Ace Frehley - Trouble Walkin’

Details: 1989, Atlantic/Megaforce, CD

With a rare London tour date just announced it seems ex-Kiss guitarist is looking to recapture some headlines in the UK. It’s been a while since much was heard of “the Ace”, probably since his most recent exit from Kiss actually but I was somewhat surprised to discover that its now approaching 20 years since this, his last solo album. Released in 1989 and dropping the “Comet” band name I remember playing this quite often when it came out. Digging it out again reminded me of some good times and brought back to my attention a few good tunes too.

At it’s most impressive, “Trouble Walkin’” boasts a couple of raucous, straight up heavy rock ‘n’ roll numbers in “Shot Full Of Rock” and “Five Card Stud” that you would hope for from Frehley and were all too starved of from Kiss at the time. “Remember Me” towards the end of the album also proves another fine rocker, presented complete with live audience sounds although the inlay doesn’t mention whether it was actually live or the audience were edited in, that seems to capture Frehley and his band at something approaching his best. For me the albums most enjoyable moment.

There are a couple of interesting covers that work well also. “Do Ya” is the old Jeff Lynne song performed by both The Move and E.L.O. in time. A decent promo video was attached to this track and it did get a fair amount of MTV Europe attention and rightly so as its a good cover, suits the man and even benefits from a bit of humourous nonsense with the line “Do ya do ya want the Ace” inserted into one of the chorus’. The title track “Trouble Walkin’” is another non-Frehely written number although copyrighted in 1989, the year of the albums release, I can’t say for sure whether this is a genuine cover or a song simply written by outside writers for Ace. Good enough though even if it does lose some of its humour when you check the lyrics and realise he’ singing “I am trouble walkin’” and not “I have trouble walkin’”!

Most intriguing track of the album is perhaps “Hide Your Heart“. A Desmond Child/Paul Stanley/Holly Knight co-write its exactly the type of thing you’d expect from that team being another Tommy & Gina style story. Much was made though at the time of Paul Stanley giving Ace a song for his new album and perhaps this was the first step towards the much anticipated original Kiss reunion? Subsequently of course Kiss would also perform the song on the “Hot In The Shade” album released at the same time as this album, but in my opinion although not a great song, Ace’s remains the best version.

Elsewhere things aren’t so good either as a procession of half-baked late 80’s hard-rock is served up and even the boast of additional vocals by Skid Row can’t help mask the fact that there are some poor songs here. “2 Young 2 Die“, “Lost In Limbo” and “Back To School” are all the type of generic fodder you’d expect from the titles, although that was what was selling at the time and I guess Ace wouldn’t have minded Skid Row’s sales. The instrumental “Franctured III” though, stuck at the end of the disc, ensures you finish thinking of Ace the guitar hero though and to be fair, despite it’s flaws there is some stuff on this CD certainly worth having.

Highlight: Remember Me

Score: 2.5/5

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Here is the afore-mentioned promo for “Do Ya“…

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BL

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