Love Gun Album - Shock Me

Inspired by Ace’s legendary electrocution at the beginning of a show in Lakeland, FL at the beginning of the band’s 1976 “Winter Tour 1976/77” (the official title of the tour, rather than often mentioned “Spirit of ‘76 Part II” or other variants). More importantly, this song provided Ace’s long-awaited lead vocal debut. Ace inadvertently created a legend when he recorded the vocals lying on his back in the darkened studio to help him deal with his nerves. Ace recalled, “I didn’t lie on my back to hit high notes – I did it because I was nervous and I didn’t want anybody to see me sing. I made Eddie Kramer lower the lights and I lay down so he couldn’t see me through the glass” (Guitar World Legends #14, 1992).

Ace is not particularly impressed by this first vocal effort in retrospect. While the song was Ace’s, Gene and Paul apparently helped clean the song up in terms of arrangement, though Gene has also contradicted that by saying, “When Ace brought ‘Shock Me’ into the band, he did that all on his own – we had nothing to do with the arrangements, and we knew immediately that it was a terrific song” (KISStory). On the single version of the song, the fade out at the end is more drastic, also helping reduce the song’s duration by an additional second or two.