Longtime KISS manager Doc McGhee has said the band is open to welcoming Ace Frehley and Peter Criss back to the stage.
“We want to celebrate everybody and we might bring out all the former members,” McGhee told Pollstar of plans for the final shows on the KISS farewell tour. "We’d like to. Nobody says we hate this guy; we hate that guy; we want everybody who wants to come out.”
Last year, Gene Simmons expressed the same view in an interview with Guitar World. “We’d love to have Ace and Peter join us here and there. And if they don’t, it’s not going to be because of us. But they’re never going to be in KISS again,” he explained.
“Ace and Peter have gotten three chances. They were in and out of the band — fired — three times. For drugs, alcohol, bad behaviour, being unprofessional … they weren’t carrying their load.”
Vinnie Vincent and Bruce Kulick are the only other surviving ex-KISS musicians. Former drummer Eric Carr died in 1991 at 41 and guitarist Mark St. John died in 2007 at 51.
KISS is scheduled to play their last show of the End of the Road World Tour on July 2021 in New York City.
“It’s going to be great. It’s going to be worthy of the end of the road,” McGhee said. “It will be worthy to the 45 years of KISS.”