Peter Criss has fired back at Gene Simmons for making the “ridiculous” accusation that Criss had had nothing to do with writing the band’s hit song “Beth.”
Earlier this month, Simmons declared that his fellow founding Kiss bandmate did not deserve a writing credit on the Criss-sung Destroyer ballad, instead insisting that Criss’ pre-Kiss bandmate Stan Penridge wrote the song.
“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,” Simmons alleged. “It appears first. Peter Criss, (Destroyer producer) Bob Ezrin, Stan Penridge, or the other way around. But Peter’s first. Peter had nothing to do with that song. He sang it.”
“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 countered in a new interview with Billboard. “Gene’s statements are ridiculous and very uncalled for; he talks about things that he doesn’t know about.”
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Criss continued by explaining how the song evolved over time from a more upbeat rock song to the orchestra-backed ballad that reached the Top 10 on the singles charts in 1976. “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,” Criss explained. “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.”
Ezrin also weighed in during the same Billboard story, saying that his memory of the process didn’t exactly line up with Simmons’ version, and agreeing with Criss about his own role in shaping the song. “(‘Beth’) was a bit rockier and more macho (at first). I felt it had potential, so I asked to take it home and play with it a bit. I did slow it down, as Gene says, and I created that piano part but also (made it) more vulnerable and sensitive. …From what I was told, the original song was written by Criss and Penridge.”
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