In 1988, a funny thing happened when several American radio stations began playing a new rock song with a heavy riff and a high vocal.
Listeners thought they were hearing a previously unreleased Led Zeppelin track.
In reality, it was the debut single from a new band – Get It On by Kingdom Come. And it made them the most controversial and maligned rock band in the world.
Led by German singer Lenny Wolf, Kingdom Come were not the first band to sound like Led Zeppelin. But they sounded more like Led Zeppelin than any other band had ever done. And they took a lot of shit for it – not least from Zeppelin’s former members.
In a 2013 interview with Classic Rock, Lenny Wolf joked: “In the beginning, Kingdom Come were accused of sounding too much like Madonna.”
But he wasn’t joking when he said of the Zeppelin comparisons: “That was very flattering, but it was something I could never really understand.
“The riff in Get It On had a very strong Zep feel. I’m not trying to hide it. I was heavily into the band back then.
"But when you hear Robert Plant’s voice and then you hear my voice… I mean, “Hello? Is anybody home?” Those are two different worlds.
“But it could have been worse. They could have compared us with Poison!”
Back in 1988, Kingdom Come guitarist Danny Stag was quoted in an interview saying he had never heard Led Zeppelin.
In 2013, Wolf explained: “Those remarks were misunderstood. Danny got so tired of hearing about the Zeppelin issue that he just blurted out: ‘Who’s Jimmy Page? Never heard of him!’ Which of course was meant ironically, it’s so obvious.
“But some writer picked up on it, and then other idiots jumped on the bandwagon, writing the same bullshit. And that’s when the shit started.”
So why did Wolf also say he’d never heard Zeppelin?
"I don’t remember saying that,” Wolf told Classic Rock. “But if I did, it was meant in the most ironic and funny way. It’s beyond stupidity to say you’ve never heard Led Zeppelin!”
Nevertheless, that first Kingdom Come album was a huge hit, going gold in the US with sales of half a million.
But by 1991 Kingdom Come was essentially Lenny Wolf’s solo project, and as he said in 2013, he had embraced different influences across the years.
“On the album Independent from 2002, that was when I became very attracted to industrial sounds,” he said. “I was always heavily into David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Depeche Mode, and they always used a lot of unusual elements in their music, not just drums, bass and guitar. That fascinated me, and since then I’ve been experimenting with sounds."
"People who liked the first two Kingdom Come records, many of them didn’t grow with me," Wolf said. "But I don’t write songs with dollar signs in my eyes. Music to me is very pure. It comes from the deepest part of my soul.”
