Tommy Thayer was born in Portland, Oregon, on November 7, 1960. Long before he wore the Spaceman makeup as lead guitarist for KISS, he was writing songs with singer Jaime St. James and trying them out in Portland clubs. The two founded Black ’N Blue, made four albums and, decades later, got back in a room to see if they could still write together. “Bombshell” was one of the songs they came out with.
Thayer could pick St. James out of a crowd before they’d even met. They went to some of the same concerts, but one sighting stuck with both of them. As they told Oregon Public Broadcasting, their high school marching bands were in Portland’s Rose Festival parade. Thayer remembered the hair. St. James remembered the tall, fuzzy hats. A mutual friend introduced them, and after graduating in 1978, they started playing and writing together.
Cover tunes got them booked. By the time they formed Black ’N Blue in 1981, they wanted to find out what their own songs could do. Portland club audiences heard “Hold On to 18” before the band had a record deal. After several trips south to play Los Angeles, Black ’N Blue moved there in early 1983. Geffen signed them that summer, and the song they’d been playing back home made their self-titled debut in 1984.
Opening for KISS in 1985 put Thayer on the road with one of the bands he’d grown up listening to. Black ’N Blue asked bassist Gene Simmons to produce their next album. He ended up producing two, and he invited Thayer to work on KISS demos with him. By the time the original KISS lineup reunited for its 1996 tour, Thayer knew the old records well enough to take on an unusual rehearsal assignment. He would come in early with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss to run through parts they hadn’t played together in years. In Thayer’s telling, the pleasure of the job was simple. He got to jam with Ace and Peter.
Thayer first performed in the Spaceman makeup at a private KISS show in Jamaica in 2002. Making the band’s 2009 album Sonic Boom called on another part of his playing. He and Paul Stanley traded riffs at Stanley’s house, then worked out how two rhythm guitars could play off each other once the band went into the studio. They cut the basic tracks together without a click. For “When Lightning Strikes,” Thayer also took the lead vocal. He told Premier Guitar it took him about 20 minutes to record.
When Thayer and St. James got together again, the plan was to revisit unfinished material. Then St. James asked if he could play a couple of new ideas. By the end of the evening, Thayer wanted to make a new record. In early 2025 they worked out tempos and arrangements in a Las Vegas rehearsal room so they could walk into producer Rob Daiker’s Portland studio ready to play. St. James, the voice of Black ’N Blue, sat down at the drums. With Thayer on guitar, they cut the basic tracks for the first five songs on Bombshell in about four hours.
The sixth came from an unexpected request. The Czech band Turbo had asked them to write a song, and while staying at Thayer’s place in Cannon Beach, St. James played him the idea for “Time of My Life.” They finished the arrangement there and drove back to Portland to cut a demo for Turbo. As Thayer told ClassicRockHistory.com, they liked the recording enough to finish it for their own record, too.
