The most successful single of the Kiss was a B Side

THE Kissstrange to say their great success, they never had a song that reached the first five positions of the US sales charts. Their single with the highest placement in the stars and stripes chart was a side B entitled “Beth”. This is the story of how “Beth” it became a success.

“Beth” He was written and sung by the drummer Peter Criss – somewhat rare event in the band’s production – and dates back to the period in which he played in Chelseagroup of which he was part before entering the Kiss. The song, a ballad, was very different from the songs for which the group of Simmons Gene And Paul Stanleyputting their record label in difficulty that did not know exactly how to promote the song.

Voices circulated on alleged boycott attempts by the president of the label, Casablanca, to undermine the possibilities that the song could become a successful single. If we want to give credit to these voices it seems that someone claimed that to the president of Casablanca, Neil Bogarthe didn’t like the song because he had an ex -wife named Beth. However, in the end “Beth” was published as side B of “Detroit Rock City”third single of the fourth album of 1976 of Kiss “Destroyer”.

As reported by Ultimate Guitar,
“Detroit Rock City”
it was undoubtedly a song much closer to the musical style of the
Kiss
but
“Beth”
He passed it in the standings and ended up becoming the fourth and last single extracted from the album. It happened that the label sent
“Detroit Rock City”
at radio stations, but many of these turned the disc and transmitted
“Beth”
.

The most striking example of what happened on the radio concerns Windsor’s CKLW, in Canada, a city just beyond the river compared to Detroit. The daughter of
Rosalie Trombley
the musical director of the station, owned a copy of
“Detroit Rock
City “
but he preferred to this
“Beth”
And he convinced the mother to add it to the CKLW playlist. The influence of that radio programming was such that, after the song became a hit, i
Kiss
They handed over a gold disc to the trombley.

The secret of the success of the song was essentially in the fact that
“Beth”
It was a languid ballad and then he also managed to reach the audience who did not follow the rock, but had more mainstream musical tastes.