Peter Criss — American drummer, born in Brooklyn in 1945 — was Kiss's original drummer and, curiously, the author of the most improbable song in the band's catalogue. His character was the Catman, and his musical grounding came from somewhere other than his colleagues': Criss played with jazz and rhythm and blues influence, and that origin is audible in the swing he gives tracks like Deuce and Strutter. In a band presenting itself as a pyrotechnic spectacle, he was the member with the most traditional rhythmic vocabulary. In 1976 he sang and co-wrote Beth — a ballad with orchestra and no guitars, on a hard rock record called Destroyer. It became Kiss's biggest US radio hit and won the band a People's Choice award. Nothing in the band's look prepared anyone for that. Criss left Kiss in 1980, returned for the classic line-up's 1996 reunion and took part in the tours that followed into the early 2000s. He is the member whose contribution fits the group's public image least — and perhaps, for that very reason, the one who most shows there were musicians behind the masks.
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