For half a century, the ballad “Beth” has stood as an outlier in the KISS catalog—a tender, orchestral departure from their hard rock anthems that became their highest-charting single in the United States. For just as long, the narrative has been that original drummer Peter Criss co-wrote the emotional track, earning him a People’s Choice Award and a permanent spot in songwriting lore. However, in a blistering new interview with “Professor Of Rock,” bassist Gene Simmons has moved to dismantle that history, alleging that the “Catman” had virtually zero involvement in the song’s actual creation.
While Criss is officially credited alongside his former Chelsea bandmate Stan Penridge and producer Bob Ezrin, Simmons insists that this credit was the result of “politics” rather than musical contribution.
According to Simmons, his first exposure to the song occurred during a car ride through Michigan in the mid-70s. It was here that he claims he not only discovered the melody but also instigated the crucial title change that saved the song’s flow.
“The history of ‘Beth‘ is that Peter and I were in one limo, and Ace [Frehley, original KISS guitarist] and Paul [Stanley, KISS guitarist/vocalist] were in another, and we were going from Flint, Michigan to a little place called Cadillac, Michigan, which is a few hundred miles from Detroit… So, in the limo, Peter starts humming [the beginning of what became ‘Beth‘],” Simmons recounted (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “I’m, like, ‘What is that? That’s a nice melody. What is that?’ He goes, ‘Oh, it’s a song I wrote called ‘Beck‘.’ B-E-C-K. ‘So how’s it go?’ ‘Beck, I hear you calling,’ and so on and so forth.”
Simmons noted that when he pressed for musical details, the drummer came up short.
“And I remember at the time, I said to him, because we had started working with Bob Ezrin, ‘Why don’t you bring up that song? By the way, what are the chords to that?’ He goes, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Oh.’ I thought that was peculiar. So, Peter had a tape of it. He brought it up to Ezrin. But before then, I suggested in the car, ‘Why don’t you change it to ‘Beth‘, because when you say ‘Beck‘, that hard syllable stops the melody. ‘Beck, I hear you… Beck, I hear you…’ There’s a ‘ck’ [sound] in there that it’s not smooth. ‘Beth‘ is a much smoother way. And ‘Beth‘ is a much more romantic idea.”
He also offered a cynical interpretation of the lyrics, viewing them less as a love song and more as a declaration of priorities.
“Actually, the lyrics are very clever. It’s about guys in a band rehearsing and the girlfriend bugs the guy, ‘Hey, when are you coming home?’ And he says to her, ‘I’m not coming home anytime soon, ’cause me and the boys are gonna be playing all night.’ You know, almost like, ‘What’s more important? Your band or me?’ ‘Actually, b**ch, it’s the band. You’re not gonna change my life. They will.'”
The interview took a somber but pointed turn as Simmons prefaced his takedown of Criss‘ songwriting abilities by acknowledging their lifelong, albeit complex, bond—a bond recently reinforced by tragedy.
“Okay, children, now that you’ve all grown up, it’s time for the truth. Statement of fact: I love Peter. We all do. Families are complex. I don’t know of any family that doesn’t argue or get angry with each other and sometimes don’t speak with each other for sometimes decades and then get back together. ‘Cause family is family. Peter is always family. And sadly we saw Peter at Ace’s funeral [last October]. And we reminisced in between the sorrow and the pain — ‘remember when’ and all that. But it’s time for the truth.”
That “truth,” according to Simmons, is that drums are not conducive to songwriting, and Criss lacked the instrumental proficiency to compose.
“Peter does not write songs. He doesn’t play a musical instrument. Drums are not a musical instrument, by definition. They’re called a percussive instrument. Really important — sometimes extremely important in a band. It was for us. But you cannot play a drum fill that can be copywritten [sic], but you can come up with a riff that you can own and a melody and a lyric. Those can be copywritten [sic], but nothing you do on drums will prevent anybody else from directly copying whatever you did and applying it to another song. Okay, that’s number one. Number two, as far as I know, Peter plays no other instruments that I’ve ever seen. Not keyboards, six-instruments at all. Peter‘s got a great whiskey voice in the early days.”
Simmons went on to identify Stan Penridge as the true architect of the track, suggesting that Criss‘s name on the credits was a negotiated favor rather than a reflection of creative input.
“The person who wrote ‘Beth‘ and ‘Baby Driver‘ and one or two more was a guy named Stan Penridge. Stan Penridge was with Peter in a group called Chelsea. They had a record out, actually, I think it was on the MCA. So, Peter did not write ‘Beth‘. And he did not write ‘Baby Driver‘. Stan Penridge wrote that. But through politics and — hint, hint, nudge, nudge — and I wasn’t there when the conversation went down, Stan Penridge apparently agreed that Peter‘s name would go in the songwriting credit. It appears first — Peter Criss, Stan Penridge… Or Peter Criss, Bob Ezrin, Stan Penridge, or the other way around. But Peter‘s first. Peter had nothing to do with that song — nothing. He sang it.”
Simmons concluded by crediting producer Bob Ezrin for transforming the track into the classic ballad fans know today, noting that the arrangement drew heavily from classical music.
“And to fix all the mythology and the gossip and the outright lies, it was Bob Ezrin who said, ‘I wanna do this like [The Beatles‘] ‘Yesterday‘,’ more like a string quartet and piano. So more acoustically, because the melody in the song demanded it. And we’d never done that. We never thought we’d be doing a song like that, but we all went, ‘Sure.’ So, the mythology of ‘Beth‘ is exactly that: mythology. The real story is Peter was lucky enough to be in the same place at the same time as a guy who wrote a song called ‘Beth‘, and then Bob Ezrin, when he heard the song, went home before it was recorded, and then Bob added the middle section of the piano, which was taken legally, as it’s public domain. I believe it was a Mozart piano concerto. And that is the story behind ‘Beth‘.”
