Peter Criss recalls KISS Unplugged reunion that sparked 1996 comeback

Peter Criss is revisiting the KISS moment that turned old chemistry into a full-scale comeback, and the stakes now look even bigger in hindsight. In a new interview with Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF, the original drummer reflected on the band’s August 9, 1995 MTV Unplugged taping at Sony Music Studios in New York City, the night he and Ace Frehley helped set the stage for KISS’s massive 1996 reunion tour.

That taping was no ordinary nostalgia detour. It brought together Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, Peter Criss, Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer, and it produced the first and only time the original KISS lineup performed publicly without makeup. The set closed with an all-four-original-members version of Rock and Roll All Nite, a finish that gave fans a real glimpse of what had been missing and what might come next. Criss later described the experience as feeling like time had stopped, a reaction that fits a night when the band’s past, present and future collided in front of a live audience.

The timing mattered. By 1995, KISS was playing relatively small crowds at fan conventions, and its 1992 album Revenge had not connected broadly. Criss and Frehley had both been away from the group for about 15 years by the time the reunion was formally announced, but the Unplugged taping showed there was still commercial power in the original lineup and still real demand for it.

The payoff arrived on April 16, 1996, when KISS announced the reunion tour aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid in New York City. Conan O’Brien introduced the band at the media event, and the move confirmed that the Unplugged appearance had done more than stir memory. It had helped turn a possibility into a plan.

The Alive/Worldwide Tour, also called the Reunion Tour, launched in Detroit on June 28, 1996. Rolling Stone noted that the trek was built entirely around KISS’s Seventies repertoire, with no post-Criss/Frehley material on the set list. Billboard later counted the 1996 run among the year’s top tours, underscoring how quickly the reunion translated into arena-scale momentum.

For drumming fans, Criss’s return was never just about one more seat behind the kit. It marked the moment when a classic rock mythology reassembled in real time, and when a single television taping became the spark for one of the most visible comebacks in hard rock history.