With the success of Alive! came the thought of a grander show. "I remember seeing Pete Townsend and going. 'Boy I wish I could do that". Gibson would give me these guitars and every night I would break one." (Metal Edge presents KISS Alive, 1996) This was probably not what Gibson had in mind and initially it wasn't KISS's relationship to the Marauder. The Marauder was introduced in 1974 but shipping records indicate that only one (1) actually shipped that year and it wasn't until 1975 that it appeared in the catalog and price lists (where it was called the M-1). The catalog mentioned that it was available in "a choice of colors" which was true, but those colors were limited to Natural Satin and Wine Red. The Marauder was Gibson's way of competing with the budget guitars of the time and they did it using such cost-cutting construction as electronics mounted on a pickguard and a bolt-on neck.
The first time the Marauder turns up in the KISS camp is for the so-called "white session" photo shoot on June 4, 1975. (As far as I have been able to find, before the April 1976 photo shoot KISS were only used in a Japanese Gibson ad.) For all intents and purposes the Gibson sponsorship was about catching a certain demographic—KISS was supposed to get kids playing guitar and the guitars KISS played were supposed to be inexpensive enough so that the kids could actually afford one. That's why Paul and Gene played truly inexpensive guitars for the first half of 1975. In fact, the Grabber Gene played during the spring of 1975 was even less expensive than the Marauder that Paul was smashing!
It wasn't until the success of Alive! and the decision to slightly upgrade the stage show that the Marauder was actually brought in the be smashed. According to Bill Aucoin, the Marauders that were smashed were defective, B-stock or just plain fakes. "It cost us $65 a piece. What they would do was, they would agree to take broken parts or whatever they had and make bodies. There were no real guts to it. Then we would saw the back of it [the neck] so it would break easy, because Paul couldn't break them." (Warman's Field Guide to KISS Collectibles, p. 499) If one only saw the backstage photos from Cobo Hall one might assume that was really the case. However...
The first documented smashing of a Marauder came at Cobo Hall in January during "Let Me Go, Rock 'n' Roll". Photos and some of the video from Detroit show a little wrinkle, something that would soon change: Paul actually plays a plugged-in Marauder during the song. You can see him play the Marauder in the encores from Detroit, and there are several photos that show the guitar plugged in. Years later he would deny it had ever happened: "Truly, the Marauder was the guitar that I broke on stage every night, I never played one live! They were horrible." (Vintage Guitar, March 1997) But the video and photo evidence is irrefutable. This was a short-lived solution and I can understand why, it had to have been cumbersome to unplug the guitar before smashing.
As the band's popularity rose Gibson were poised to take advantage. Remember, Gibson had gotten in "on the ground floor" in late 1974 when the band was still struggling and just barely selling records. Now, with Alive! literally flying off the shelves, the band ready to reveal a new look and a brand new, hopefully even more successful album, Gibson decided to get some added mileage out of the relationship. The April 9 "white session" with Barry Levine got turned into a 1976 advertisement for the Marauder Custom (which was a step up but still on the lower end of the price list).
1976 Gibson Marauder ad
Photo by Barry Levine
For the rest of the 70s the Marauder was just the sacrificial lamb that Paul (and Bill Aucoin) remembers. As fars as I've been able to tell there were no guitars smashed during the European Tour in May and June and by the time the Spirit of '76 Tour in support of Destroyer started the Marauder was no longer plugged in; Paul was just handed the guitar by a stage hand once it was time to smash it. (But we should note that the Marauder was still part of the backstage instrument lineup which seems odd if it was only for breaking.) Alas, the sawed-through neck to facilitate breaking seems to have been an afterthought. At the start of the summer tour 1976 the necks were really bad at breaking. In the photos below we can see that Paul had to resort to breaking the neck over his shoulders and it didn't go very well. At other, later, times there were instances where the body broke instead of the neck...
