Ace Frehley, the founding guitarist of KISS, died on Thursday (Oct. 16) at age 74, just seven weeks before the band is slated to receive a Kennedy Center Honor. That ceremony is set to tape on Dec. 7 and to air on CBS on Dec. 23.
Frehley will become only the third person to receive this honor posthumously, following two other group members who likewise died after the group’s awards were first announced: Glenn Frey of Eagles and Phil Lesh of Grateful Dead.
Ironically, for a cultural institution named after a slain president, the Kennedy Center has a policy that its honorees must be living.
Eagles were originally slated to receive the honor in December 2015, but Frey’s illness pushed the presentation back a year. Frey died in January 2016 at age 67 and the Kennedy Center included him when the group was honored that December.
Lesh died on Oct. 25, 2024 at age 84, just six weeks before the ceremony, where the group (including Lesh) was honored. The award also went to Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and Bobby Weir, but lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia, who had died in 1995, was not honored.
In 2008, The Who became the first group to receive a Kennedy Center Honor, but only the two living members – Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey – were honored. The two members who had died – Keith Moon and John Entwistle – were not.
In 2012, Led Zeppelin became the second group to be honored, but again only the living members (John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant) were honored. There was no award for drummer John Bonham, who had died in 1980.
Even Maurice White, universally acknowledged as the mastermind behind Earth, Wind & Fire, was not included when that group was honored in 2019. The only members who were awarded were Philip Bailey, Verdine White and Ralph Johnson.
KISS is only the seventh group to receive a Kennedy Center Honor. And the award to KISS, following last year’s award to Grateful Dead, marks the first time two groups have been honored in back-to-back years. The other groups to be honored are The Who (2008), Led Zeppelin (2012), Eagles (2016), Earth, Wind & Fire (2019) and U2 (2022).
This year’s Kennedy Center Honors ceremony is set to air on Tuesday, Dec. 23, from 8-10:30 p.m. ET/PT. In addition to KISS, this year’s recipients are Grammy-winning country music icon George Strait, Tony-winning stage and screen star Michael Crawford, Grammy-winning disco pioneer Gloria Gaynor and film icon Sylvester Stallone.
In announcing this year’s honorees on Aug. 13, President Trump said he would host the program. If he follows through on that, it will mark the first time an elected official, much less a president, has hosted the program.
