A final night in Detroit Rock City: Kiss and Michigan through the decades

This autumn isn’t just the end of the road for Kiss. It's the final chapter in one of the most colorful, long-running sagas in Detroit rock history.

Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley will lead the fabled New York rock band Friday night at Little Caesars Arena, the latest and last Michigan show on the group’s lengthy farewell tour. The global tour will conclude with a pair of Madison Square Garden dates in December.

After half a century of onstage theatrics and fireworks, codpieces and platform boots, loud songs and loving tributes to the Motor City, the history of Kiss concerts in Michigan — for raucous fans in venues both humble and huge — is set for a grand finale.

"For us to be embraced (in Detroit) the way we were, from the very beginning, was a badge of honor because it's a blue-collar nation that embraced us," Paul Stanley told the Detroit Free Press in 2019. "Detroit made us headliners when we were still a support band in many parts of the country."

"You gotta lose your mind in Detroit Rock City" wasn't just a song lyric, Stanley said. It was a battle cry.

Here's a look back at Kiss' career in Detroit and Michigan:

1974: Detroit's Michigan Palace: A home away from home

Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley had been honing their costumed stage act in New York clubs. But they were still obscure upon their inaugural Detroit visit in April 1974 — a status made clear by a Free Press blurb billing the band as "The Kiss."

Along with Aerosmith, the group was scheduled to be part of a WABX-FM event at Belle Isle followed by a show at the Michigan Palace downtown. While the outdoor component was canceled because of bad weather, the April 7 evening concert went on, drawing a sellout crowd and giving Kiss its Motor City debut.

The set featured some of the raw, riff-driven tunes that would become Kiss standards, including "Deuce," "Strutter" and "Black Diamond."

It was the first of many Kiss shows during '74 at the 5,000-capacity Palace on Bagley Street as the band got its foothold in the city that would become a second hometown.

1974: Leaving a mark across Michigan

In addition to Detroit, cities across the state got shows from Kiss during the band's 1974 tour and into '75 as the road warriors hit spots such as Grand Rapids, Mount Clemens, Fraser, Flint, Hartland, Jackson, Saginaw, Muskegon, Kalamazoo, Port Huron and East Lansing.

Spring 1975: Cobo Arena debut

No venue in the world is more tightly linked with Kiss than Detroit's Cobo Arena, where the band ultimately headlined 15 shows, recorded its most famous live album and shot a 1984 concert film. The downtown arena also played an Emerald City-esque role in the 1999 movie comedy “Detroit Rock City,” the saga of four Ohio fans trekking to Cobo for a Kiss concert.

Following two days of rehearsals at the Michigan Palace, the group made its Cobo premiere on May 16, 1975, as part of the Dressed to Kill Tour — a show recorded for the band's forthcoming live album.

September 1975: Kiss 'Alive!'

Recorded in large part during the band’s Cobo debut that spring, the band's first live record, a 16-track double album, also captured performances in Cleveland, Iowa and New Jersey — not to mention some audio touchups in the studio, as Kiss eventually confessed.

The back cover of “Alive!” famously featured a pair of Cobo concertgoers hoisting a homemade Kiss poster. Those Macomb County teens, Bruce Redoute and Lee Neaves, were tracked down two decades later by the Free Press — and their sign was intact.

October 9, 1975: A Cadillac special

In '75, Kiss was busy selling out major theaters and arenas across North America when the band decided to do a cozy gym gig at Cadillac High School.

That homecoming-weekend concert, now the stuff of legend in the small northern Michigan town, was inspired by the school’s football team: Having lost the first two games on its 1974 schedule, the squad turned to Kiss music in the locker room to get pumped up — then spent the rest of the season undefeated.

Word of the Kiss-inspired feat made its way to the band, which squeezed in a Cadillac visit between tour dates in Kalamazoo and Columbus, meeting with local dignitaries (who donned makeup for the occasion) and hitting the gridiron for a photo shoot with the team.

January 1976: C'mon and love them

By the start of America’s bicentennial year, it was clear that Kiss and Detroit had forged a unique bond. The band’s high-decibel music, studded leather style and fire-breathing, blood-spitting stage show seemed a perfect fit for the hardworking, hard-partying Motor City.

“All of this is giving Kiss unrivaled adulation by Detroit’s 11- to 16-year-old set," read a Free Press story that January as the group arrived for a three-show Cobo run. "Though Kiss is enjoying a surge of national popularity, no other city has fallen as hard for them. The group’s recording company, Casablanca, touts Detroit as the best Kiss market.”

Summer 1976: 'Detroit Rock City'

The Kiss love affair with the Motor City culminated in the lead track on the band's "Destroyer" album. Penned by Paul Stanley and producer Bob Ezrin, the hard-rocking song celebrated the high-energy concert experience ("you gotta lose your mind in Detroit Rock City!"), but at heart was the tragic tale of a fan killed en route to a show — based on an apparent car accident in North Carolina ahead of a Kiss gig.

"Detroit Rock City" became a signature live number for Kiss and — along with Motown — gave the city another catchy, enduring musical nickname.

1996: Tiger Stadium reunion tour kickoff

In the early '80s, Kiss ditched its makeup while Peter Criss and Ace Frehley left the band. But in 1996, history got a reboot as the original lineup reunited, the greasepaint came back and a two-year reunion tour was launched in grand style in Detroit.

Nearly 40,000 fans packed Tiger Stadium for the June 28 occasion.

"Detroit took us in their hearts, and we don't forget," Gene Simmons told the Free Press ahead of the show. "It was the first city that really took us in, arms open. Elsewhere, we were being called Nazis, cannibals, Satan worshippers, you name it."

2000: A Palace and Pine Knob farewell ... but not retirement

Kiss played five Michigan dates, including the Palace of Auburn Hills and Pine Knob Music Theatre, as part of a yearlong run dubbed the Farewell Tour. But three years later, the group was back in action, this time under the banner "World Domination" — including a Comerica Park stadium show with Aerosmith, the band with whom Kiss shared a bill during its first Detroit visit in '74.

2009: A Cobo farewell ... but not retirement

In fall 2009, with Cobo slated for demolition, Kiss played its final pair of shows at the vaunted arena, drawing fans from around the country for the special Detroit stand.

2019: Kiss starts a long goodbye smooch ... and finally retirement

Speaking with the Free Press, Paul Stanley played coy after Kiss announced its farewell tour with a prime-time performance of "Detroit Rock City" on "America's Got Talent."

Kiss was hyping up a Detroit goodbye show at Little Caesars Arena in March 2019. So would that really, truly be the band's final concert here?

"It's a tough question," the guitarist-singer said.

Kiss, in fact, went on to play additional Detroit and Michigan shows on its End of the Road World Tour, which wound up extended because of the COVID-19 pandemic disruption.

But barring some wild turn of events to come, this Friday's LCA show will definitely, positively, 100% be the final Motor City spectacular from Stanley and company. He's 71, Gene Simmons is 74, and they've vowed their homecoming New York shows in December really are the end.

And so Friday is one last opportunity for the local Kiss Army to lose its mind in ... well, you know where.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Kiss playing final show in Detroit Rock City: Here's a look back