Background and career
Paul Charles Caravello (July 12, 1950 – November 24, 1991), better known as Eric Carr, was an American musician. He was the drummer for the rock band Kiss from 1980 until his death in 1991. Caravello was selected as the new Kiss drummer after Peter Criss departed. He created the stage name "Eric Carr" and designed his on-stage Fox persona. He remained a member of Kiss until his death from heart cancer in 1991.
Born as Paul Charles Caravello on July 12, 1950, to Albert (1927–2022) and Connie Caravello (1929–2010), Carr was of Italian descent. He grew up on 1043 Belmont Avenue in the East New York section of Brooklyn in New York City. Because his father worked most of the time, Carr did not see that much of him, and "never went to a baseball game or that kind of stuff" with his father. He spent a lot of time alone in his room, playing with toy soldiers and toy monsters. Caravello attended the High School of Art and Design. He planned at first to be a cartoonist, then changed his mind quickly thereafter and decided to study photography. According to him, he ended up wasting "absolutely every day of high school. I got no work done, did nothing to further my career, wasted time, and wound up getting drunk in the darkroom with my friends all the time. We never got caught because we could see through the one-way glass whenever a teacher would come. It wasn't like I was getting drunk every day, you know. Half a cup of vodka in those days was enough to get you drunk." However, he has described himself as overall "a real good kid. I didn't do anything to make trouble." In February 1964, Caravello watched the Beatles performance on The Ed Sullivan Show and was immediately captivated by the group, particularly Ringo Starr. He collected several books and pots from the kitchen to create a makeshift drum kit and began teaching himself how to play drums. Caravello was one of only two students in his high school who had long hair, mostly due to his love of the Beatles. He recalled that "I used to Dippity-Do my hair down, to make it stay flat. I used to have a Beatles haircut, but my hair's curly, so I couldn't get it to lay flat like the Beatles'. So I'd get the stuff Dippity-Do, drench my hair with it, and I'd take a piece of my Mom's nylon stocking, tie a knot in one end, and pull it over my head like a burglar. I was sleeping like that for probably two years with that on my head every night." Caravello graduated from high school in 1967. At around that time, riots started to occur in New York City, followed by white flight that started to make his neighborhood more predominantly African-American. Caravello stated that this was not a concern to him, because "I never had any problems with anybody, I had black friends, and I never grew up thinking in those kinds of terms.".
Caravello purchased a small drum kit that consisted of snare, kick, and a tom. The kit had a black oyster finish that was similar to Ringo's kit. Within a few months he added a floor tom. Sometime in 1965 he joined his first band, the Allures. They played a blend of Latino music and Beatles songs. the Allures did not last long, perhaps only a few months. Caravello then asked his friend in junior high school, Thomas, to join him on bass while they looked for other musicians. Shortly after starting high school he met John, who was interested in learning to play the guitar. The three young musicians called the group the Cellarmen because they practiced in Caravello's cellar. Thomas and Caravello soon began working as a team and eventually wrote two Beatles-inspired songs, "Your Turn to Cry" and "I Cry at Night." The drummer felt confident in the band and soon designed stylized lettering of the band's name and printed the Cellarmen on the front of his kick drum. However, the band broke up in late 1965 or early 1966. In March 1966, Caravello met keyboardist Victor Cohen and bassist Dave Bartky. Guitarist Bob Pryor joined the band within a few weeks. They played cover songs and their goal was to become good enough to play in the clubs. They practiced several times a week and soon had considerable number of songs ready. They kept the Cellarmen name because at the time they did not have enough money to purchase a new kick drum skin. Besides, the band still practiced in Caravello's cellar, so the name was appropriate. The Cellarmen's first gig was in August 1966. They were strictly a cover band playing popular music of the times. The Cellarmen played together until late 1968. In that time they had progressed musically and financially, and were represented by Ruston & Brenner, a large booking agency in New York City. They also recorded the two songs Caravello had written with the previous iteration of the Cellarmen. The two songs appear on the Jody Records label. During the last few months with the Cellarmen, Caravello added a second kick drum to his kit. He began exploring heavier music, such as Cream and Jimi Hendrix. After the Cellarmen disbanded. Caravello formed a new band called Things that Go Bump in the Night. This band played heavy music, but failed to gain traction in the clubs and soon disbanded. In the spring of 1969, Caravello joined his three former bandmates from the Cellarmen and vocalist Gary Fray in their band, Smack. Caravello insisted he would work with this cover band only until the fall. Ruston & Brenner continued booking Smack through the summer and band was soon in demand in the clubs. In the fall of 1969, Caravello left Smack, but he did not have another band to join. In November 1970 he joined a band called Salt & Pepper, a cover band playing music from multiple genres; the band was named that because half of the members were black and half were white. His old bandmate, Victor Cohen, was the keyboardist and recommended Caravello to the band. Salt & Pepper played mostly Top 40 songs. As he described it later, "Top-40 in those days was everything – funk, ballads, rock, country, and everything. It was a great time for radio.". Salt & Pepper had marginal success playing other events, such as opening for Nina Simone in December 1971 at the Academy of Music (New York City). In 1973 the band changed their name to Creation, now performing disco music as well as Top 40, Motown, and funk. In March 1973, Salt & Pepper opened for Stevie Wonder at a benefit concert. By this time Caravello was playing an acrylic [Fibes Drums] kit. In 1974 a fire broke out during a discothèque gig at Gulliver's nightclub in Port Chester, New York, killing dozens of people including the band's keyboardist, Damon DeFreis, and lead singer George D. Chase. Caravello escaped and was credited with also saving John and Sarita Henderson, the other two members of Creation. It was determined that the fire had been started by a thief in an adjacent building hoping to cover his tracks. Ruston & Brenner held a benefit to replace their ruined equipment. and Creation was back playing the clubs by the end of the year. In 1975, Creation changed its name to Mother Nature-Father Time. They continued playing the mostly disco songs in the clubs. In early 1978 Gregg Diamond, who had recently released an album titled Bionic Boogie, hired Mother Nature-Father Time to play as the touring band, however Gregg did not go on tour as he was strictly a studio musician. Over the next year, Mother Nature-Father Time played gigs under that name and as Bionic Boogie. They enjoyed some success, such as playing in Walt Disney World in Florida, and playing on disco TV shows in Florida and Canada. In the spring of 1979, producer Lewis Merenstein, who knew Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart, received an offer to produce a disco record. He soon recruited Mother Nature-Father Time with guitarist Tom Siano writing three of the five songs. Caravello sang background vocals and played drums on the record. The album was titled Lightning and Casablanca released the band's self-titled album on August 13, 1979. The Lightning album and Diamond's latest album Tiger, Tiger both failed to chart. The result was the end of the Caravello's work with people he had known since 1970. Diamond did not hire Mother Nature-Father Time to tour and Mother Nature-Father Time broke up in October 1979. Caravello later described the band as "like my family basically for nine years." In December 1979, Caravello successfully auditioned for a four-piece rock 'n' roll cover band called Flasher. After three weeks of rehearsals, they started playing at clubs. Flasher played the club circuit in New York City and Long Island for several months before Paul Turino, their keyboard player, quit to join a band that was signed to a record label and touring. Flasher continued as a power trio, with the three sharing vocal duties. They played songs by Joe Jackson, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, among others. Eventually, bookings diminished and Caravello become discouraged about his musical future after so many years trying to make it without a break and considered settling down with a non-musical career. "We were making real (lousy) money – something like $10, $7 a night, whatever it was it was. Really, really terrible. Just by contrast, I used to make $15 a night when I was like 16 years old, and here I am almost 30 years old, and I'm making like $7 a night! So I wasn't doing better, obviously – I was going in reverse." Caravello handed in his resignation in late May 1980 but agreed to play the remaining shows the band were booked for. At that point, he considered quitting music, having reached the age of 30 without any real success. In early June, Caravello had a chance meeting with Turino in a club in Queens called Poets. Caravello invited Turino to see Flasher play the following night at the same club. The next night, Turino told Caravello about Peter Criss's departure from Kiss, and urged Caravello to audition to become Kiss' drummer.
Caravello applied for Kiss, submitting a cassette tape of Kiss' current single "Shandi" but with his vocals over the music instead of Paul Stanley's vocals. "It sounded great!" he enthused years later. The application was put into a bright orange folder to make it stand out visually. Jayne Grodd, a Kiss staffer, told him later she had noticed the brightly colored envelope and so picked it to be one reviewed from the pile. While sitting outside the room used for the audition, Caravello watched the three members of Kiss – Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons and Stanley – walk by to enter the room. He was one of the few people outside of the band's circle of friends, family and music business partners, to see Kiss without make-up. "Paul, I knew right away", he told a fanzine in 1990. "The others I wasn't sure about." Caravello was the last drummer to audition for the band and asked Stanley, Simmons and Frehley to autograph the list of Kiss songs he was to play with the band, in case he never saw them again. "But I knew I had it", he told a fanzine in 1990. According to Caravello, his audition was videotaped. He was also immediately comfortable, feeling the songs he had to play "...were a snap." He knew the arrangements better than the band did, from learning the recorded versions of Kiss' albums. "They had been on tour, and changed little things around," he said. He was not impressed with Kiss' performance at the audition. "They were awful!" he emphasized, "I had to remind them, "'No, I sing this harmony, you sing that one', stuff like that. It was great! Right away we were working together. I know it impressed them." Stanley later described Caravello's audition: "He was this guy who cleaned stoves for a living, and the first thing he said to us was 'It's a real pleasure to meet you. Let's play.' We started playing and it was like thunder, even though he was the shortest guy in the room. It just fit like a glove. The one thing that probably sealed it for us was when, after the audition, he asked us for autographs. It wasn't brown-nosing, it's just that he was a real person." A significant advantage for Caravello may have been his relative anonymity, as it was important for the band to maintain the mystique surrounding the members. Said Paul Stanley, "It was really important to us that we got somebody who was unknown... We didn't want somebody who last week was in Rod Stewart's band or in Rainbow." Before they issued a press release announcing the induction of Caravello into Kiss, they subtracted three years from his actual age - in part to confuse those seeking information about his true identity, but also to help create an identification with Caravello: a young fan chosen from the crowd to be the new Kiss drummer!
After Caravello passed the audition, time was short and the band had some trouble coming up with a character persona and a stage name for him before his debut concert. "We never actually told him he was in the band," stated Paul Stanley on USA Network's Night Flight program in 1983, "We just said: "In two weeks we're playing.'" Paul Stanley alleged that Caravello wanted to use the stage name "Rusty Blade" until Stanley dissuaded him. Caravello decided on "Eric Carr" quite carefully. He noticed that while the four members' full stage names were each three syllables long, Criss' name was the inverse of the other three band members' name syllable pattern – 'Peter Criss' was two syllables followed by a single syllable. He decided to make his stage name sound the same rhythmically as Peter Criss' by choosing a double syllable first name and a single syllable last name so that when people said all four names together it would still fit the same to the ear. Carr was shortened from his birth name Caravello, and he chose Eric from a list of first names his girlfriend at the time had created. Paul Caravello remained his legal name. For his Kiss persona, Carr initially tried "the Hawk"; this concept was apparently very difficult to realize in greasepaint – a suitable make-up design was never created, and the "Hawk" costume was a "bright orange yellow!" The idea was dropped after Paul Stanley mentioned that it looked like Big Bird. With the band on deadline (only two weeks before Carr's stage debut), Carr came up with the make-up design for the persona of "the Fox"; Simmons liked it and thus the character was born. The original design was modified within days of Carr's initial photo sessions and debut concert as a Kiss member. Carr's first public performance was with the band in New York City's Palladium on July 25, 1980. His parents, warned to not tell anyone their son was in Kiss (to maintain the mystique that no one knew what the new member looked like without make-up), attended the concert, and were recognized by a friend who worked with Carr at a repair shop – and had no idea the new Kiss member behind the kit was his former coworker. " 'What are you doing here?' ", Carr's father, Albert Caravello, related in the Tale of the Fox DVD, " 'You like Kiss?' I said, "Yeah!' " The next day, Bill Aucoin, Kiss manager, told Carr that his makeup was indistinguishable from the audience and asked the drummer to refine his Fox makeup. On July 30, Carr was introduced to the public on an episode of the syndicated television youth show Kids Are People Too!, which aired in September 1980. This was the first time he wore the makeup that most fans identity him with. For Christmas in 1980, the Kiss organization bought Carr a Porsche—so their new drummer would ride around in appropriate rock-star style. The car broke down often, and caused Carr quite a bit of grief. His persona remained consistent for three years until the band's well-publicized removal of their stage makeup in September 1983, live on MTV. The drastic move came after declining album sales and a poorly attended US tour. Carr thought the band was coming to an end, but Kiss slowly turned their career descent into a rebound, and the band thrived once again. Carr earned a reputation amongst fans for being very friendly and approachable. He answered more mail than other band members, and often added messages to his autographs. Despite replacing an original member, he gained popularity among fans based on his personality and percussion skills.
On August 29, 1980, Kiss began a European tour to support the Unmasked album. This was Carr's introduction to playing to large audiences, such as the 30,000 fans in Milan, Italy on September 2. The European tour ended in mid-October, after which Kiss flew to Australia for a four-week run on the Southern Continent and New Zealand, beginning on November 8 and concluding on December 2. Of the 11 shows, 10 were sold out and the highest attendance occurred in Melbourne (45,000). Carr's first tour with Kiss saw the band play 41 shows in 13 countries. Carr's first album with Kiss was 1981's (Music from) The Elder, which marked a departure for the band toward a mystical art-rock direction. One of Carr's contributions to the album, "Under the Rose", is one of the few Kiss songs written in 68 time and featured a Gregorian chant-style chorus. Carr also cowrote "Escape from the Island" with Frehley and producer Bob Ezrin. It was only the second instrumental recorded by Kiss. Poor album sales and lower chart position did not allow Kiss to tour to support The Elder. During the summer of 1982, Kiss dedicated themselves to creating a hard rock album that predominantly featured Carr's drumming and his unique style. Creatures of the Night was released on October 25, 1982. The heavy reverb on Carr's drums was a unique sound not previously heard on a Kiss album. The album featured nine songs, none of which were written by Carr. In late December 1982, Kiss began their first tour of North America since the 1979 Dynasty tour. It was Carr's first North American tour. The tour was poorly attended and ended in early April 1983 after only 53 shows. In June Kiss played in Brazil for the first time. The pent-up demand for Kiss resulted in high attendance, with approximately 137,000 people at the Rio de Janeiro show. Carr received writing credits on "All Hell's Breakin' Loose" from Lick It Up, "Under the Gun" from Animalize, and "No, No, No" from Crazy Nights. Carr said he found writing lyrics harder than writing music. Besides drumming, Carr also played guitar, bass guitar and piano, and also sang background vocals. Occasionally he sang lead vocals, such as on "Black Diamond" and "Young and Wasted" live with Kiss. His first lead vocal in the studio was a re-recording of "Beth" (a song originally sung by Peter Criss) for the 1988 compilation album Smashes, Thrashes & Hits. Carr recorded his version of the song in the same room in the Record Plant where the song was originally recorded, using the same backing track as Criss. In 1989, he recorded a demo with Kiss lead guitarist Bruce Kulick. Carr wrote the music, played bass and drums, while Kulick played guitar. As Carr was not a proficient lyricist, he presented the demo to Simmons with the words to Marvin Gaye's 1965 classic "Ain't That Peculiar". Simmons wrote new lyrics, which Carr recorded for the subsequent Hot in the Shade release. The song was released as "Little Caesar". He performed the song a few times, but it wasn't performed beyond the first month of the tour. Carr's last live performance with Kiss was November 9, 1990, in New York City, at Madison Square Garden. As a replacement member, Carr was a paid employee and did not have voting privileges, unlike the four founding members who shared profits and voting rights equally. Through Carr's years in Kiss, his rank as an employee was a source of significant discontent for him. He felt excluded and unfairly treated as a second-class Kiss citizen, for instance not being allowed to share Simmons' and Stanley's limousine, only getting minimal exposure in videos such as the Kiss eXposed VHS, or being partially cropped out of the Asylum album cover. Unlike fellow bandmember Bruce Kulick with the same status, Carr grew ever more frustrated and unhappy, culminating in his feeling of being ditched by Kiss during his 1991 hospitalization. In his autobiography, Peter Criss listed Carr as one of the people that Simmons and Stanley "drove mad": Carr "was reduced to sitting in his hotel room naked with the blinds all drawn, drinking and refusing to come out.". However, this account is questionable as Carr and Criss only met a few times during the 11 years Carr was in Kiss. The two drummers were on friendly terms but did not regularly contact each other and were not friends. During a 1999 interview with KISS Asylum, former Kiss guitarist Mark St. John spoke fondly of Carr but mentioned he wasn't given much creative freedom during the Animalize period: "We would go out to dinner, it would be one of those type of dinner meetings, and Eric would give everybody a tape of his demos because he wanted everybody to listen. Nobody else would give tapes of their music to anybody, but he wanted it so bad, you know, he still wanted to put his music out there. Well, it was like a money thing -- if Eric got a song on the album he would make more money and people would like it more and yadda, yadda, yadda. It would be like a domino effect so they never let him do it. Carr's last recording with Kiss was for the song "God Gave Rock 'N' Roll to You II", which featured him on backing vocals. The last time Carr worked with Kiss was in July 1991 when Kiss filmed the video for "God Gave Rock 'N Roll to You" with Carr playing drums. Carr's last public appearance with the band was at the MTV Video Music Awards in September 1991.
