Creativity Quote by Peter Criss

Control is the rock-star mirage that turns into a survival skill once the hangover wears off. In Peter Criss's blunt before-and-after, you can hear a guy talking less about power than about damage control: the difference between steering the machine and being dragged by it.

The line works because it sounds almost comically simple, like something you’d say to a worried friend, yet it carries the weight of a whole era of excess. For Criss, a founding member of KISS, "then" isn’t just an earlier chapter; it’s the classic rock narrative when the band’s brand got bigger than the band’s judgment. KISS was always about spectacle and discipline onstage, but offstage the mythology of unlimited access (substances, egos, money, fame) turns "freedom" into a kind of unmanaged liability. Saying "we're really in control" is both reassurance and revision: a way to reclaim the story from tabloid chaos, internal fractures, and the sense that outside forces (managers, labels, addiction, the persona) were calling the shots.

There’s also a subtle group therapy dynamic in the "we". It spreads responsibility and redemption across the whole enterprise, implying maturity without naming specific sins. The repetition of "control" does the rhetorical work: it’s not poetic, it’s managerial. That’s the point. Rock mythology sells the idea of losing control as authenticity; Criss flips it, insisting the real flex is staying functional long enough to keep playing.