Elise Krentzel had a natural empathic sense at a very early age where she was able to detect unhappiness in people and consequently spent much of her time growing up tending to the constant grief of others, namely the adults around her…more specifically, her mother. It was one of those ticking time bomb/walking-on-eggshells childhoods that so many kids have as they balance an unhealthy diet of physical and emotional abuse…and that’s not to say that the commonality of such an existence lessens the blows or that it makes people feel better to know that they’re not alone in their dreadful experiences with adults who are battling their own demons of depression and drug addiction. There’s nothing common when it’s you living it every day, and you don’t know from one minute to the next whether you’re going to get a nice big loving hug from your mom or get slapped upside the head.
Krentzel’s 2022 book Under My Skin: Drama, Trauma & Rock ‘N’ Roll begins in confrontation and then proceeds to spiral a few generations back into the past to trace the origins of what unfolds as a tumultuous upbringing. Without giving away the details, it’s enough to highlight and spell out why she felt she had nothing to lose when she picked up and left New York City for Japan one day in March 1977 at the age of 19 when asked to join the rock band Kiss as a journalist on their two week Sneak Attack tour….though it wasn’t just the familial affliction informing this, but the fear of becoming mediocre…a thankless cog in the wheel of bourgeois suburban boredom. Given that type of adversity at such a young age, not many people would thrive coming out of such a negative environment. This held true, particularly in the 70s, when women were usually considered objects and had to claw their way through the male-dominant rat race…though, Krentzel had the good sense and the courage to combine a passion for writing with her love of music during a time when writing about music was a much-coveted affair and rock journalism in its peak era was still largely patriarchal. She had already been well-acquainted with the rock scene in New York by then and had been in and around key places and moments that are now enshrined in history, both in New York City and in the revered rock and roll folklore and mythology that is often bigger than the history itself.
While there is much to be said about Krentzel’s life in Under My Skin, the book has often been most-associated (at least publicly) with Kiss, and that is thanks largely to the attention it’s received in and around the Kiss community, consisting of social media groups, public forums and podcasts, which is how I personally came to it while doing book research of my own. While I see this book as so much more than Kiss, namely an author’s personal triumph, I was far from surprised to see a few of the negative gripes some Kiss fans had in their reviews…whining about how they had gotten the book expecting it all to be about Kiss and were disappointed that Kiss was only part of it. Not many bands in history aside from Kiss have a fan base that’s been given a limitless wealth of material for discussion and firsthand primary sources to shed further light on the very things they endlessly nitpick about, and the arrogant sense of entitlement among so many fans doesn’t seem to allow them any sense of just how spoiled they really are. As a first-generation Kiss fan since 1976, I say this lovingly. And so Krentzel offers a riveting firsthand account of the behind-the-scenes of Kiss’s brief Japanese tour, their first, and of the adventures she found herself on during the downtime when the moments weren’t about Kiss. Krentzel knows the significance of these moments, as she was sitting with and witnessing a band right on the cusp of their time as the biggest band in the world. But Japan isn’t just Kiss. Kiss leaves after two weeks and Krentzel stays for seven years. In that period of time, she builds the next chapter of life, becoming the Tokyo Bureau Chief of Billboard Magazine and ends up having a hand in introducing punk rock to Japan and devices like the Sony Walkman and Laserdiscs to the Western world.
Long story short, Elise Krentzel goes from that “street smart vulnerable Jewish girl from the Bronx” with severe trust issues to the resourceful young woman who learned to trust herself, learned to listen to herself and set her own course as an artist, a well-traveled citizen of the world, and evolve into one badass woman who has lived a successful life in the rock and roll, communications and publishing worlds. The back and forth of the timeline of Under My Skin is refreshing in that it cuts to what Krentzel probably saw as the bare necessities in telling the story with only the most significant pieces. With a few more books promised, perhaps the other pieces will arise in similar jigsaw fashion. Or perhaps not. The uncertainty is always the biggest part of the charm in awaiting the next one.
There was a time when the glamorous yet destructive hedonism of the 1970s was unfolding in real time. This wasn’t myth…it really happened. And there was a time when sex, drugs and rock and roll wasn’t just a cliché or a punch line. Still with the story far from completion, Under My Skin is a living, breathing primary source document and testament to that time…and well beyond.
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