Early Years
Of Italian-American descent, Criss is the oldest of the five children of Joseph and Loretta Criscuola; he grew up in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. He was a childhood friend of Jerry Nolan, who would later find success as the drummer for the New York Dolls.
He was an avid art student and a jazz aficionado. While playing with bandleader Joey Greco, Criss ended up studying under his idol, Gene Krupa, at the Metropole Club in New York. This blossomed into an active musical career as he went on to play jazz and rock with a number of bands in New York and New Jersey throughout the 1960s.
Read more about this topic: Peter Criss
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)