Greg Kihn

Gregory Stanley Kihn (/ˈkɪn/; July 10, 1949 – August 13, 2024) was an American rock musician, radio personality, and novelist. He founded and led the Greg Kihn Band and he wrote several popular horror novels. He is best known for the hits "The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)" in 1981 and "Jeopardy" in 1983.

Kihn's early influence was the Beatles and their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. "Just about every rock and roll musician my age can point to one cultural event that inspired him to take up music in the first place: The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. If you were a shy 14-year-old kid who already had a guitar, it was a life-altering event… In a single weekend everything had changed. I'd come home from school the previous Friday looking like Dion. I went back to class on Monday morning with my hair dry and brushed forward. That's how quickly it happened."

Kihn began his career in his hometown of Baltimore, working in the singer/songwriter mold. But he switched to straightforward rock and roll when he moved to San Francisco in 1974. He started writing songs and playing coffee houses while still in high school in the Baltimore area. When Kihn was 17, his mother submitted a tape of one of his original songs to the talent contest of the big local Top 40 radio station, WCAO 600 AM. Kihn took first prize and won three things that would change his life: a typewriter, a stack of records, and a Vox electric guitar.

After his move to California, Kihn worked at painting houses, singing in the streets, and the behind the counter job at Berkeley record store Rather Ripped Records. His co-worker was future bandmate and Earth Quake guitarist Gary Phillips. The next year, Kihn became one of the first artists signed to Matthew King Kaufman's Beserkley Records. Along with Jonathan Richman, Earth Quake, and the Rubinoos, Kihn helped to carve the label's sound—melodic pop with a strong 1960s pop sensibility—an alternative to the progressive rock of the time.

In 1976, after his debut on the compilation album Beserkley Chartbusters, he recorded his first album with his own ensemble called the Greg Kihn Band. Through the 1970s, Kihn released an album each year and built a strong cult following through constant touring. The group consisted of Robbie Dunbar (guitar), Steve Wright (bass), and Larry Lynch (drums). Dunbar, already a member of Earth Quake, was replaced by Dave Carpender in time to record their second album, Greg Kihn Again. In 1979, Kihn released his cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Rendezvous", a song which didn't make the cut for Springsteen's "Darkness on the Edge of Town" LP. Springsteen had admired Kihn's distinctive recording of "For You" so much that he sought out Kihn after a concert and gave him a cassette with the "Rendezvous" outtake, the lyrics, and permission to record the song, which Kihn did on his LP With the Naked Eye.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.