There are two words that tell an amazing story: “My Sharona.” It's clear as a concert spotlight - the haughty backbeat, the stuttering vocals, the melody that bounces like a lopsided Ping-Pong ball.
But it's not just about a song. It's about a rock-and-roll comet, the story of a band that blazed into sight, circled the Earth, and zipped back into the inky darkness from whence it came.
Yes, The Knack is back, headlining the Labor Day weekend RiverFest lineup along with another classic rocker, former Bad Company lead singer Brian Howe, who last played Toledo at a Rally by the River in 1998.
The Knack's 1979 debut album “Get The Knack” hit Gold Record status in 13 days and sold 6 million copies worldwide. The jaunty pop-rock single “My Sharona” topped the Billboard charts for six weeks, sold 10 million copies worldwide, and was named the No. 1 single of the year by Billboard.
>Schedule for 2001 RiverFest | |
| Friday | |
| 6 p.m. | Benlow, local rock band formerly known as All Hail Me. |
| 8 p.m. | National recording artist Brian Howe, formerly of Bad Company. |
| Saturday | |
| 1 p.m. | Eddie Boggs, local artist. |
| 2 p.m. | Johnny Reed and the House Rockers, local blues artists. |
| 3 p.m. | Sugarbuzz, local rockers. |
| 4 p.m. | Good Stuff Maynard, Top 40 covers. |
| 5 30 p.m. | Uncle Sandwitch, Local rockers. |
| 6 p.m. | Falling Upward, on Festival Park Teen Stage. |
| 7 p.m. | Sheep, Festival Park Teen Stage. |
| 7 30 p.m. | National recording artists The Knack. |
| 8 p.m. | RISE, Festival Park Teen Stage. |
| Sunday | |
| Noon | Worship service with Sanctus Real. |
| 1 p.m. | Gospel recording artists First Creation. |
| 2 p.m. | Sanctus Real. |
| 3 p.m. | Local and national recording artist Kerry Patric Clark. |
| 4 p.m. | National recording artist Kate Minor. |
| 5 p.m. | Breaking Point, Festival Park Teen Stage. |
| 6 p.m. | National recording artist Nicole C. Mullen. |
| 6 p.m. | Pinewood Derby, Festival Park Teen Stage. |
| 7 p.m. | National recording artists the Katinas. |
“It wasn't fun. It was like being pinned to the nose cone of a rocket ship. It was pretty amazing,” Fieger said from his Los Angeles home. “And when it happened, it happened overnight. `Sharona' went on the radio one day and the next day it was the biggest song in the world.”
Like most so-called overnight successes, The Knack had spent years working its way into position before catching a ride on that rocket ship.
“I had a band when I was a young kid. We got signed out of Detroit, where I grew up [in the suburb of Oak Park],” Fieger said. “We went to England to record and were teamed with Jimmy Miller, the legendary producer who had worked with the Rolling Stones, Traffic, who had written `I'm a Man.' We recorded a couple of albums in England and then we moved to L.A. The band broke up after a couple of albums.”
Fieger started looking around for new musicians and in 1973 began writing songs with guitarist Berton Averre.
“It took about eight years to put The Knack together,” he said, “and by the time `Sharona' became a hit I had been playing professionally for 11 years, since I was 14.”
The Knack came in the nick of time for rock and pop fans. The late 1970s had been dominated by disco. The soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever sold 25 million copies worldwide and the Bee Gees and Donna Summer were fixtures on the radio and sales charts.
Fieger, Averre, bassist Prescott Niles, and original drummer Bruce Gary made their concert debut on June 1, 1978, at Los Angeles' famed Whiskey-A-Go-Go and quickly became a sensation on the city's club scene. Rock icons such as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Eddie Money, and the Doors' Ray Manzarek sat in with The Knack during the band's club shows.
Thirteen record companies vied to sign the band before Capitol won the bidding war. Fieger said they had written enough songs for a double album but Capitol balked because of the expense. Mike Chapman was hired to produce the debut disc and “Get The Knack” was recorded essentially live in the studio in just 13 days.
Capitol invested a paltry $18,000 into the project, earning the label one of the biggest returns on an investment in recording history.
“It was fun until it got to a certain point and then it was ... `Whoa!'” Fieger said. “It was definitely out of our hands.
But I'm not complaining. It's better than working for a living.”
The Knack's second single, “Good Girls Don't,” reached No. 17 on the Billboard chart, but that was the extent of the band's short-lived Top 20 career.
“We had a Top 30 hit on the next album [“But the Little Girls Understand”] and another charted into the 70s. Without a Top 10 single we sold over 2 million worldwide. And people called that a failure. You tell me. I don't really understand it.”
The pressures of fame tore the band apart and they official split up in 1982.
What did he do for the next few years?
“I just recovered,” Fieger said. “I did a lot of growing up. I did a lot of thinking about stuff.”
The Knack was asked to reunite in 1986 to play a benefit show for a Los Angeles woman who had first booked the group and was dying of cancer. The audiences loved the concert and the musicians had fun, something that was lacking before their breakup.
“We like to have a bit of tongue planted firmly in cheek,” Fieger said. “There's a lot of irony and humor involved in this band. That's one of the most misunderstood parts of The Knack. Everybody's so serious. For me, rock and roll is supposed to be fun.”
The band enjoyed a revival of “My Sharona” when it was included in the 1994 Winona Ryder film Reality Bites, making the tune one of only 12 in rock history to re-enter the Hot 100 chart.
The Knack signed a new recording contract with Impact Entertainment and on Sept. 25 will release its first studio album in three years.
“It's a different kind of album,” Fieger said. “There isn't a song that remotely sounds like any other song on the album. We do a country song, we do a jazz song that's almost Steely Dan-ish. The title song, Normal as the Next Guy, I don't know how to describe it. It's sort of a cross between AC/DC and Spike Jones.”
Three of the original band members, Fieger, Averre, and Niles, are still with the band and Gary has been replaced by drummer David Henderson.
“We've had a long series of drummers,” Fieger said. “It's been sort of `Spinal Tap-ish.' There's a high attrition rate. But I think the band sounds better than it's ever sounded before.”
The Knack just finished recording a live album and DVD concert video two weeks ago in Long Beach, Calif. Their first live album since 1979, when a Carnegie Hall concert was released on Laserdisc, will be called “Live from the Rock and Roll Fun House.”
RiverFest's opening night concert on Friday will feature the latest lineup assembled by Howe, who was the lead singer for British rock supergroup Bad Company for 10 years.
The native of Portsmouth, England, also was a member of Ted Nugent's band before replacing Bad Company's famous vocalist Paul Rodgers.
Howe said he takes great pride in having been a part of Bad Company for so many years and still enjoys singing their songs, particularly “Ready for Love,” “Holy Water,” and “If You Needed Somebody.”
“Most of the band's fans of the last 20 years or so, certainly the MTV generation, only know me as the singer of Bad Company. I'm expected to do the songs, and I don't mind. I was in the band for 10 years, I wrote a lot of the hits, and I helped to promote their music around the world.”
He left Bad Company in 1994 and has been hit with a number of legal and personal attacks from his former band mates.
“We're not on talking terms, far from it, “ he said. “It's a very sad situation. They are very angry and bitter that I have a career left after what they tried to do to me. They tried to stamp my career out. It's very sad how insecure they are.”
On a brighter note, Howe said he has many fond memories of playing “the ice arena in Toledo” with Bad Company.
The Sports Arena “was one of my favorite places to play. I used to love that gig. I used to walk across from the hotel, across the bridge. We always had a great time there. The people in Toledo really know how to rock. They're staunch rock and rollers.”
Howe said he's been busy with his new band, touring “nonstop,” including recent concert trips to Japan, Korea, and Canada and an upcoming tour in Italy.
Howe has plans to record an 18-song CD but said it's been tough trying to schedule studio time around the band's concert schedule. He said it also hasn't been easy disciplining himself to write new tunes.
“I live on an island in Florida. I've got palm trees and a beautiful sandy beach. Guess where I'd rather be. Give me a pina colada and sunshine and I'm set for the day.”
First Published August 26, 2001, 3:34 p.m.
