“Beth” reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the People’s Choice Award for favorite New Song of 1976.
But in a January 2026 interview with the Professor of Rock podcast, KISS co-founder Gene Simmons downplayed Criss’s involvement with the hit song.
“I thought that was peculiar,” Simmons added. "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. ... And 'Beth' is a much more romantic idea."
“It's time for the truth,” Simmons shared. “Peter does not write songs. He doesn't play a musical instrument. Drums are not a musical instrument, by definition. …As far as I know, Peter plays no other instruments that I've ever seen. Not keyboards, six-string instruments. Peter's got a great whiskey voice in the early days."
“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,’” Simmons claimed. “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 because it's public domain. I believe it was a Mozart piano concerto. And that is the story behind 'Beth.'"
Simmons isn’t the first KISS band member to question Criss’s involvement with writing “Beth.” In a past interview with Rolling Stone, lead singer Paul Stanley also claimed Criss couldn’t have written the song.
Criss hit back to allege that Stanley was just mad that “as a lead singer of the band, he never got to write the hit.” “They hated the fact that I wrote a hit record and won a People's Choice,” Criss told the outlet of his KISS bandmates.
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