Speedin' Back To My Baby

Ace Frehley, Jeanette Frehley

Ace gave a song-writing credit on this song to his wife Jeanette. According to Ace's friend Bobby McAdams, "Ace would write a song (like 'Speedin' Back To My Baby') and would let her write a line and give her a song writing credit just to appease her" (Kiss & Tell, p.102). Ace also experimented with backwards-masking on the track. Ace recalled, "I'll tell you the story behind that. I cut a solo and I said to Eddie, 'Eddie, maybe we should try a backwards part here'? I thought that it would go with the sounds of the cars on the choruses and towards the end of the song. They are Ferraris, by the way - we had to wait a week to get tapes of them. Specifically, we needed Ferraris because Eddie is a racing car bug and so am I. So anyway, we tried playing a mediocre solo backwards and [engineer] Rob Freeman transferred it to a half-track. On unused tracks, when the part came up, he started up the other machine backwards to sync it up, and he hit it the first time. The parts fit perfectly, and that's what came out. Then we re-edited certain sections of it. The intro came in just fabulous, which was the end of the original solo. I was really happy with the way it came out - it just rips at the intro. It's funny, because it was the end of the solo and I was all out of ideas, but you turn it around and there is new life to it" (Guitar Player, 1979). Professional backing vocalists David Lasley and Susan Collins were brought in to work on this song, "New York Groove" and "What's On Your Mind." David, in particular was an in-demand backing vocalist, songwriter, and singer who was recording and touring with the legendary James Taylor.