The classic 1976 Kiss song that the band rejected: “The cock and balls master of the universe”
For every rock fan growing up in the 1970s, chances are they were into Kiss.
On the strength of their live album Alive, four maniacs from New York approached rock and roll like a twisted circus, each dressed in horrifying makeup and adopting different personas whenever they performed live. Though they may have wanted to shock the world, every rock band has a sensitive side, and ‘Beth’ is what brought Kiss to the top of the charts.
For a band whose entire identity revolved around pyrotechnics, theatrics and swaggering hard rock, a stripped-back ballad like ‘Beth’ felt almost unthinkable. Kiss had built their reputation on loud guitars and outrageous stage personas, so the idea that their biggest breakthrough would come from a piano-led love song seemed completely at odds with everything the group represented at the time.
Not everyone was sold on the hit when the band first played it, though. Originating with drummer Peter Criss, the song was a folk tune he wrote for his girlfriend, talking about a man having to go back on the road and leave his girl behind under the title ‘Beck’. No ballad would get past Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, though, so Criss increased the tempo to where they approved.
When the band started working on their follow-up album, Destroyer, they chose to work with Bob Ezrin, who had previously helmed albums for Alice Cooper and would go on to work with Pink Floyd on The Wall. After combing through everyone’s material, Criss mentioned Ezrin wanting to slow it down, telling Metal Evolution: “When I played it for Bobby, he said, ‘Oh, I hear it much slower.'”
What Ezrin heard in his mind was a lush ballad, adding different textures to the tune after asking Criss if he could go home and play around with the melody. While the song may have turned out well on Ezrin’s piano, he admitted having an uphill battle ahead of him, saying, “I heard a lush ballad. Now I have to sell Kiss, the cock and balls master of the universe, the idea of doing a song with a piano and an orchestra.”
Criss even admitted that the recording was rough-going, as Simmons and Stanley constantly teased Criss in the vocal booth until Ezrin threw them out of the studio. Despite their work, the group still didn’t have faith in ‘Beth’, only throwing it on the B-side to ‘Detroit Rock City’, which they intended to be the real selling point.
After flipping the single over one day, the US became hooked on the soft song about Criss missing his lover back home, delivered with the same rasp found in Rod Stewart’s best work. The song would become the prototype for the power ballad in hair metal, with most rock stars using these slow songs to get more in tune with their feelings.
The song’s success was immediate and undeniable. ‘Beth’ climbed to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned Kiss a People’s Choice Award, becoming the band’s biggest mainstream hit. For many listeners who might have been intimidated by the band’s explosive image, the track offered a surprisingly vulnerable entry point into their music.
Kiss also noticed a demographic change at their shows, with the slew of teenage boys being replaced by women in the audience. The attention also became a double-edged sword, with Stanley and Simmons trying to recapture the magic in the next few years by riding genre trends like disco on ‘I Was Made For Lovin You’.
For the rest of Criss’s tenure in the band, the ballads would usually fall on him, eventually singing the folk-tinged sequel to his biggest hit, ‘Hard Luck Woman’. Kiss could go their entire career trying to make lightning strike the same place twice, but ‘Beth’ is the kind of song that only comes once in a career.
