In 1976, KISS released what would become their biggest hit song, “Beth.” The power rock ballad appeared on the glam band's fourth studio album, Destroyer, and started as the B-side to “Detroit Rock City.” In a rare move, the vocals were performed by drummer Peter Criss, who was credited as a co-writer on the song alongside Bob Ezrin and Stan Penrdige.
“Beth” reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the People’s Choice Award for favorite New Song of 1976.
In a post on his official website, Criss, 80, has touted "Beth” as “KISS' biggest hit.” He added that the People’s Choice honor was his “favorite award, because you, the people, voted,” and said he’s even prouder of the song decades later than he was in 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.
“The history of ‘Beth’ is that Peter and I were in a limo, and he starts humming,” Simmons recalled. “I'm, like, ‘That's a nice melody. What is that?’ He goes, ‘Oh, it's a song I wrote called ‘Beck.’ Because we had started working with Bob Ezrin, I said, ‘Why don't you bring up that song? By the way, what are the chords to that?’ He goes, ‘I don't know.’”
“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."
Simmons then said that while Criss would always be “family,” he wanted to set the record straight on the history of the classic rock song.
“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 person who wrote 'Beth' … is a guy named Stan Penridge," Simmons explained. "Stan Penridge was with Peter in a group called Chelsea. They had a record out, actually. I think it was on MCA. So Peter did not write 'Beth.' 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, Bob Ezrin, Stan Penridge, or the other way around. But Peter's first. Peter had nothing to do with that song. He sang it."
“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.'"
Penridge died in 2001, per Noise 11.
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.
“[Stan] Penridge came up with 'Beth, I hear you calling,’” Stanley said in 2014. "Peter had nothing to do with it, because if you write one hit song, you should be able to write two. That's the reality. Devastating? It's the truth. It was a lifeline that Peter hung on to validate himself, but it wasn't based on reality."
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.
In an interview with Chron, Criss said the band "hated" "Beth” when he first brought it to them during the recording sessions for Destroyer. "[They said] 'This ain't Kiss. We're about leather and studs and ripping your head off and chasing around millions of women,'" Criss said of the ballad. "Well, it sure got us on the radio!”
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