Face the Music
Paul Stanley
The Starchild's side of the same story. Reading it after Criss's account shows how differently two bandmates remember the makeup years, the lineup changes and the reunion tours.
11 books to read next
Books Like Makeup to Breakup
If you loved Makeup to Breakup by Peter Criss
Readers love Makeup to Breakup for its raw, unfiltered voice: Peter Criss tells his story like a Brooklyn guy at the bar, mixing outrageous 1970s tour excess with frank talk about addiction, failed marriages, depression and breast cancer. Fans get a drummer's-eye view of KISS at its peak, plenty of grudges against bandmates, and a surprisingly tender thread about family and faith. It is a gritty, confessional rise-fall-and-survival story rather than a polished band history.
The other KISS memoirs
No regrets
Ace Frehley
The Spaceman's memoir shares Criss's candour about drugs, drinking and feeling sidelined in KISS, told with the same loose, streetwise humour.
Kiss and make-up
Simmons, Gene
The Demon's version of the band's rise is brash and businesslike, a sharp contrast to Criss's emotional telling and a must for anyone weighing both sides.
Drummers behind the kit
Moon
Fletcher, Tony.
Keith Moon's biography captures the wildest drummer in rock, with the same mix of brilliance, excess and self-destruction that runs through Criss's darkest chapters.
The Storyteller
Dave Grohl
A drummer's warm memoir about growing up obsessed with music, with the same heartfelt focus on family, especially his mother, that Criss brings to his story.
Seventies rock excess
The dirt
Mötley Crüe (Musical group), Tommy Lee
If Criss's tales of tour debauchery hooked you, this band oral history goes even further into the sex, drugs and fistfights of hard rock's glory days.
Hammer of the Gods
Stephen Davis
The classic account of Led Zeppelin's touring excess, capturing the arena-rock decadence of the same era in which KISS rose to the top.
Walk this way
Stephen Davis, Aerosmith
Aerosmith's oral history mirrors KISS's arc: seventies hard rock stardom, addiction, band breakups and a reunion, told in blunt, competing voices.
Survival and second chances
Life
Keith Richards, James Fox
A rock survivor looks back on decades of addiction and friction with bandmates in a candid, conversational voice that fans of Criss's storytelling will enjoy.
Scar Tissue
Anthony Kiedis
Brutally honest about relapse and recovery, it matches the confessional tone of Criss's chapters on drugs, rehab and near-suicide.
I Am Ozzy
Ozzy Osbourne
Funny and self-deprecating about a life of excess, firings and survival, with the same working-class roots and late-life focus on family that Criss describes.
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