With record label Casablanca in deep financial trouble, Kiss was thinking of leaving for another label, but on the insistence of the others, decided to issue a live album later in 1975 Alive!. The excitement and energy of a Kiss show was captured perfectly by rock producer Eddie Kramer, and the song that benefited perhaps the most from the live setting was "Rock & Roll All Night." The version was a bit longer than the studio take (including an Ace Frehley guitar solo that was absent from the original), but as Bogart hoped, it became an instant rallying cry and a hard rock classic, becoming a number 12 hit and pushing the album it was taken from straight up the charts. Since 1975, there hasn't been a single Kiss concert that did not feature "Rock & Roll All Night" as an encore and is the band's most instantly identifiable song.
Contents |
"Rock and Roll All Nite" was written by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons while Kiss was still in Los Angeles, as part of their Hotter Than Hell tour although during the group's concert at Cobo Hall in Detroit on January 26, 1976, Stanley introduces it as a song that was written in and for Detroit. The tour ended early (February 1975), when Casablanca Records founder and president Neil Bogart ordered Kiss to return to the studio to record a follow up to Hotter Than Hell, which had stalled on the charts and failed to meet Casablanca's sales expectations. One of Bogart's instructions to the band was to compose an anthem, something he felt the band needed.[2][5] The song itself was inspired by the Slade song Cum on Feel the Noize, and is often referred to as the Rock And Roll National Anthem (for instance, Stanley states during Kiss' performance at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards that "there's only one nation, that's Kiss Nation, there's only one Rock & Roll national anthem: Rock and Roll All Nite, party everyday!")
Stanley wrote the chorus, and Simmons wrote the verses, borrowing parts of a song he had previously written, entitled "Drive Me Wild." The song was one of two the group recorded toward the end of the Hotter Than Hell tour, prior to returning to Electric Lady Studios for the proper Dressed to Kill recording sessions.[5] For the choruses, the band and Bogart brought in a large group of outside contributors to sing and clap, including members of the Kiss road crew, studio musicians, and Peter Criss's wife Lydia. Some of the road crew used their jacket zippers to create sound.[2][6]
While "Rock and Roll All Nite" would eventually become a fixture in Kiss's live performances, it was not inserted into the band's setlist immediately. Nor did it immediately replace "Let Me Go, Rock 'n' Roll" as the closing number.[5] Kiss performed the song during the closing ceremonies for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City which proved to be Ace Frehley's final performance with Kiss to date. They also performed the song live with Adam Lambert during the season 8 finale of American Idol, on May 20, 2009 at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles.
The original version of the song, as it appears on Dressed To Kill, does not have a guitar solo, while many later versions do have one. The Kiss Unplugged version features Ace Frehley and Bruce Kulick sharing the solo. The Unplugged version was released as a single and reached number 13 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks.[7] The original version also ends while fading away; all live versions end with the last notes of another Dressed to Kill song, Getaway. The chorus of the Alive! version of the song is played at the beginning of "Detroit Rock City," from 1976's Destroyer.
"Rock and Roll All Nite" has appeared on the following Kiss albums:
"Rock and Roll All Nite" has been covered, among others, by:
"Rock and Roll All Nite" is used in the video games Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (cover version), Guitar Hero: On Tour, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, Karaoke Revolution Volume 2, Stick Dudes Gone Wild: Rock Band, Tony Hawk's Underground (Alive IV version), Madden NFL 11 and as downloadable content for Rock Band 3.
The song is one of the all-time crowd favorites amongst Red Wings fans at Joe Louis Arena.[8][9] In one incident during the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals, fans continued to sing the chorus even though the puck had dropped, which according to NHL rules state the music must be stopped. Mike Emrick commented on this on air during the NBC broadcast, "By league rules, the music must be stopped when play resumes, but that doesn't stop the fans from continuing it!"[10]
The song is played in the beginning of the movie Detroit Rock City by the Kiss cover band Mystery. It also appears in a number of television shows, including The Simpsons and Family Guy.
| "Rock and Roll All Nite" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Poison | ||||
| from the album Less Than Zero | ||||
| Released | October 12, 1987 | |||
| Recorded | 1987 | |||
| Genre | Glam metal, heavy metal | |||
| Label | Enigma/Capitol Records | |||
| Writer(s) | Stanley/Simmons | |||
| Producer | Ric Browde | |||
| Poison singles chronology | ||||
|
||||
"Rock and Roll All Nite" was covered and released as a single by American rock band Poison from the soundtrack album Less Than Zero (released in 1987). It was released on a Poison album The Best of Poison: 20 Years of Rock in 2006 and again on the cover album Poison'd in 2007.
At the start of "Nothin' But a Good Time" music video, Poison sings "Rock and Roll All Nite".
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||