# Creatures of the Night Tour/10th Anniversary Tour

The Creatures of the Night Tour/10th Anniversary Tour was a concert tour by the hard rock group Kiss in support of their album of the same title. It was the second tour with drummer Eric Carr, his first in the United States, and the first tour with guitarist Vinnie Vincent, (née Vincent Cusano) who replaced Ace Frehley.

## Background

In June 1982, Frehley told Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons that he was leaving Kiss, although it would take 12 months for lawyers to negotiate the lead guitarist's complete departure. In an effort to prolong their lucrative recording contract, Frehley agreed to participate in a press conference on October 22, 1982 and to travel to Europe for a promotional tour in late November. Meanwhile Stanley designed a new persona for Frehley's replacement, Vincent Cusano. Wearing a makeup design of an Egyptian "ankh", Cusano adopted the stage name "Vinnie 'The Wiz' Vincent," who was "even weirder than we are" in the tour's press release. The groups' lucrative record contract with PolyGram required Kiss to be composed of founders Stanley (vocals/rhythm guitar), Simmons (bass/vocals) and Frehley. The release did not say Frehley had quit, but instead stated Frehley was too injured from a recent car crash to tour, but might make appearances onstage when able. The band used group photos containing Ace Frehley for the tour's press kits and ad material during early dates; these were used by promoters for advertising, so many fans did not realize Frehley was replaced until they came to the venues. Before Vincent was announced, new photos were taken and later dates featured the band with Vincent in show ads.
Attendance in North America was abysmal; even though the band had returned to its signature hard rock after a couple of years of pop and disco-influenced music, very few people showed up at the concerts on the tour. Even worse was the fact that the band couldn't drum up interest despite it being their 10th anniversary and their first tour of the US in over three years, an unprecedented amount of time for them during that era. Frontman Paul Stanley recalled a show in Lexington, Kentucky where he threw a guitar pick that went over the entire audience of 2,500 and hit the floor. On March 11, they decided not to book dates beyond April 3, although they accepted a short tour of Brazil in June. Kiss played to the biggest crowd of their career at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with 137,000 people in the audience. According to the band management, promoters were actually interested in booking Kiss in smaller venues such as large nightclubs and smaller theatres where they would have had an easier time selling out shows. The band, however, refused to play anything except arenas and large theatres.
During their North American tour, Kiss was met with accusations from religious groups of promoting Satanism through their music and image, and several protests were held by such groups outside concert venues; however, Kiss politely denied the accusations and the tour continued.
This tour is the only tour to feature live performances of "Rock and Roll Hell" and "Keep Me Comin" from the Creatures of the Night LP, although both would be dropped from the set almost immediately. "I Want You" returned to the setlist for the first time since the Alive II Tour in 1978. The band sang the chant that opened and closed their new main single "I Love It Loud", but by the tour's end, this was changed and only Simmons sang it.
The Plasmatics were the opening act in the middle of the tour while heavy metal band Mötley Crüe opened for Kiss on the final dates of the North American leg after Kiss noticed their notoriety growing. Molly Hatchet, Night Ranger and Zebra were also the opening acts for several concerts on the tour. The Headpins, from Vancouver, BC, opened all four shows in Canada.
In the tour program for the band's final tour, both Simmons and Stanley reflected on the tour:
   When we were working on Creatures of the Night, I said, "I want to write something that sounds like "My Generation," something that says, "This is who I am and this is what I believe in. – Gene Simmons
   On record and on the subsequent tour, Creatures of the Night was very much a recapturing of our desire and our focus as a band and a reclaiming of what was important to us. When we did Creatures it was that step of us declaring that we were back. – Paul Stanley

## Stage set

Simmons described the tour's visual effects: "There's some fire-breathing and blood-spitting into the air and we give birth on stage and there's some fire balls that go thirty feet up into the air. And it rains fire and also some rockets take off on stage, and the stage looks like a tank sixty feet wide. You actually feel it in your chest when the tank moves. And then the drum riser, which is on top of the tank, goes forward, moves left and right, and actually fires like a real tank."

## Setlist

* "Creatures of the Night"
* "Detroit Rock City"
* "Cold Gin"
* "Calling Dr. Love"
* "I Want You"
* "I Love It Loud"
* "Firehouse"
* "War Machine"
* "Love Gun"
* "God of Thunder"
* "I Still Love You"
* "Shout It Out Loud"
* "Black Diamond"
Encore
* "Strutter"
* "Rock and Roll All Nite"
* "Rock and Roll Hell" was dropped after the first three shows.
* "Keep Me Comin'" was also played live on this tour, but it was dropped after the first two shows.
* "Shout It Out Loud" was dropped from the set list after the February 1 concert in Knoxville, TN.
* "I Love It Loud" was played twice in São Paulo-Brazil (instead of "Strutter").

## Tour dates

| Date | City | Country | Venue | Opening Act(s) |
| North America |||||
| December 29, 1982 | Bismarck | United States | Bismarck Civic Center | Hotz |
| December 30, 1982 | Sioux City | United States | Sioux City Municipal Auditorium | Dare Force |
| December 31, 1982 | Rockford | United States | Rockford MetroCentre | Shoes |
| January 1, 1983 | Terre Haute | United States | Hulman Center | Why On Earth |
| January 4, 1983 | Charleston | United States | Charleston Civic Center | Defectors |
| January 6, 1983 | Lexington | United States | Rupp Arena | Night Ranger |
| January 7, 1983 | Saginaw | United States | Wendler Arena | Night Ranger |
| January 8, 1983 | Toledo | United States | Toledo Sports Arena | Night Ranger |
| January 9, 1983 | Dayton | United States | University of Dayton Arena | Night Ranger |
| January 12, 1983 | Quebec City | Canada | Colisée de Quebec | The Headpins |
| January 13, 1983 | Montreal | Canada | Montreal Forum | The Headpins |
| January 14, 1983 | Toronto | Canada | Maple Leaf Gardens | The Headpins |
| January 15, 1983 | Ottawa | Canada | Ottawa Civic Centre | The Headpins |
| January 16, 1983 | Glens Falls | United States | Glens Falls Civic Center | Night Ranger |
| January 18, 1983 | Syracuse | United States | Onondaga County War Memorial | Night Ranger |
| January 20, 1983 | Rochester | United States | Rochester Community War Memorial | Night Ranger |
| January 21, 1983 | Portland | United States | Cumberland County Civic Center | Night Ranger |
| January 22, 1983 | Worcester | United States | The Centrum | Night Ranger |
| January 25, 1983 | Norfolk | United States | Norfolk Scope | Night Ranger |
| January 27, 1983 | Huntsville | United States | Von Braun Civic Center | Night Ranger |
| January 28, 1983 | Birmingham | United States | Boutwell Auditorium | Night Ranger |
| January 29, 1983 | Chattanooga | United States | UTC Arena | Night Ranger |
| January 30, 1983 | Nashville | United States | Nashville Municipal Auditorium | Night Ranger |
| February 1, 1983 | Knoxville | United States | Knoxville Civic Coliseum | Plasmatics |
| February 3, 1983 | West Palm Beach | United States | West Palm Beach Auditorium | Plasmatics |
| February 4, 1983 | Lakeland | United States | Lakeland Civic Center | Plasmatics |
| February 11, 1983 | Pine Bluff | United States | Pine Bluff Convention Center | Plasmatics |
| February 14, 1983 | New Orleans | United States | Louisiana Superdome | Zebra |
| February 16, 1983 | Dubuque | United States | Five Flags Center | Plasmatics |
| February 18, 1983 | Bloomington | United States | Met Center | Plasmatics |
| February 19, 1983 | Sioux Falls | United States | Sioux Falls Arena | Plasmatics |
| February 20, 1983 | La Crosse | United States | La Crosse Center | Plasmatics |
| February 22, 1983 | Richfield | United States | Richfield Coliseum | Plasmatics |
| February 23, 1983 | Detroit | United States | Cobo Arena | Plasmatics |
| February 24, 1983 | Indianapolis | United States | Market Square Arena | Plasmatics |
| February 26, 1983 | Springfield | United States | Prairie Capital Convention Center | Plasmatics |
| February 28, 1983 | St. Louis | United States | Kiel Auditorium | Plasmatics |
| March 1, 1983 | Kansas City | United States | Kansas City Municipal Auditorium | Molly Hatchet |
| March 9, 1983 | Dallas | United States | Dallas Convention Center | Plasmatics |
| March 10, 1983 | Houston | United States | Sam Houston Coliseum | Plasmatics |
| March 12, 1983 | San Antonio | United States | HemisFair Arena | Plasmatics |
| March 13, 1983 | Beaumont | United States | Beaumont Civic Center | Plasmatics |
| March 14, 1983 | Corpus Christi | United States | Corpus Christi Memorial Coliseum | Plasmatics |
| March 18, 1983 | Biloxi | United States | Mississippi Coast Coliseum | Plasmatics |
| March 19, 1983 | Shreveport | United States | Hirsch Memorial Coliseum | Plasmatics |
| March 21, 1983 | Norman | United States | Lloyd Noble Center | Plasmatics |
| March 23, 1983 | El Paso | United States | El Paso County Coliseum | Plasmatics |
| March 26, 1983 | Irvine | United States | Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre | Mötley Crüe |
| March 27, 1983 | Los Angeles | United States | Universal Amphitheatre | Mötley Crüe |
| March 28, 1983 | Phoenix | United States | Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum | Mötley Crüe |
| April 1, 1983 | Las Vegas | United States | Aladdin Theater | Mötley Crüe |
| April 3, 1983 | San Francisco | United States | San Francisco Civic Auditorium | Mötley Crüe |
| Brazil |||||
| June 18, 1983 | Rio de Janeiro | Brazil | Maracanã Stadium | Herva Doce |
| June 23, 1983 | Belo Horizonte | Brazil | Mineirão Stadium | — |
| June 25, 1983 | São Paulo | Brazil | Morumbi Stadium | — |
* ^Note 1 First show with Vinnie Vincent.
* ^Note 2 Paul Stanley announced from the stage they would not be allowed to use pyrotechnics. The show had none, except Simmons' firebreathing. Clips of this show and a quote from Paul Stanley backstage appeared on a Providence, Rhode Island TV station WPRI Channel 12 news story about the Centrum venue beating out the Civic Center for business, using Kiss as one example.
* ^Note 3 Kiss' last show in makeup until 1996.

### Postponed and cancelled dates

| Date | City | Country | Venue | Reasoning |
| December 27, 1982 | Rapid City | United States | Rushmore Plaza Civic Center | Severe snow storm |
| January 23, 1983 | Providence | United States | Providence Civic Center | Poor ticket sales; tickets for this show were exchanged for the Worcester, Massachusetts, show. |
| February 6, 1983 | Charleston | United States | Charleston County Hall | Tentative date on the schedule. The concert was not advertised and no tickets went on sale |
| February 8, 1983 | Asheville | United States | Asheville Civic Center | Tentative date on the schedule. The concert was not advertised and no tickets went on sale |
| February 9, 1983 | Bristol, Tennessee | United States | Viking Hall Civic Center | Tentative date on the schedule. The concert was not advertised and no tickets went on sale |
| February 17, 1983 | Duluth | United States | Duluth Arena | Poor ticket sales |
| March 31, 1983 | San Diego | United States | San Diego Sports Arena | Poor ticket sales |
| June 20, 1983 | Belo Horizonte | Brazil | Mineirão Stadium | Electrical outage during show, rescheduled for June 21; as a result only 30,000 of the expected 80,000 showed up. |
| June 24, 1983 | São Paulo | Brazil | Morumbi Stadium | Reserved on the schedule for a second Sāo Paulo show |
| August 19–21, 1983 | Buenos Aires | Argentina | Boca Juniors Stadium | Terrorist threat |

### Box office score data

List of box office score data with date, city, venue, attendance, gross, references :
| Date | City | Venue | Attendance | Gross |
| December 29, 1982 | Bismarck, United States | Civic Center | 3,335 / 8,200 | $30,011 |
| January 14, 1983 | Toronto, Canada | Maple Leaf Gardens | 9,565 / 10,000 | $124,100 |
| January 15, 1983 | Ottawa, Canada | Civic Centre | 4,919 / 7,000 | $59,028 |
| January 21, 1983 | Portland, United States | Cumberland County Civic Center | 4,338 / 4,500 | $45,549 |
| January 22, 1983 | Worcester, United States | The Centrum | 10,147 / 11,000 | $94,652 |
| January 27, 1983 | Huntsville, United States | Von Braun Civic Center | 5,025 / 10,106 | $49,959 |
| January 29, 1983 | Chattanooga, United States | UTC Arena | 4,451 / 11,000 | $43,533 |
| January 30, 1983 | Nashville, United States | Municipal Auditorium | 8,936 / 9,900 | $92,841 |
| February 3, 1983 | West Palm Beach, United States | Auditorium | 5,202 / 6,200 | $58,588 |
| February 14, 1983 | New Orleans, United States | Louisiana Superdome | 10,421 / 15,000 | $107,866 |
| February 22, 1983 | Richfield, United States | Coliseum | 10,212 / 10,212 | $10,120 |

## Personnel

* Paul Stanley – vocals, rhythm guitar
* Gene Simmons – vocals, bass
* Eric Carr – drums, vocals
* Vinnie Vincent – lead guitar, backing vocals