In conjunction with KISSFAQ’s month-long NovElder retrospective, uncredited engineer Michael McCarty sheds some light on KISS' Elder sessions at Phase One Studios in Toronto, shares fun recollections of GENE SIMMONS and PAUL STANLEY, and offers a personal snapshot of Bob Ezrin. The following is an excerpt from McCarty's interview with KissFAQ's Tim McPhate:

Q: Michael, you are not officially credited in The Elder liner notes. How do you fit into the album's picture?

A: "Well, I was working for Bob (Ezrin) as an engineer and associate producer and started off with the project. He was alternating working on The Elder and the second KINGS' album. I was the associate producer on The Kings' record. Actually, Ringo [Hyrcyna] and I both engineered and co-produced The Kings' independent record. And when Bob heard that record he got very excited about the band and got them a deal with Elektra and then we redid the record. So Ringo and I were engineers and associate producers.

So then [Bob] took the job of doing the next Kings album and The Elder at the same time. I don't think he consciously did that but that's just the way it worked out. I mean, it's hard enough for a producer and an engineering team to work on one album at a time. Working on two at a time is really, really daunting." (laughs)

Q: It's interesting to note that Ace (Frehley) really wasn't creatively invested with The Elder. When all was said and done, he was absent for most of the sessions and "flew" in a lot of his guitar work from home, sending the tracks back to Bob. Do you recall this dynamic?

A: "Ace appeared to be the odd-man out. There's probably other issues [that were] going on there that probably aren't appropriate for me to comment on. He definitely seemed to be the odd-man out, and seemed to be not very in the loop as to the songs or what the chords were. Our observation was he was sort of disinterested possibly for other reasons, we didn't pick up any tension that there was creative differences necessarily. The band, particularly Gene, were pretty frustrated with his playing. It could be that they did have some fundamental core creative differences on the project and that caused the sort of emotional disconnect for him. Regardless of what the reason was, he definitely wasn't up to speed on the songs. Gene was quite frustrated and they ended up letting him go take long breaks and they would record when he was taking a break. It wasn't particularly clear whether Ace knew they were recording when he was on the break, or cared."

Read the entire interview at this location.