No Regrets: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir
By Ace Frehley, with Joe Layden and John Ostrovsky. (Simon & Schuster, 2011)

No regrets, but that’s to be understood because there’s not a whole lot of self-awareness in the first place. Ace Frehley gets that he overdid the drugs and booze while hiding behind the Spaceman make-up in one of the most popular rock bands of the 20th century. But his constant grumblings about the commercial-minded machinations of Gene Simmons and other insults to his assumed excellence rankle the reader in different ways than they do the writers. (Frehley required two associates to pen this disaffected tome.)

What’s weirdest about this book, and about the world of Kiss in general, is how it seems to exist in a vacuum. He dispenses with personal influences (The Who, Cream, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels) early on, and doesn’t really get into comparing his best-known band with any other. When he mentions famous rockers, it’s as celebrity encounters, not as colleagues or artists.

The book, and Frehley’s views, exist in a void. It’s as if Kiss was a distant planetary entity which Spaceman was destined to plant a flag on, then jump back in a spaceship and orbit as a pissed-off observer for the rest of his career.