Ace Frehley: New York Groove – The Song He Didn’t Want to Record

Ace Frehley: The Song He Didn’t Want to Record

Ace Frehley didn’t want to record “New York Groove”. That may be the most revealing detail about a song that would become the biggest hit of his first solo album and the recording most closely associated with him outside KISS. Producer Eddie Kramer heard something in the song that Frehley initially didn’t hear, and he kept pushing the guitarist toward it. Frehley eventually agreed, but even then the record wasn’t finished. The first version wasn’t working, so the song was rebuilt from the ground up at Plaza Sound Studios above Radio City Music Hall.

The result was a rare kind of record. “New York Groove” had already been written by Russ Ballard and recorded successfully by the British glam-rock band Hello, whose version reached No. 9 in the UK in 1975. Frehley’s version took the same composition and changed its character completely. Released as part of the extraordinary 1978 KISS solo-album project, it reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became the only Top 20 single from the four records.

Frehley didn’t write “New York Groove”. He didn’t even think it belonged on his album. Yet after Kramer, Anton Fig, Rob Freeman and Frehley finished rebuilding the recording, the song sounded so completely like Ace that it became difficult to separate the composition from the artist who recorded it.

A New York Song Written in England

“New York Groove” began with Russ Ballard, the English guitarist and songwriter whose work with Argent had already established him as a formidable writer before his songs began finding their way into the repertoires of other artists. Ballard came up with the title in 1975 while traveling to New York, and the song grew from the feeling of returning to the city and reconnecting with its energy.

The first recording came from Hello, a British glam-rock group whose music sat comfortably in the same mid-1970s landscape as Sweet, Slade and other bands that could move between hard rock and pop without treating the distinction as particularly important. Hello recorded “New York Groove” in 1975 and turned it into a European hit. Their version reached No. 9 in Britain and No. 7 in Germany, giving the song a legitimate history before Ace Frehley ever heard it.

Frehley wasn’t rescuing an unknown song from obscurity. “New York Groove” already had a successful recording and a recognizable identity. What changed with Frehley’s version was the center of gravity. The glam-pop polish of Hello’s recording gave way to a harder, more guitar-oriented approach that fit the guitarist’s own musical vocabulary.

Russ Ballard later recognized exactly what had happened. He preferred Frehley’s recording, describing it as tougher and more street-oriented than Hello’s version. The songwriter had created the composition, but Frehley had found a way to make it sound as though it had been waiting for his guitar.

Eddie Kramer Kept Pushing

The circumstances surrounding Frehley’s 1978 solo album make his resistance to the song particularly interesting. KISS had embarked on one of the strangest major-label projects in rock history, with Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss each releasing a solo album on the same day. Each record was a separate statement from an individual member, but all four were still operating inside the KISS world.

Frehley’s album was produced by Eddie Kramer, whose relationship with KISS had already made him one of the central figures in the band’s recording history. Kramer understood how to capture the band’s guitar-heavy sound, but Frehley’s solo record gave him considerably more room to work with one musician’s personality. Anton Fig supplied drums on most of the album and Frehley played the majority of the instruments himself, giving the record a very different character from a conventional KISS session.

Kramer introduced Frehley to “New York Groove”. Frehley’s reaction was not enthusiasm. In a later interview, he recalled telling Kramer that he didn’t think the song had anything to do with the other material on the album. Kramer kept telling him that he needed to record it.

The persistence eventually worked. After much of the album had been recorded in Connecticut, the production moved to Manhattan for overdubs and vocals. It was there that Kramer finally talked Frehley into cutting the song. Frehley would later look back at the decision with obvious amusement: the song he hadn’t wanted to record became his biggest hit.

Frehley wasn’t trying to manufacture a hit single by reaching outside his own material. His instinct was actually the opposite. He was making a record that felt personal and guitar-driven, and he initially heard “New York Groove” as something that belonged somewhere else. Kramer heard the possibility of taking that outside song and putting Frehley’s personality inside it.

Tracking in a Gilded Age Mansion

Much of Ace Frehley was recorded at the Colgate Mansion in Sharon, Connecticut, a sprawling 12,000-square-foot Gilded Age estate that songwriter and producer Paul Leka occasionally turned into an operational recording environment. Using the Electric Lady remote truck parked outside, the sessions produced an entirely unconventional sonic signature. Anton Fig’s drums were positioned squarely on the landing between the mansion’s grand staircases, letting microphones capture the massive, natural acoustic reverb of the neo-Gothic reception hall. Frehley tracked his guitars separately, turning a Gilded Age country manor into an impromptu tracking room.

“New York Groove” was initially attempted during this residential estate period, but the first version fell short. Rob Freeman, the engineer who handled the Plaza Sound sessions, later explained that Frehley and Kramer arrived in Manhattan with the mansion recording and felt that something about its overall feel wasn’t sitting correctly.

The solution wasn’t simply to add a guitar solo or change a mix. Freeman recalled that they decided to recut the song from scratch, beginning with a new basic track built around drums and rhythm guitar. They did it again.

Freeman’s account says the song was recorded a second time at Plaza Sound and then recorded a third time after Kramer and the musicians went back to Russ Ballard’s original songwriting demo for comparison. Subtle changes to the tempo and drum feel were made, and the third basic track became the final version.

It is an unusually revealing example of how a supposedly simple rock single can emerge. The finished “New York Groove” feels relaxed and inevitable. Behind that ease were multiple attempts to find exactly the right groove, with Kramer unwilling to settle for a technical shortcut that might have altered the sound of the recorded instruments.

Plaza Sound and the Sound of the Record

Plaza Sound occupied the upper floors of Radio City Music Hall, placing Frehley’s recording sessions in one of the most recognizable entertainment buildings in New York. Rob Freeman was head engineer and part owner of the studio at the time, and the facility had already become an important home for the city’s emerging rock scene. Freeman had worked on records by the Ramones, Blondie and Richard Hell and the Voidoids before the KISS project brought Plaza Sound a much larger international spotlight.

For “New York Groove”, the physical acoustics of the room played a definitive role. Freeman recalled clearing the studio, setting up Anton Fig’s drums in the open space and utilizing the facility’s distinct echo to create a stark contrast from the Connecticut mansion recording. Frehley played along from the control room while the new basic track was built.

Frehley later remembered Plaza Sound as a particularly interesting recording environment, with its large tracking room and relatively small control room. The studio gave him a chance to experiment with guitars and sounds in a way that reflected one of the central advantages of making a solo album: he wasn’t working under the same compressed timetable that had characterized some KISS sessions.

That freedom can be heard across Ace Frehley, but “New York Groove” is where the recording environment and the song’s identity intersect most clearly. The title is about New York, the guitarist was a Bronx native and the final recording was made in Manhattan above Radio City Music Hall. None of that proves Frehley selected the song because of his hometown identity. In fact, his own recollection makes clear that he initially resisted it. The New York connection became powerful because of what the finished recording sounded like, not because it was part of a rigid master plan.

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The Cover Becomes an Ace Frehley Record

Frehley’s performance is what ultimately made the recording his. He handled lead vocals and guitar and played bass, with Anton Fig supplying drums and percussion. David Lasley and Susan Collins added backing vocals, while Bobby McAdams contributed the talk-box effect that became one of the track’s signature sounds.

That talk box is an especially important detail because the distinctive single-note guitar figure can initially sound like a wah-wah effect. Freeman later confirmed that it was a talk box, one of Frehley’s favorite pieces of equipment, and went so far as to say that the talk-box part made the recording.

Frehley also used his sunburst 1959 Les Paul on the track, an instrument he later no longer owned. The guitar’s sound was inseparable from the player’s phrasing, but the important change wasn’t simply the choice of instrument. Frehley and Kramer had taken Ballard’s song and removed much of the distance between the composition and the guitarist’s own personality.

The contrast with Hello is important. The original had been a glam-rock single from a British band working in the commercial sound of 1975. Frehley’s version is looser, heavier and more obviously built around the physical feel of a rock band playing together. Ballard heard the transformation himself and preferred Ace’s version.

“New York Groove” stops being merely a successful cover at this point. Russ Ballard still owns the songwriting credit. Hello still owns the historical fact of making the first recording and having the first hit. But Frehley’s recording became the version that established the song’s lasting identity for American rock audiences.

The Hit That Nobody Expected

When the four KISS solo albums arrived on September 18, 1978, “New York Groove” gave Frehley’s record an immediate point of connection with listeners beyond the album itself. The single climbed to No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the only Top 20 single from the four solo albums.

That result changed the way the entire project was perceived, at least from Frehley’s side. His album was no longer simply one quarter of an elaborate KISS experiment. It had produced a genuine hit single under his own name, and the song was coming from a record that otherwise leaned heavily on Frehley’s guitar personality rather than the established KISS formula.

The commercial success also created an amusing problem of authorship. Because “New York Groove” became so strongly associated with Frehley, some listeners assumed he had written it. Frehley later joked that he wished he had, because the songwriting royalties would have been considerably more valuable.

That misunderstanding says something useful about the nature of the recording. A successful cover usually carries a trace of the original artist. Frehley’s version largely erased that distance. Listeners weren’t hearing Ace interpret a Russ Ballard song so much as they were hearing an Ace Frehley record that happened to have been written by Ballard.

When the Song Becomes the Artist

There is a temptation with famous covers to describe them as though the artist simply made the song their own. In Frehley’s case, the recording history gives that phrase some actual meaning. He resisted the song, Kramer insisted on it, the first recording was rejected, the basic track was rebuilt and the arrangement was refined through repeated attempts until the performance felt right.

The result also fits a larger pattern in Frehley’s career. His best-known covers have rarely sounded like exercises in imitation. He tends to approach outside material by stripping it down to the elements that interest him and then filtering those elements through his guitar sound, vocal delivery and sense of rhythm.

“New York Groove” became the most successful early example of that instinct. It also arrived at exactly the right moment. Frehley was still inside KISS, but the solo album allowed him to step outside the group’s tightly defined identity. A song he hadn’t written and initially didn’t want became the clearest demonstration that Ace Frehley could establish an identity without needing the KISS name to do all the work.

The New York connection only made the result more durable. Frehley didn’t need to write a hometown anthem. He recorded somebody else’s song in a New York studio, with his own guitar at the center of it, and the city became part of the record’s identity almost by association.

Final Thoughts

“New York Groove” sounds like one of those records that was always destined to work. Its riff is immediate, its groove is uncomplicated and Frehley’s performance gives it the kind of personality that makes the recording seem almost inevitable. The history tells a different story.

The song had already been a hit for Hello. Frehley didn’t want it. Kramer kept pushing. The first recording didn’t satisfy them, so the track was rebuilt at Plaza Sound and then rebuilt again before they arrived at the performance that became the master. By the time the record reached listeners in 1978, all of those decisions had disappeared into three minutes of music.

That may be why the song has lasted so well as an Ace Frehley recording. Russ Ballard wrote “New York Groove”, but Frehley gave it a voice, a guitar sound and a place in rock history that the composition did not have before. The song wasn’t born as an Ace Frehley song. It became one in the studio.