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Credit: Far Out \/ Record Sleeve<\/p>\n
Tue 28 July 2026 2:30, UK <\/p>\n
Detroit may well be best known by its \u2018Motor City\u2019 moniker that inspired the names of Motown Records and the MC5, but for fans of Kiss<\/a>, it will always be \u2018Rock City\u2019 thanks to their 1976 crowd favourite.<\/p>\n Obviously, Kiss are well-known for being from New York City, but that shouldn\u2019t stop them from writing a song as a tribute to a city they enjoyed playing in. The places that bands visit on tour can quite often provide significant inspiration for material, and so many other acts have chosen to write hits that mention different locations they\u2019ve encountered on the road, so Kiss\u2019 decision to do this with Detroit, a city with a significant musical history, was no different.<\/p>\n Kiss weren\u2019t exactly hugely popular until the release of Alive!<\/a>, the live album that came out in 1975 and introduced them to the mainstream, so Destroyer, which featured \u2018Detroit Rock City\u2019, was the first album of new material that was going to be hitting a wider audience.<\/p>\n However, according to a 2023 interview with Paul Stanley on an episode of\u00a0The Howard Stern Show, the reason they went to Detroit was that they started getting attention in the Michigan city long before anywhere else. \u201c\u2018Detroit Rock City\u2019 is an interesting one, because Detroit really embraced us before any other city,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe were an opening act everywhere else, and in Detroit we were a headliner.\u201d<\/p>\n For this reason alone, it\u2019s a perfectly sound reason to want to pay tribute to the city<\/a>, but when you dive deeper into the lyrical content, you\u2019ll realise that something isn\u2019t quite right about the way in which they\u2019ve opted to pay their respects. In actuality, the song itself is based on a rather tragic true story, and one that, despite its title, actually has nothing to do with Detroit.<\/p>\n In the intro on the album version, you can faintly hear Gene Simmons taking on the role of a newsreader as he tells the story that inspired the song, which is about a Kiss fan who unfortunately lost his life in a traffic accident on his way to see Kiss in concert. Simmons sets the scene by saying, \u201cA head-on collision on Grand Avenue this morning, the youth was reportedly driving on the wrong side of the boulevard when he struck a delivery truck and was catapulted through the windshield of his car,\u201d before Stanley turns it all into a song that is sung from the perspective of the victim as he meets his fate.<\/p>\n But, despite Simmons\u2019 intro referencing Detroit landmarks and Stanley explicitly using Detroit in his lyrics, in actual fact, this horrifying turn of events took place over 600 miles away in North Carolina. Stanley further elaborated on this during the same 2023 interview, stating that it was a somewhat unexpected diversion that they hadn\u2019t anticipated taking at the time.<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n
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<\/a> The Far Out Classic Rock Newsletter<\/p>\n