I Need Seven Inches Or More: Parental Guidance Suggested

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Doug Fieger R.I.P.

It was the summer of 1979 and my family and I were traveling to Michigan for vacation. As we were driving, the AM radio in our Dodge Aspen station wagon was tuned to the only tolerable station with enough watts to make it through most of the entire journey. The old man hated fiddling with the controls while driving-it was a job that he later delegated to me, but because I was only twelve years old at the time; he didn’t trust me enough to let me make the decisions.
WLS in Chicago was a Top 40 station back then, and by “top 40” I mean that they truly seemed to play just 40 songs over and over. It was designed for commuters, not for long distance travelers. And if your band was fortunate enough to have a hit in the top 10, then you were guaranteed that your song would be played enough times that it would be permanently engrained into the minds of station listeners.
There was one song in particular that captured my attention during that trip, not just because it was played every two-and-a-half hours, but also because it was so downright infectious. Early on in the trip, my Dad acknowledged that it was pretty awesome and my Mom could be seen in the back seat (she actually liked the back seat better so she could read magazines, thereby allowing me to be closer to the radio’s monophonic speaker that was hidden in the top of the dash) singing the chorus. By the end of the trip, both of them were sick of the song, and I vaguely recall one of the WLS DJs commenting that they were playing the song far too often.
“My Sharona” was the kind of hit that you just don’t see today. It was written by Doug Fieger, a guy that sweated through a bunch of anonymous L.A. bands for years before meeting up with three session players with similar talents. Something clicked, the quartet changed their name to The Knack and they found themselves with a massive hit that others would kill for.
It was so massive that “My Sharona” ended up killing them.
How do you repeat a success like “My Sharona?” You don’t, but you should be able to maintain a bit of its popularity for a while. The misconception is that The Knack were one hit wonders. They actually had a pretty big follow up with the awesome “Good Girls Don’t” and their follow-up contained “Baby Talks Dirty,” a complete re-write of “My Sharona” that managed to hit the top 20. Heck, there was even a song from their third album that reached the lower tiers of the top 40.
It wasn’t that Doug Fieger couldn’t write another hit song, it’s just that no one wanted to hear another hit song written by Doug Fieger. Much of the criticism the band faced during the fallout of The Knack was completely unfounded and undeserving, but Fieger did little to try to counter it. His silence was perceived as conceitedness, and when he did talk to the press, he sometimes came across as an asshole. The rock press wanted Fieger to come across as more grateful than he seemed, never mind that the band's newfound success was about a half-dozen years in the making.
It didn’t help that he was also a decade older than the rest of the New Wave crowd he was typecast with. And it was a bit creepy that the boners he got from “the touch of the younger kind” was something that most fellows his age wouldn’t be bragging about, let alone writing about in tight, three-and-a-half minute power pop songs.
In short, he was old enough to know better.
But he was also old enough to know that by continually playing, The Knack would get good. And they were beyond good-particularly on that first record-they were great.
I think the most telling thing about Doug Fieger’s character was that I never read an article where he seemed bitter about not being able to follow up “My Sharona” with the same amount of success. He seemed resigned to the fact that he knew “My Sharona” would be the only song people remembered him/The Knack by and that he’d spend the rest of his life playing that song to smaller venues and during countless nostalgia packages. It didn’t stop him from playing it well either; he was a professional musician before “My Sharona” and each gig was treated as a chance to demonstrate that.
Many people were surprised at how good that he and The Knack were during their performance on Hit Me Baby One More Time, but please, a talent like Fieger could knock out a rendition of Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” in his sleep.
Shortly after turning heads on that television competition, Fieger began a five-year long battle with cancer. He sadly lost that battle yesterday, but it’s fitting that the horn dog decided to pass on Valentine’s Day.
He was 57.

The Knack - Get The Knack

If you’re young, it’s hard to explain just how much controversy Get The Knack stirred up when it was originally released. First of all, there was the leadoff single “My Sharona,” a song so awesome that it was played every 90 minutes on Top 40 radio while it was requested every 10 minutes. It was a song so huge that everything paled in comparison. It was a song so huge that every critic, novice or professional, looked for any detail to latch on to.
And Get The Knack provided them with plenty to work from, starting with Doug Fieger’s offensive, occasionally misogynistic lyrics that, when you take a deep breath, were the same topics that rock music’s foundation was based on. The difference? Fieger incorporated shit like “she’s sitting on your face” and “don’t fuckame fuckame today” while the old bluesmen used cutesy metaphors like “squeeze my lemon.”
On top of that, Fieger had a keen sense of humor, adding a barely audile “It hurts!” after the “sittin’ on your face” comment and including a song about Siamese twins that plead for someone to kill the other sibling.
The critics won. In a year, the backlash was in full swing and “Knuke the Knack” buttons were selling more than the band’s follow up …But The Little Girls Understand. Nobody gave a shit by the time Round Trip was released and the band is now fodder for those “one hit wonder” jokes even when the band actually charted four top 40 singles in their lifetime.
Quibbling aside, the real proof is in actually playing Get The Knack, an album great enough for practically anyone to recognize.
This is power pop with a capital “P” delivered in twelve tracks of impeccably performed and wonderfully captured glory, hinting at the reality that these guys worked long hours honing their craft and solidifying their arrangements. The album plays like a tight setlist, ebbing and flowing with stunning efficiency, each track sounding just as memorable as the last.
I won’t even address the other criticism, trivial potshots at the cover art and blatant Beatlesque poses, which hundreds of other bands are equally as guilty of. The Knack was nowhere near as great as the Beatles were, but they did manage to make an album as great as Meet The Beatles.
Whether it’s a case of believing their own hype or letting it destroy them, The Knack were never able to rebound from the backlash. But before they let them get their hands on ‘em, they did manage to release on of the greatest debuts in history, one that was unfairly pegged as a pre-packaged blueprint.
The reality was that Get The Knack was a legitimate document of a band blessed with twelve great songs that were religiously rehearsed and tremendously catchy. Whether or not they deserved their demise is one thing, but Get The Knack proves that they certainly deserved their initial success.

The Knack - But The Little Girls Understand

How do you follow-up a classic debut? For many bands that have pondered that question, the answer came as “Let’s try to repeat everything we did on the first album!”
Now honestly, there’s a good chance that, by doing so, you won’t pull the wool over anyone’s eyes and there’s an even better chance that you won’t build the fan base by much after doing so.
The Knack certainly didn’t need to build their audience after Get The Knack, an album of such epic power-pop greatness that critics (and some fans of the genre) needed to look for ways to dismantle the quartet’s smugness and ungratefulness after the success of their debut.
Yeah, their image was a problem, but their music certainly wasn’t. So what The Knack did was conveniently ignore this and make another album chock full of great power pop songs that, as expected, fell short of the batting average of the Get The Knack but was certainly nothing to kick out of bed for eating crackers.
Smart move? Not really. The Knack’s sophomore album not only fails to address their Achilles heel, it exposes it even more. Not only is the title of the album a direct swipe at would be detractors, …But The Little Girls Understand has the audacity to not only name check one of the great blues lyrics of all time (“Back Door Man”), it also suggests that only teenage girls would be equipped at “getting” The Knack.
Indeed, the original artwork depicts a girl looking innocently upwards to something off camera (Doug Fieger’s penis?) and the inner sleeve shows the boys in a limousine that’s overrun with girls trying to get through the windows of the vehicle.
The photo looks incredibly staged.
Now add to all of this that the producer of the record, Mike Chapman, wrote a comment to potential purchasers of …But The Little Girls Understand buy more than one copy because, no shit, it would help his bank account.
Count ‘em: you’ve got four reasons to absolutely hate this album before you’ve played note one.
And when you finally put the needle on the record (literally for me: this is a review of my original vinyl release with the old Capitol Records’ rainbow band label done up entirely in pink) you’re met with the band’s attempt at “My Sharona” (part two): “Baby Talks Dirty.” With any sequel, you’re bound to be disappointed and, if you allow yourself, you’ll certainly be disappointed in “Baby Talks Dirty.” Not because it’s a bad song, it’s just nowhere as good as “My Sharona.”
But what is?
And what’s as good as Get The Knack while we’re at it?
Certainly not …But The Little Girls Understand, but consider how The Knack’s second album is probably better than the vast majority of power pop albums out there anyway.
“The Feeling I Get” falls short with its ‘The Knack as produced by Phil Spector” impersonation and “How Can Love Hurt So Much” is barely believable as a tender retro ballad, particularly after already disclaiming how Doug likes it when his chick’s utter “Hurt Me! Hurt Me”
At the same time, there’s some gems scattered across the sophomore disc, some of which rival Get The Knack. A good cover of The Kinks’ “The Hard Way” followed by the originals “It’s You” and the slide-happy “End Of The Game” starts side two with three up-tempo tracks while late drummer Bruce Gary has his way over the kit on “I Want Ya.”
There are a few hints and trying to expand their sound, but primarily ...But The Little Girls Understand finds The Knack trying to mirror the pattern laid down on their first album. By the time The Knack eventually addressed their image problem on their third album (Round Trip), the band lost most of their humor and (surprise!) most of their fan base. I suffered through that mediocre release, however, I wouldn’t have even bothered with it if …But The Little Girls Understand wasn’t as good as it is.

The Knack's Doug Fieger celebrates his 55th birthday today.

Additional proof of The Knack's badassedness: 1979 footage of the track "The End Of The Game."