Wicked Lester - Unreleased Album

Unreleased Album

The recording of Wicked Lester's album, which began in November 1971 at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, took place over multiple sessions and was finished in July 1972. The album was a mixture of original material and covers, showcasing the group's eclectic style. Three of the songs recorded for the Wicked Lester album would later resurface as Kiss songs, with varying degrees of similarity.

The chorus of their cover version of The Hollies' "I Wanna Shout" would serve as the inspiration for "Shout It Out Loud" from 1976's Destroyer, although the two songs are completely different in every other respect. Two of the tracks, "Love Her All I Can", written by Paul Stanley, and "She", written by Simmons and Steve Coronel would resurface on 1975's Dressed to Kill. "Love Her All I Can" featured similar arrangements in both versions while the Kiss version of "She" lacked the congas and flute of the original.

The only part of Wicked Lester's album to initially be released, was the cover art, which was used for The Laughing Dogs' self-titled debut album in 1979. CBS Records, who owned the rights to the album, remixed it and planned to release it in late 1976 to capitalize on Kiss's commercial popularity. Kiss and Neil Bogart, the president of their label, Casablanca Records, purchased the master tapes from CBS for $137,500 and never released it. The label and band feared that if CBS released the tracks it would diminish their commercial appeal. The band worried that their hard rock image would be damaged by these more eclectic recordings. It was also feared that the release would be accompanied by pictures of Simmons and Stanley without their trademark make-up, at this point in their career very few photographs of Kiss without their makeup existed. In later years the album surfaced as a bootleg named The Original Wicked Lester Sessions. The band bought Bogart's share and eventually released three of the tracks, "Keep Me Waiting," "She," and "Love Her All I Can", in 2001 as part of a five-disc box set.