When KISS Rocked Cadillac
Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns
KISS was on the cusp of superstardom when a small, conservative town in northern Michigan invited the band to visit. The rest is rock history.
It sounds like a Hollywood screenwriter's fantasy: a small-town high-school football team turns around a losing season, inspired by the music of wildly theatrical rock and rollers from New York. The team contacts the group with an unlikely ask: Would they consider visiting, so the town can say thanks? The band, on the cusp of superstardom, agrees — resulting in one of the most improbable, wholesome, heartwarming stories in rock history. But this was no movie: the year was 1975; the town was Cadillac, Michigan; and the band was KISS. Here, after unearthing never-seen photos from the event, FOTO celebrates an unrepeatable pop-culture moment, and speaks with a man who helped make it happen.
ROLLING THUNDER Jim Neff was a 28-year-old assistant football coach and history teacher at Cadillac High in 1974 when the varsity Vikings experienced a rocky 0-2 start to the season. "I was a big KISS fan," Neff told FOTO, "and I started playing their music in the locker room to get the team fired up." When the Vikings started winning, Neff wrote to KISS' management to let them know about the team's reversal of fortune. To his astonishment, KISS graciously replied; they were thrilled that their music inspired the Vikings to victory. Pictured: The October 1975 Cadillac High School homecoming parade; KISS can be seen in the distance.
PLAYING THE FIELD Rocking out to KISS, the '74 – '75 Vikings won seven straight, and ended the season as conference co-champions. A year later, realizing KISS was playing a concert just 140 miles south, in Kalamazoo, Neff contacted the band again and asked if they'd visit Cadillac: The town wanted to show its appreciation for a winning season. And that, in a nutshell, is what sparked two unforgettable days of unlikely fellowship between, at the time, the world's most outrageous rock and roll act and a quiet, tight-knit Midwestern community of 10,000. Other photographers attended the Cadillac event, too, but these pictures by Fin Costello, an Irish music journalist who shot Deep Purple, Humble Pie, and other major rock groups of the '70s, are unique: They've never been published — until now. Pictured: KISS' Paul Stanley goofs around with the Cadillac High football team, October 1975.
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