<\/p>\n
Mike McCready is mourning the loss of Kiss\u2019s Ace Frehley after news of his death<\/a> on Thursday, Oct. 16. In a social media post shared by both Pearl Jam and McCready, the musician reflected on how Frehley forever changed his life and inspired him to pick up a guitar.<\/p>\n McCready shared that he learned of Frehley\u2019s death through Rick Friel of Shadow. \u201cRick was also the first guy on the bus in 1977 with a KISS lunchbox to tell me about Ace\u2026just changed my life,\u201d recalled McCready.\u201d<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI got a guitar in 1978 to join Rick\u2018s band Warrior, which turned into Shadow. We covered \u2018C\u2019mon and Love Me,’\u201d he continued. \u201cAll my friends have spent untold hours talking about KISS and buying KISS stuff. Ace was a hero of mine and also I would consider a friend. I studied his solos endlessly over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pearl Jam guitarist encouraged fans to listen to the band\u2019s \u201cAlive\u201d to hear Frehley\u2019s influence, since he used the solo from Kiss\u2019 \u201cShe\u201d as a \u201ctemplate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAce jammed on \u2018Black Diamond\u2019 with Pearl Jam at Madison Square Garden\u2026a dream come true for me. I would not have picked up a guitar without Ace and KISS\u2019s influence,\u201d McCready wrote. \u201cRIP it out Ace, you changed my life. Thank you.<\/p>\n Frehley died in Morristown, New Jersey, at age 74. Frehley\u2019s rep, Lori Lousararian, attributed his death to a \u201crecent fall at his home,\u201d though a specific cause of death was not immediately available.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are devastated by the passing of Ace Frehley,\u201d Kiss bandmates Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley said in a joint statement. \u201cHe was an essential and irreplaceable rock soldier during some of the most formative foundational chapters of the band and its history. He is and will always be a part of KISS\u2019s legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mike McCready is mourning the loss of Kiss\u2019s Ace Frehley after news of his death on Thursday, Oct. 16. In a social media post shared by both Pearl Jam and McCready, the musician reflected on how Frehley forever changed his life and inspired him to pick up a guitar. McCready shared that he learned of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2096614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[381157,345494,396028,21965,396029],"class_list":["post-2096613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ace-frehley","tag-kiss","tag-mike-mccready","tag-pearl-jam","tag-rick-friel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Pearl-Jams-Mike-McCready-Honors-Kiss-Guitarist-Ace-Frehley-\u2018You.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2096613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2096615,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096613\/revisions\/2096615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2096614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2096613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2096613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2096613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}