Electric Angels guitarist Ryan Roxie recently revealed how KISS allegedly stole their song title without providing any compensation.
On The Hair Metal Guru, Roxie recalled that Bruce Kulick, who was involved in the scene at the time and interested in producing, suggested recording three songs so they could shop them to record labels. They recorded the tracks in the studio, but ultimately none of the West Coast labels approved them.
“Bruce Kulick, who’s hanging around the whole scene at that point, says, ‘Look, I’m in getting into producing. I know how what’s going on. I can hear the songs that are there. Let’s record three songs,’” Roxie said. “And then, we go in the studio. And again, those were songs that we would shop to record labels. And ultimately not get the thumbs up from any of them on the west coast.”
The guitarist said their band struggled to get interest on the West Coast, but things changed after moving to the East Coast. Using mostly the same demos—with only minor remixes—they were able to secure a deal there.
He noted that three songs helped close the deal, especially “Rattlesnake Kisses,” which later became a single on Atlantic Records. Another track, “Tiger Tiger,” didn’t make the album but is still considered a strong song and can be found on the Music Machine.
“When we move to the east coast, same demos, same sort of may maybe a remix here or there, but that’s what closed the deal over on the east coast,” he continued. “But the three songs in particular were Rattlesnake Kisses. That was number one that uh ended up actually becoming the single on Atlantic Records. another song called Tiger Tiger and didn’t make the album or anything like that, but still a really great song. You can I think you can actually even find it on the Music Machine.”
Roxie then revealed the controversial incident involving the third song they recorded.
“And the third song that we recorded uh was called ‘Put the ‘EX’ in Sex’. And you know what’s coming because it just so happened about 6 months later or you know a year later KISS comes out with a song and their newest single called Let’s Put the X in Sex,” he said. “And we were like up in arms. We’re like how could you do this Bruce? Because obviously Bruce had played it for Gene and Paul and they’re like, ‘Ah good, we like this title. Let’s take it.’”
Roxie recalled that the band initially believed they would receive credit or publishing money after KISS released a song with a very similar title to theirs. However, Gene Simmons explained to them that song titles cannot be copyrighted, meaning they had no legal claim despite the similarity. The band was surprised but ultimately realized Simmons was correct.
“So we’re thinking, ‘Well, you we’re going to be able to be rest easy now cuz KISS has now taken our song and we’ll be able to get some sort of credit and publishing off of it,’” Roxie explained. “And then Gene simply goes to us one time, he goes, ‘Uh, you cannot uh copyright a song title, just so you know.’ And it was like, ‘What? Wait a second.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, yeah. Think of how many songs have the word love in it, you know, or blue eyes. Think about it.’ And then we were like, oh, Gene’s done it again.”
