RECKIHNING & ROLLING WITH GREG KIHN!

RECKIHNING & ROLLING WITH GREG KIHN!

FEATURES

Jeff Tamarkin

Even if you’ve never heard Greg Kihn’s music, you probably know who he is—he’s the character who comes up with dumb puns on his own name for most of his album titles. Let’s see, so far there’s been Next Of Kihn, Rockihnroll, Kihntinued, Kihnspiracy, and the latest, Kihntagious. What’s next? Workihn In A Coal Mine? How long Kihn this go on?

Kihntrol yourself, because it seems that the California rocker is a victim of cirkihnstance. “I always hate the titles,” kihnfesses Greg. (OK, we’ll stop, put away the torture devices.) “What happened this time is that I went to Paris after I finished the record. While I was away someone came up with the title Kihntagious and I wasn’t around to veto it. When I came back I made a sour face, but this is the third time it’s happened and every time it’s happened before, the record has been successful. So I should always hate the titles and they should always keep coming up with them. I think that’s what God intends. The formula works great so I shouldn’t fuck with it, right?”

Right-e-o, Felix, especially since it took Kihn six albums to have a hit record (“The Breakup Song”) and eight to find his way to the top (“Jeopardy,” which made it to number two). But even though Kihn sticks to a proven formula when naming his albums, he refuses to get stuck repeating his past successes when it comes time to make the music. Granted, Kihn’s nine Beserkley albums each stick to basic timetested American party-rock, and he hasn’t joined the synth-pop brigade or made an African funk record yet. And you won’t see him in a bleach-blond Duran Duran hairstyle either. What’s changed is not so much the Greg Kihn Band’s approach to rock ’n’ roll as the level of professionalism they bring to it. And...

“The music world around us has changed,” theorizes the Baltimore-bred Kihn, whose true love of life is the Baltimore Orioles and probably will always be whether or not they ever come close to the World Series again. “The band hasn’t really changed its style in the 10 years we’ve been together. You know, we go on tangents like ‘Jeopardy’ but we keep coming back to the same kind of music we’ve always played: slightly R&B, slightly rock ’n’ roll, slightly Beserkley music. When we started out we were way out in left field and now we’re considered mainstream. It’s the same old story.”

That same old story took a surprise turn in ’83 when “Jeopardy” became a dance hit and bulleted to the top of the charts, a region previously verboten to the Kihn clan. Sure, its clap-track rhythm and frequent MTV play didn’t hurt, and the song was genuinely catchy—enough so that Weird Al Yankovic graced it with a parody (“I Lost On Jeopardy”) and used not only Kihn himself but the former host of the Jeopardy game show, Art Fleming, in the video for his recording. Still, during the recording of Kihntagious, Kihn drew the line when it came to xeroxing the elements that gave him his first legitimate smasheroo.

“People expected us to come back with a whole album of ‘Jeopardy’s,’ ” he says. But did Kihn try to capture that magic again? Shit, yeah. “I tried to come up with another ‘Jeopardy’ but I came up with ‘Reunited,’ the first single off this album, instead. That’s how far off my sights were. The record company said give us a followup that’ll sell as many copies and I came back with something that was closer to heavy metal. I couldn’t even come up with another ‘Breakup Song.’ Oh, well.” So much for artistic integrity, but seriously, folks, Kihn is glad that he avoided trapping himself.

“I’m kind of proud that I followed up ‘Jeopardy’ with something that was straightahead rock ’n’ roll. Ya know, a lot of people who picked up on the band when that song was a hit didn’t even know that we’d been around for all those years or that we were a rock ’n’ roll band to begin with. But that’s good because when we play a show to them we have to really work hard. It’s not like playing to a Beserkley cult audience when you’re opening for Journey, which we did. And it’s more fun for me to entertain under those conditions. I like to keep the shows loose and when we play you can hear anything; there’s a real wide variety of music.”

After 10 years of playing together, you might think that Kihn would be striving for more depth, for a more complex sound. Quite the opposite is true. “Figures, right?” he shrugs. “Everyone else is adding stuff and we’re trying to get simpler. Of course we’re influenced by stuff we hear and we’ve had to make some concessions to today’s music. Nowadays you’ve got to put synthesizers imjust to get played on the damn ‘Rock of the ’80s’ radio format. So we whipped up a couple of things like that, heh, heh. But that’s just because we thought it would sound good in there; we never consciously sit down and say ‘OK, let’s put a synth in here, some horns in there, and some African drums right here.’ As soon as we do stuff like that, we fuck up. That’s the charm of this band.”

Kihn says he often relies on the ideas suggested by Matthew King Kaufman, who has produced all of his records, and on those of his longtime bandmates—Steve Wright (bass), Greg Douglass (lead guitar), Larry Lynch (drums) and Gary Phillips (keyboards, guitar). On recent albums the band’s taste has shifted more toward classic R&B, which was manifested in the “Jeopardy” hit and kihntinues (whoops!) to be heard on the current LP. Kihn has also developed a taste for pure country, but, he says, “Nothing I write ends up sounding like ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart.’ I’m crazy enough to do something like make an all-country album,” he warns. “And I think my record company fears me; they think I’ll do something like that. They know that inside I’m a seething Wild Man Fischer. I could go into the studio any minute now and record ‘Merry Go-Round.’ ”

“When I watch a Duran Duran video I get so horny I have to leave the room!”

Don’t think he wouldn’t actually do it. But Kihn admits mellowing a bit in his old age, especially with a bonafide chart-topper under his belt. While he still feels alienated from the lawyers and accountants who really run the record biz, Kihn admits that things do change after having a hit record.

“A year or two ago I was pulling my hair out,” he says in his best before-and-after TV commercial voice. “I was worried about chart positions, I was getting pimples. But now I don’t do that anymore. I’m happy. When I tell my grandchildren that I was a rock musician in the ’80s they won’t believe me. In fact, they’ll probably say I’m full of shit. But here I am doing it—and you know something, it’s a real kick.

“Lately, since ‘Jeopardy,’ I’ve been able to understand a little more where people in the industry are coming from. Now that we’re on the other side of the coin and successful it helps a lot. In the old days they had to make up excuses for us and we just sulked. Now it’s pretty much always good news and everybody’s happy. I don’t have any complaints.”

If Kihn seems like a light-hearted kind of guy, not the type who goes off on the usual rock ’n’ roll binges, well, that’s ’cause he is. He’s still in it for the music and the fun and still defines rock ’n’ roll in terms of the original ’50s and ’60s rock heroes he grew up on. When he says that if it wasn’t for him and a handful of others, young fans wouldn’t even know who Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly are, he says it more out of reverence for the roots than to advertise his own abilities. “I’d rather kill myself trying to write ‘Peggy Sue’ to make art,” he says. “If some of these other guys would rather write ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’ that’s up to them and I’m not gonna try to stop them. I’d rather try to come up with ‘Tutti Frutti’, myself.”

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Kihn says he has nothing against the current trends in music and fashion, but that it’s just not for him. “I’ll tell you,” he says with a hint of dismay, “I don’t know what any song has been about since 1974. I mean, can you tell me what the fuck ‘Union Of The Snake’ is supposed to be about? I’m just an economical sort of writer; I don’t go reading history books and writing about Cortez; I’d rather write songs about my girlfriend. As far as the trendy stuff, well, that changes every year or two so it doesn’t bother me. As long as the rest of us can be successful, too. But I like to see things that are artistically good also be successful; that’s a fair combination to ine and occasionally it even happens. I just like the fact that rock ’n’ roll has become a world tradition; it’s like folk music.”

Kihn is especially proud of his big-budget video for “Reunited,” the leadoff track on Kihntagious. The video takes over where “Jeopardy” left off, both artistically and literally—the girl who is married to Kihn in the “Jeopardy” vid is seen here honeymooning with her favorite rock star in “Reunited.” Where? In Oz, sort of.

“The video parodies The Wizard Of Oz, and I’ll bet you it’s the only G-rated video out,” says Kihn. “There’s no T&A in here at all; in fact, I’ve never made a sexist video. There’s nothing like that in here; it’s just fun, which may be a first. I wanted to make a video that kids would like. I’ll tell you, when I watch a Duran Duran video I get so horny I have to leave the room! Jeez, man, I don’t even know the bands in half the videos I see, just the girls. It’s like burlesque is coming back through video or something.”

Maybe Kihn is a throwback after all. Or maybe he’s just smarter and cares more passionately about rock ’n’ roll and its original values than most of the new kids on the block. Whatever, this enthusiasm throughout both relative obscurity and semi-fame is encouraging in an era of take-the-megabucks-and-run.

But there’s one more question, Greg? Why did you hire 20 dwarfs to run around the set during the “Reunited” video?

“Oh, those guys. They’re the munchic/hns, of course.” Just remember, he said it, not us.