In a new conversation with Billboard, original KISS drummer Peter Criss pushed back against Gene Simmons, responding to the bassist/vocalist’s claim that Criss “had nothing to do” with the songwriting for the band’s 1976 hit “Beth.”
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.
In a recent interview with “Professor Of Rock,” Simmons said:
“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‘]. 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.’”
Simmons then took aim at Criss‘ songwriting abilities.
“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.”
“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 further identified Stan Penridge as the true architect of the song, 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‘.”
Now, contacted by Billboard, Criss explained that in Simmons‘ description of the “Beth” creative process is “not correct.”
“Gene wouldn’t know how the song was originally written because Gene wasn’t there from the conception of the song in the late ’60s and he wasn’t there for the completion of the song with Bob Ezrin,” Criss told Billboard. “Gene‘s statements are ridiculous and very uncalled for; he talks about things that he doesn’t know about.
“What Gene‘s getting wrong is that as the singing songwriter, I wrote the melody and creating the phrasing for the song that’s on the original demo ‘Beck’ with Stan Penridge. Out of Stan‘s little black book what remained on the reworked version of ‘Beth’ is Stan‘s original verse and chorus, and my core melody remains on the reworked composition. The core melody was expanded with Bob‘s orchestration symphony and musical genius. Bob and I sat at the piano at the Record Plant studio working out the song. Bob Ezrin changed the tempo and made it slower, and I worked on changing some of the second verse and the phrasing with the slower tempo.”
Criss added: “Bob Ezrin changed the title from ‘Beck’ to ‘Beth’ — not Gene or anybody else. It was Bob Ezrin; He asked me, ‘Peter, do you mind if we change the title?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not. ‘Beth’ is much better.’ Bob took the song home and fixed the rest of the lyrics and the structure of the song. He added piano, some time changes and the incredible orchestra composition which elevated the song beyond my wildest my dreams. It was mind-blowing.”
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.
