Gene Simmons Reopens The Fight Over Who Really Wrote KISS Classic ‘Beth’

For a band built on spectacle, excess, and myth making, it’s fitting that KISS’s biggest U.S. hit is also its most disputed.

Nearly 50 years after ‘Beth’ climbed to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, Gene Simmons is once again challenging the story behind the song and the role drummer Peter Criss played in its creation.

In a new interview with Professor Of Rock, Simmons pushed back hard on Criss’s long standing claim that he co wrote the 1976 ballad, despite being listed as a co writer alongside the late Stan Penridge and producer Bob Ezrin.

“The history of ‘Beth’ is that Peter and I were in one limo,” Simmons said, recalling a drive through Michigan when Criss hummed an early version of the song, then titled ‘Beck’.

“I said to him, ‘Why don’t you bring up that song? By the way, what are the chords to that?’ He goes, ‘I don’t know.’”

Simmons claims the song’s evolution, including changing ‘Beck’ to ‘Beth’, came from suggestions outside of Criss, with Ezrin ultimately transforming it into the orchestral ballad heard on Destroyer.

Controversial take

Then Simmons delivered his most controversial take:

“Okay, children, now that you’ve all grown up, it’s time for the truth,” he said. “Peter does not write songs. He doesn’t play a musical instrument. Drums are not a musical instrument, by definition.”

According to Simmons, the real author of ‘Beth’ was Penridge, who previously played with Criss in CHELSEA.

Simmons also credited Ezrin’s arrangement, noting it was modeled after The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’.

This isn’t the first time the claim has surfaced, in 2014, Paul Stanley echoed the sentiment, telling Rolling Stone that Criss ‘had nothing to do with it.‘

Criss didn’t take that lightly, responding: “Paul is so full of f**king shit.”

Penridge himself addressed the issue back in 2000, stating plainly: “[Peter was] absolutely not responsible [for it] at all.”

For a song that barely resembles classic KISS bombast, ‘Beth’ has left a lasting scar, not just on the charts, but inside the band’s own history.