The origins of
Alive II go back to early 1977 when the band's manager
Bill Aucoin suggested that Eddie Kramer record a live album during the evening show at
Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Japan on April 2, 1977. The plan was to release a live album to give Kiss some time off before recording the album that would become
Love Gun later that autumn. Kramer finished work on the album, but Casablanca and Kiss deemed it unusable, and the band forged ahead with their
Love Gun sessions. Most of the live tracks on
Alive II were recorded during the band's August 26–28 shows at the
Forum while on their
Love Gun Tour. The 3 p.m. soundchecks at the August 26 and 27 shows were recorded and later used on the album (i.e. "Tomorrow and Tonight" with crowd noise being dubbed in later). "
Beth" and "I Want You" were lifted from the unused Japanese live recordings and repurposed for the finished album. As the band did not want to duplicate songs included on
Alive!, the songs chosen for the three live sides of the album were all drawn from Kiss' three preceding studio albums:
Destroyer,
Rock and Roll Over, and
Love Gun. The new songs on side 4 (tracks 6–10 on the second CD of the reissue) are tracks recorded live without an audience at
Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, and overdubbed and mixed at
Electric Lady Studios in New York City on September 13–16, 1977. Although
Ace Frehley was originally credited for lead guitar on the studio tracks, later sources confirmed that
Bob Kulick played lead guitar on the tracks "All American Man", "Rockin' in the U.S.A.", and "Larger Than Life", with
Paul Stanley playing all guitars on the cover "
Any Way You Want It". Frehley's sole involvement for the studio songs was "
Rocket Ride" (originally written for his solo album), on which he sang lead vocals and played both guitar and bass guitar. "Rockin' in the U.S.A." had references to both the previous year's Spirit of 76 European Tour and to that spring's debut in Japan. Several early copies of the album's cover featured a rare misprint of three additional songs ("Take Me", "Hooligan", and "Do You Love Me?") with a slightly altered song order. None of these additional songs appeared on the LP. On the misprint, "Take Me" is after "
Detroit Rock City", with "King of the Night Time World" appearing after "Ladies Room" on side one. Side two features "Hooligan" after "
Shock Me", which is placed after "Hard Luck Woman". On side three, "Do You Love Me?" appears after "God of Thunder", with "Beth" between "I Want You" and "
Shout It Out Loud". ==Promotional items==