February 14, 2010 – Doug Fieger (The Knack) was born on August 20th 1952 and raised in Oak Park, Michigan, a northern suburb of Detroit, and attended Oak Park High School. While still at school he sang lead and played bass in the group Sky, eventually recording two albums in 1970 and 1971. Doug also played bass guitar in the German progressive rock band Triumvirat for a short period in 1974. After which he founded the New Wave rock quartet The Knack based in Los Angeles that rose to fame with their first single, “My Sharona”, an international No.1 hit.
With a six-week run at No. 1, “My Sharona” was the inescapable hit of the summer of 1979, and it became a staple of high school dance parties for years to come. Built on a simple riff that was as perky as it was sexy, the song, by Mr. Fieger and the band’s lead guitarist, Berton Averre, celebrated teenage lust in unabashed terms. “When you gonna give it to me?” Mr. Fieger sang in the impatient whine that was his hallmark.
The song, written about a 17-year-old high school student who had caught the eye of the 26-year-old Mr. Fieger, displaced Chic’s disco anthem “Good Times” on Billboard’s singles chart and came to symbolize the commercial arrival of new wave, the poppier, snazzier-dressed cousin of punk rock. (That girl, Sharona Alperin, became a high-end real estate agent in Los Angeles.) With a carefully executed marketing plan, the members of the Knack seemed to position themselves as a new Beatles, adopting a uniform of white shirts and skinny black ties, even recreating a group pose from the film “A Hard Day’s Night” for the back cover of their debut album, “Get the Knack”. “My Sharona,” Fieger once said, had been written in 15 minutes. Billboard listed it as the No. 1 song of 1979.
The follow-up hit was “Good Girls Don’t” which stopped one notch short of the Top 10 – peaking at No.11, and Get The Knack spent five straight weeks at No.1 and eventually sold 3 million copies in the United States – 6 million globally. In addition to performing, Doug also produced the Rubber City Rebels debut album for Capitol Records and another album for the Los Angeles-based band, Mystery Pop
He died from lung cancer on Feb. 14, 2010 at the age of 57.
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