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.

 

He moved to California in 1972 and worked painting houses, singing in the streets, and working behind the counter at the Berkeley record store, Rather Ripped Records, with future band mate and Earth Quake guitarist Gary Phillips. The following year, he became one of the first artists signed to Matthew King Kaufman's now-legendary 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 prog rock of the time.