Bin über einen LA Weekly Artikel gestolpert, ursprünglich über den Backgroundsänger & den Keyboarder von Ozzy Osbourne und dann durfte ich von diesem bösen Gary Corbett hören oder lesen... wer nicht alles lesen will, am schlimmsten is das fett markierte, denn bevors ihm langweilig wird hinter der Bühne, spielt er lieber Gitarren und Bass mit...!!!
If The Rolling Stones can put their keyboard players onstage, why can’t you put your guy up there?
"Gene Simmons was not into it," he says with a laugh. "He didn’t want that guy up there.”
No, Gene Simmons did not, as Gary Corbett can tell you with a good-natured laugh. Corbett did offstage keyboards and background vocals on Kiss tours promoting late '80s and early '90s LPs Crazy Nights, Hot in the Shade and Revenge. Before that, his credits including co-writing Cyndi Lauper’s top-five hit “She Bop” and working with the solo band of former Foreigner singer Lou Gramm, who recommended Corbett to Kiss’s Paul Stanley. Stanley was looking for someone to play offstage keys for Kiss because Crazy Nights featured lots of synths — played in the studio by New York session man Phil Ashley, who was unavailable for the tour.
“There seemed to be a trend in the '80s that bands didn’t want the image of having a keyboard player on stage,” Corbett says, calling from his Nashville home studio. “Some people think keyboards aren’t as much of a rock instrument as a guitar. Gene Simmons is definitely of that mindset." He laughs. "At every soundcheck, if the sound man asked me, ‘Could you just give me a couple of notes,’ [Simmons] would immediately put his hands behind his back and act like he was ice skating around a rink.”
Ironically, Corbett never played Kiss’s most famous keyboard song, “Beth,” which featured the band’s original drummer Peter Criss on vocals, who had left the band before Corbett came onboard. On the Crazy Nights tour, the moody ballad “Reason to Live” was the song that featured synth the most. A keyboard was set up onstage for then-guitarist Bruce Kulick to play along with Corbett’s offstage keys for the first third of the song, “and then when it came to the chorus, Bruce switched to his guitar and people weren’t supposed to notice the keyboards were still playing.”
Whether a Kiss song contained keyboard parts or not, Corbett says he played on every number at every concert he ever did with the band. Instead of adding, say, piano fills, he’d double rhythm guitar parts with a gnarly, guitar-ish synth tone. “Those guys put on such a show. Gene and Paul are running around so much, and sometimes the playing takes a backseat to the show. So in order for certain parts to never stop, you reinforce Paul’s guitar parts or you're doubling the bass on certain things to fill out the bottom end.”
When Corbett started with Kiss, he was hidden offstage left behind stacks of speakers. However, a gaffe at the 1988 Monsters of Rock show put him in plain sight. “It was such a big show that they had big Diamond Vision screens on each side of the stage. So when the guys that were working the cameras on the side of the stage were roaming around and filming everything, I guess nobody told them that they weren’t supposed to be filming me. So during ‘Rock and Roll All Nite,’ I’m standing there singing and playing and having a good time. And later I found out I was on the big screens in front of like 60,000 people, which I don’t think made the guys very happy." (Kiss’s management did not reply to multiple requests for comment.)
