RIP DOUG FEIGER & BRUCE GARY The Knack was an American rock band based in Los Angeles that rose to fame with its first single, "My Sharona", an international number-one hit in 1979. For about months in 1979, the Knack was a pop sensation. Its debut album, "Get the Knack", sold 5 million copies, while “My Sharona” blared on car radios throughout the summer. The band’s brash sound and Fab Four affectations seemed to incite Knackmania overnight. Then, suddenly, it was all over. The records stopped selling, and the girls stopped screaming. The Knack’s strict no-interview and no-TV policy backfired; critics dismissed the band’s Beatlesque packaging as shallow hype and attacked singer-guitarist Doug Fieger for the sexist arrogance of his lyrics. By November 1980 the Knack had fallen apart. Although the band reunited to cut their third album "Round Trip", the Knack gave its final performance at an Acapulco nightclub in December 1981. Fieger defended the Knack as “a legitimate rock & roll band from the streets of Hollywood. We came up through the club scene and had legitimate songs, real musicianship.” The fatal flaw, he says, was the poisonous, ultimately self-destructive cynicism evident in promotional gambits like the group’s blatant Beatles-on-Ed Sullivan pose in the photograph on the back cover of "Get the Knack". The Knack reunited in November 1986, to play a benefit for Michele Myers, who had been the first person to book the band for a show in 1978. They continued to play club gigs for the next several years. In July 1989, Billy Ward replaced Bruce Gary as the band's drummer (after a brief interim by Pat Torpey of Mr. Big). In 1990, the Knack signed with Charisma Records and recorded the album "Serious Fun" which was released in February 1991. Lead single "Rocket O' Love" was a top 10 hit on US AOR stations (and a top 30 hit in Canada). The Knack would continue to tour and record, releasing albums such as "Zoom" (1998), "Normal As The Next Guy" (2001), and "Live From The Rock - N - Roll Fun House" (2002). In 2006, during a performance in Las Vegas, Fieger became disoriented, developing a dull headache, and grasping for the words to the songs that he had written and performed for years. Diagnosed with two brain tumors, Fieger underwent surgery and radiosurgery and returned to performing. However, he still continued to battle brain and lung cancer until his death on February 14, 2010, in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 57, effectively bringing the band to an end. Bruce Gary became a producer (archive recordings of Jimi Hendrix and new recordings of The Ventures) and a sideman performing live and on studio sessions with a wide range of artists. Gary died from lymphoma on August 22, 2006, at the age of 55.

• published: 21 Feb 2023
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