10. February, 1977: “Beth” wins the People’s Choice Award for Best Song of 1976

On 10. February, 1977, “Beth” won the People’s Choice Award for Best Song of 1976. Kiss were on tour and thus not able to receive the award, so Peter’s wife Lydia Criss went to accept it and held a speech in place for the band. The People’s Choice Awards is an American awards show, recognizing people in entertainment, voted online by the general public and fans. The show has been held annually since 1975, with the winners originally determined using Gallup Polls until a switch to online voting in 2005.

Lydia Criss
“On January 28, the night of the second Cobo show, Bill Aucoin informed the band that they had won The People’s Choice Award for the Favorite New Song of 1976. The band was really excited as this was the first time they were going to be on an award show. Unfortunately, Bill also told them that they couldn’t accept the award themselves. For one, they were already performing elsewhere and couldn’t cancel the show. Secondly, they could only appear if they wore their makeup which would prevent them from sitting in the audience. The People’s Choice Awards were one of the only award shows that let you know beforehand if you’d won or not. It would look pretty stupid if KISS just happened to be sitting in the audience in full costume and makeup, and then had to act surprised that they won. KISS decided to tape a small acceptance speech during the show, in front of the Detroit audience, thanking the fans for the award. This was to be aired just after their name was announced as the winners.

Bill Aucoin, Gene, Peter, and I were sitting around after the Detroit gig talking about what a shame it was that they couldn’t even accept their first award. I jokingly said that I would be willing to go on the show and accept the award for “Beth” considering that the song was rewritten for me. With a slight hesitation, Gene Simmons looked at me and said, “Okay.” I thought I was hearing things. I was numb. It was only 10 days before the show. What was I to wear? How should I do my hair? What should I say? All these questions raced through my head, but the most important one was, how was I going to lose enough weight to compensate for the 10 pounds that television puts on you. I had my hands full.

I was about to start talking when I could hear Paul Stanley’s voice in the faint distance. It dawned on me that they were playing some of “Beth” and the acceptance speech that KISS had prerecorded in Detroit, two weeks earlier. Luckily, I realized this and I waited until I could no longer hear Paul’s voice. I started my speech, stumbled a little, but managed to complete it without making a complete fool of myself. Because I walked up to the stage a little early, Dick Van Dyke didn’t have the chance to announce me, so no one knew who I was. When I finished my acceptance speech, Dick Van Dyke calmly improvised and said, “By the way that was the Beth for whom the song was written, the wife of the drummer, Mrs. Peter Criss.” I wasn’t sitting near Alan Miller, but I’m sure he almost had a heart attack because Dick Van Dyke wasn’t supposed to mention that I was Peter’s wife. Well, if anyone didn’t know before then that Peter was married, they surely did now. Too bad!”
– “Sealed With A Kiss” by Lydia Criss

James Campion
“On February 10, 1977, “Beth” won the People’s Choice Award for Best Song of 1976, edging out a pair “joke songs” about animals, “Disco Duck” and “Muskrat Love.” Introduced by 1950s television icon Dick Van Dyke, dressed nattily in a tux and calling KISS a “musical revolution,” the band performed the song in a live taping in Chicago. Adding “Beth” to the band’s shows was something that had become unavoidable once the song dominated the airwaves. Peter Criss would sit alone on a stool at center stage, a single spotlight on him, singing to a backing track of the orchestral recording of January 13—Bob Ezrin’s piano accompanied by the conducting of Allan Macmillan blaring over the deafening P.A. After that, another 1960s television icon, Goldie Hawn, joined the stage and called the music of 1976 “frenetic, dissident, and cacophonous,” playfully butchering her pronunciation of the last word. She then presented the award, giggling as if completely baffled by the absurdity of this harlequin freak show winning an award for a lovelorn ballad. Lydia Criss, looking quite “Hollywood” in a black dress but conspicuous by her thick Noo Yawk accent, accepted the award for the band and her husband by nervously stating that her love of the song was not only due to it expressing how Peter felt about her, “but how every man feels when he’s away from the woman he loves.” Somewhere Bob Ezrin, now estranged from the KISS inner sanctum, smiled triumphantly, his job accomplished.”
– “Shout It Out Loud, The Story of Kiss’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon” by James Campion

Peter Criss:
“It was time to release another single from the album to stoke up sales, and I pushed for “Beth.” Gene and Paul agreed, but made sure that it wound up on the B-side of the single, with “Detroit Rock City,” one of Paul’s songs, featured on the A-side. But Scott Shannon, who was working in the promotion department of Casablanca (and who would go on to become a famous disc jockey), loved the song and urged a deejay in Atlanta to flip the single over and play “Beth.” The reaction was immediate and overwhelming. “Beth” became our highest-charting single ever. It revived the album’s sales and it won many awards, including a People’s Choice award. It even got played on easy-listening stations. One day | was channel surfing and “Beth” was playing on three different stations simultaneously.

Suddenly we were getting awards, too. In 1976 and 1977 I won the Circus magazine Drummer of the Year award. The first year I gave my award to Lydia. The next year Belushi got it. But the award that was dearest to my heart was the People’s Choice Award for “Beth.” Of course, we were touring at the time, but the guys let Lydia fly out to L.A. and accept it for us on the telecast. They had hooked up a satellite link to where we were, and even though we knew we had won, Bill told us to act surprised. After we waved at the camera, Lydia was brought onstage in L.A. and she picked up the actual hardware.”
– “Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss” by Peter Criss

Paul Stanley:
“Peter can’t write a song, because Peter doesn’t play an instrument,” Stanley told Rolling Stone. “Penridge came up with [sings], ‘Beth, I hear you calling…’ 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.”

The original song
The song was originally recorded as “Beck” by Peter Criss and his former band Chelsea – and to this day Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons are certain that it was Stan Penridge who really wrote the song.