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Supreme Court KISSes Vincent Goodbye
10/03/2006 2:23 PM, E! Online
Vinnie Vincent won't be raking it in for Lick It Up.
On the first day of the U.S. Supreme Court's new term, the Big
9 declined to consider a lower court's dismissal of Vincent's lawsuit
against KISS, in which he claimed he was owed royalties for his
contributions to the 1983 album Lick It Up.
Vincent,
whose real name is Vincent Cusano (Gene Simmons named him "Vinnie
Vincent"), sued the band in federal court for $6 million in 1997. The
court ultimately ruled that the guitarist had been a salaried member of
the group at the time and therefore had received all the moola he was
entitled to.
The former Happy Days staff songwriter
joined KISS in 1982 as a replacement for founding member Ace Frehley and
played on the heavily made-up rockers' 14th album, Creatures of the
Night. Vincent was reportedly fired at the end of the
Creatures tour because of personality clashes with Simmons, but
he was back on board in time for Lick It Up, an album especially
significant because it marked the end of KISS dressing up in
black-and-white face.
Vincent was given the KISS-off yet again
in 1984 and went on to form the metal band Vinnie Vincent Invasion. (He
maintains he left to do his own thing.) The musician reunited with
Simmons & Co. to cowrite three songs for KISS' 1992 album,
Revenge. Vincent also released a live disc, Speedball
Jamm, in 2002, in which a bunch of songs are mashed into one
71-minute track.
In another hall of justice, the man
convicted of killing Vincent's ex-wife, AnnMarie Cusano, lost an appeal
in June to have his manslaughter conviction overturned. Gregory McArthur
maintains that two drug dealers were most likely responsible for
Cusano's death in 1998. She and Vincent were briefly married in the
1980s.
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