‘Love Gun, ‘ the sixth studio album from Kiss, and the clear pinnacle of the band’s first golden era, was released 35 years ago this week.

The album’s release marked a pair of turning points for the band. It was the last record to feature their original lineup — Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley — performing together on every song.

(In 1998, the foursome released a reunion album entitled ‘Psycho Circus,’ but it is widely reported that outside musicians joined Stanley and Simmons for much of that project.)

‘Love Gun’ was also released at the high-point of the band’s commercial success. Kiss were without question the hottest band in the land at the time, with arena shows selling out across the country and mountains of records and merchandise flying off store shelves.

Seeing as how ‘Love Gun’ was their fifth studio LP in just three years — not to mention the near-constant touring the group had been doing since forming in 1973 — it’s hard to say they didn’t work hard to earn that position.

By 1977, they were ready to reap the rewards. As Stanley explains in the band’s official biography ‘Behind the Mask,’ “I had fun making ‘Love Gun’ because I was feeling my oats. I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to do and in some ways what Kiss was going to do… I’d give that four and a half, five stars. I’m proud of the record.”

Recorded in just three weeks with production help from the legendary Eddie Kramer, who had worked with the band on their breakthrough 1975 ‘Alive’ double-live concert album, ‘Love Gun”s drum-heavy title song (rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat!) became an instant classic, and has been performed at nearly every Kiss concert since its release.

The piano-tinged ‘Christine Sixteen‘ and the blistering album opener ‘I Stole Your Love‘ have also endured in fan’s hearts and on the group’s setlists. (The downright nasty Simmons tune ‘Almost Human‘ has always been one of our personal favorites, not that anybody asked.)

‘Love Gun’ was the first Kiss album to feature all four members on lead vocals, with Criss signing of his younger trouble-making days in ‘Hooligan‘ and Ace Frehley turning in one of his career highlights with ‘Shock Me.’ Inspired by an accidental and scary on-stage electrocution, the guitarist wrote the track and then gave into his bandmates’ positive peer pressure to take the lead, although he was reportedly so nervous he sang the track lying flat on his back in the studio.

Looking back, the only sour note Stanley sees on the record is the gender-switched, album-ending cover of the Crystals’ 1963 smash ‘Then He Kissed Me.’ “Some things in retrospect just don’t work. That’s a great song and it needs to get redone like ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand‘ needs to get redone. It’s a song you don’t mess with.’

‘Love Gun’ was a smash hit immediately upon release, racing up to No. 4 on the Billboard charts and selling over a million copies. But cracks were forming within the band. Criss and Frehley were eager for more creative freedom, and Stanley and Simmons were growing tired of the hard-partying duo’s unreliable ways.

The very next year, these internal squabbles would result in each of the Kiss members recording solo albums under the band’s brand name. Between those four simultaneously-released projects, the band’s second live album (‘Alive II’), and their first-ever best-of collection, ‘Double Platinum,’ it could easily be argued that Kiss over-saturated the market prior to the release of their next group album, 1979′s ‘Dynasty,’ which, as discussed here, is widely regarded as the beginning of the group’s most challenging era.

Watch the Original TV Commercial for ‘Love Gun’ by Kiss

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