Film In Works Based On KISS’ (Music From) The Elder

The Guardian’s Martin Horsfield reports:

Like Dave Gorman, Morgan Spurlock and, um, Anneka Rice, Seb Hunter loves a challenge. For his book Rock Me Amadeus, this unreconstructed rocker opted to travel around Europe in an attempt to “get” classical music. In the uproarious and empathetic How To Be A Better Person, he detailed a year as a volunteer, helping failed asylum seekers fill in forms and assaulting an entire daycare centre’s ears with his improv drone metal band. But this year, unexpectedly – and definitely not as the premise to another whimsically amusing quest book – Hunter is going to turn film-maker.

In November, his blog became a means of raising funds for a film based on (Music From) The Elder, the 1981 concept album by KISS. Anyone who’s heard it will realise the scale of Hunter’s undertaking. It depicts the thoughts of The Boy during his training by the Elders, under the auspices of Morpheus. An attempt to emulate the success of PINK FLOYD’s The Wall, it boasted a choir, orchestra, bits of spoken-word, lyrics by LOU REED and none of the three-chord jock rock KISS were famous for. Needless to say, it tanked, and the film was never made.

Until now, that is. KISS may have long disowned The Elder (the band never toured it; singer PAUL STANLEY thought it “delusional”; producer Bob Ezrin blamed the coke), but Hunter is still a fan. Tell him it’s one of Q’s 15 Albums Where Bands Lost The Plot, and he’s having none of it. “It doesn’t need defending!” he snorts. “The reason for its derided status within the KISS canon is that it doesn’t sound much like KISS. Their fans were simply too … let’s say ‘straightforward’ to embrace it.”