CADILLAC, Mich, (WPBN/WGTU) — The Cadillac community takes center stage as it marks a 50th anniversary focused on the rock band KISS.

In the fall of 1975, the City of Cadillac made rock history, not with a concert, but with a high school football team and a visit from one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

It kicked off with a small-town high school football coach, a bold idea, and a little metal magic that would turn a losing streak into a legendary moment.

It all started a year prior in 1974 after Cadillac’s High School football team dropped two straight games.

Assistant coach and teacher Jim Neff believed music could change the mood, so he brought in a band most players hadn’t even heard of yet: KISS.

“So I said to our head coach Dave Brines, maybe if we play rock-and-roll in the locker room it will loosen the team up, and they could play to their capability, and sure enough, he said, ‘I don’t know anything about rock-and-roll, so you choose the band’. I chose KISS because in football parlance, it’s ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid,” explained former Assistant coach Jim Neff.

Neff had seen KISS in concert and knew their over-the-top energy might just be what the team needed.

It worked, Cadillac rattled off seven straight wins.

“I sent a letter to KISS management told them all was going on and I got a letter back from their manager and said he thought was a great idea and I was sitting in my easy chair one evening and I got a call from Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were backstage at a concert just a way to go on and they said This is really a lot of fun. It’s a great story Please let us know how the team does every week,” Neff explained.

Then came a moment no one in the town believed would actually happen, until it did.

Bill Barnett was on the Cadillac football team at the time.

“To see them here, and to see that in real life, was a moment in my life, and I’m sure many others that we will never forget. Our community, like many, was kind of split at the time, just with the trends and so forth in the ’70s but this pulled us all together. Every single person in this town was together and behind this eventually when it happened,” said Bill Barnett, former Cadillac High School football player.

Gene Simmons shared a special message for the Cadillac community:

In October 1975, KISS landed in Cadillac, literally, arriving by helicopter, dropping leaflets over the football field and performing a full concert in the high school gym.

For a moment, it felt like the center of the rock universe, and students experiencing it in real time said it was a moment they would never forget.

“Kiss was in the middle of it, walking around. Pictures were being taken, and he just looked over at me and he said, ‘can I wear your drum?’ Take it, you know? And he had it the whole time, when they flew off in the helicopter, and then they dropped all the flyers that said, Cadillac High School KISS Loves You. I mean, that touched my heart,” said Lynda McKinley-Young, band member from the class of ’77.

The football season that year ended with a winning record, but the real victory was the unity and pride it sparked in the town.

50 years later, the story of KISS in Cadillac still rocks.

Schedule of celebration: