Gregory Stanley "Greg" Kihn (born July 10, 1949) is an American rock musician, radio personality, and novelist.
Greg 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, MD, working in the singer/songwriter mold, but switched to straightforward rock & roll when he moved to San Francisco in 1972.
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, in which he took first prize and won three things that would change his life: a typewriter, a stack of records, and a Vox electric guitar.
Greg Kihn is the debut album of singer/songwriter Greg Kihn. It was released by Beserkley in 1976.
The cover photo portreys Kihn as a working class man and was shot in front of Rather Ripped Records in Berkeley where he worked at the time, with future Greg Kihn Band keyboard player Gary Phillips.