50 Years Ago: Vince Gill Opens for KISS. It Doesn’t Go Well

If it’s not one of the best stories in country music, it certainly one of the best in the arsenal of Vince Gill. Today, we all think of Vince Gill as the mild-mannered, clean cut, all-American Country Music Hall of Famer whose songs like “Go Rest High On That Mountain” and “One More Last Chance” defined some of the best of ’90s country.

But like all country greats, Vince Gill had to pay his dues, do time as an opening act, and sometimes not in the most ideal of environments. Before Vince Gill was Vince Gill, he played in the country rock band Pure Prairie League, and in the Kentucky-based bluegrass bands Bluegrass Alliance and Boone Creek with Ricky Skaggs. But one of the first bands he performed with in his home state of Oklahoma was a bluegrass band called Mountain Smoke.

They might’ve not been big on the national level. But after he graduated high school, Vince Gill and Mountain Smoke became pretty big in the Norman/Oklahoma City area, so much so that they were one of the go-to opening bands whenever some big name would tour through town. One such band happened to be the legendary rockers KISS.

Mountain Smoke was not initially scheduled to open the show for KISS. After all, you’d have to be pretty daft to think a bluegrass band would be well-received at a hard rock show. But when the opening band scheduled to perform ahead of KISS ducked out last minute, the local promoter went into a scramble drill, and reached out to Mountain Smoke feature an 18 year old Vince Gill.

The band had no idea who they were opening for. When they arrived at the Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City and saw the marquee lit up with KISS, they thought it might be a mistake, or maybe they were playing in the basement as part of another gig. Nope, they were told to tune up their acoustic instruments and get ready.

This was also the biggest gig Vince Gill and Mountain Smoke had ever been booked for at the time. And when you’re 18 years old, you’re not in a position to turn down a paying gig. So they took the stage. As you can imagine, it didn’t go well.

“They’re ready for blood and guts and rock ‘n roll,” Vince Gill says about the show on March 4th, 1976, “And we get out there, ‘Deedle leet deet dee!’ So we didn’t last very long. The first song finished, and the whole place started booing. And not just lightly booing, but angrily like a bad football game ending where the ref blows the call to cost the game. It was intense.”

But according to Vince Gill, he kind of liked the negative attention. “I enjoyed hearing that many people pissed off,” he says. Instead of feeling ashamed about the situation, he decided to embrace the fun and absurdity of the whole thing, thanking the crowd for the boos, and starting the second song. This is when beer bottles and other projectiles started flying, and Vince and Mountain Smoke had no other choice but to vacate the stage.

Vince Gill wasn’t going out lightly though. “On my departure, I hung them the bird, and bent around and grabbed my ass and said, ‘Kiss my ass!'” Vince recalls.

The review in the paper the next day recalled the incredibly poor booking choice for the opening act, and said, “Group member Vince Gill on his departure showed the crowd which part of his anatomy they could KISS.”

Vince Gill would live to fight another day and become a country legend. But his story about opening for KISS shows another “(back)side” of Vince Gill country fans rarely if ever got to see.

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