Most every day, rock star and KUFX (98.5) radio DJ Greg Kihn would leave his morning radio show in San Jose and drive his Mustang almost two hours to his home in the East Bay, where he would try to write 50 pages of a new novel or a screenplay or a song.
Kihn, who died Aug. 13 at 75 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, was a creative force of nature, writing hit songs, screenplays and novels, and penning fascinating stories of the music life for his four-hour-long daily radio show, which often reached No. 1 in the market.
“He had endless creativity,” recalls Chris Jackson, 58, his radio co-host for 15 years. “I remember days when I didn’t have anything left and we had a deadline and I thought we wouldn’t be able to come up with something for next week. Imagine you had a screenplay and you had to do the first five pages by 10pm.
“He’d say, ‘Let’s sit down and do it.’ Then he’d say, ‘Why don’t you go down to your car and lay down for 15 minutes.’ When I’d come back, it would be done. He never hit a creative wall.”
Kihn was born in Baltimore and moved to San Francisco and then Berkeley in 1974, checking out a music scene that started in the 1960s in Haight Ashbury. While groups such as the Grateful Dead and Santana made their names with long jams, Kihn preferred short, sweet, everyman music, influenced by the Beatles, the Kinks and, later, Bruce Springsteen.
He opened for the Rolling Stones during their 1981 tour and regularly opened for the Bay Area’s Journey. On the tour route, when Journey’s singer Steve Perry couldn’t do interviews, Kihn stood in for him.
“He loved radio and was a DJ at junior college in Baltimore,” Jackson says. “It was always one of his passions. On that tour he learned it was important to be a good interviewee and they would ask for him again. He learned if you were a good guest you could be a good host.”
Kihn’s music, on albums that played on his name, such as RocKihnroll, earned him heavy rotation on MTV in the 1980s. His hits included “The Breakup Song,” which reached No. 15 on the Billboard chart in 1981, and “Jeopardy,” which hit No. 2 in 1983.
His novels, which were mixtures of music and horror, included 1996’s Horror Show, a salute to old creature features; 1998’s Shade of Pale and Big Rock Beat; and 1999’s Mojo Hand, in which blues man Robert Johnson was found to be still alive and working in a fast-food joint.
He was one of a handful of rock stars, including Alice Cooper and Ted Nugent, who turned to radio broadcasting, but he was the only one who lasted 15 years in the most important morning slot.
He is survived by wife Jay Arafiles-Kihn, son Ryan Kihn, daughter Alexis Harrington-Kihn, grandsons Nate Harrington-Kihn and Zuri Harrington-Kihn, and sister Laura Otremba.
Jackson didn’t suspect Kihn was ailing until recently at a radio awards show when his colleague didn’t laugh at any of the jokes being told. “And they were really funny,” Jackson says.
