THE STORY OF A SONG: Kiss - "Rock And Roll All Nite"

At the end of 1974, Kiss were in trouble. Their self-titled debut album had shifted just 75.000 copies. The follow-up. Hotter Than Hell, had stalled at No. 100 on the US chart. Kiss needed a hit and they needed one fast.

Their label boss, Casablanca Records owner, Neil Bogart told frontman Paul Stanley, in precise detail, what kind of hit this should be. “He said. ‘You need something that your fans can rally behind - a song that embodies what you're about," recalled Stanley.

The singer chose the right place to write it - in his room at the famous Hyatt House hotel on Sunset Boulevard, a joint that became known as ‘The Riot House’ after all the wild parties that been staged there, one of which involved Led Zeppelin’s hard-drinking drummer John Bonham riding a motorcycle along the corridors. Paul took out an acoustic guitar and within a few minutes he had it.

"Right away I had the lyrics: “I wanna rock and roll all nite and party every day”, he said. ‘It was very primal in that it really wasn't anything that I pondered. At that time I don't believe people talked about wanting to party. It was just a one-word description of a way of getting loose. Rocking and rolling all night and partying every day isn't so much a physical action as much as it's an attitude. It’s a way of looking at life. It’s a mindset - a mindset about liberation and celebration of the individual."

The song was completed with a verse from a work-in-progress Gene had, Drive Me Wild. "I never had the chorus", Gene said, “but I had this notion of a car as an analogy to a woman, the idea of. 'You drive me wild. I'll drive you crazy'. So the pieces were basically stuck together. Take my verse and attach it to Paul's chorus and you've got a song".

When Neil Bogart heard Rock And Roll All Nite, he was ecstatic. But for all its populist genius, Rock And Roll All Nite, only made it to No.68 on the Billboard Hot 100 when it was released in April 1975. But it took on another life when a live version was extracted from the blockbusting Alive! album later that same year, reaching No. 12 in the US.

Just as Neil Bogart had instructed, it was the anthem that defined the band. For the members of Kiss - and for rock'n'roll partiers everywhere - things would never be the same again.