The Knack

The Knack was an American rock band based in Los Angeles that rose to fame with their first single, "My Sharona", an international number-one hit in 1979.

History

Founding (1977–78)

Singer Doug Fieger was a native of Oak Park, Michigan, a northern suburb of Detroit, Michigan, and grew up in the 9 Mile/Coolidge area. The brother of attorney Geoffrey Fieger (later known for representing Dr. Jack Kevorkian in a series of assisted suicide cases) Fieger had previously played in an eclectic rock band called Sky as well as the Sunset Bombers. Although Sky had received a modest amount of acclaim, including being produced by Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller, the band broke up without having any chart success. As a result, Fieger made the decision to move to Los Angeles and start another band.

Fieger met the three other original members of the Knack in 1977 and 1978: Berton Averre (lead guitar, backing vocals and keyboards), Prescott Niles (bass), and Bruce Gary (drums). Niles was the last to join, a week before the band's first show in June 1978. In the meantime, Fieger had been doubling on bass on a series of demos that the group had shopped to several record labels, all of which were rejected. Some of these songs later made up the band's debut album Get the Knack, and included "Good Girls Don't".

My Sharona

"My Sharona" is the debut single by the Knack. The song was written by Berton Averre and Doug Fieger, and released in 1979 from their album Get the Knack. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart where it remained for 6 weeks, and was number one on Billboard's 1979 Top Pop Singles year-end chart.

It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, representing one million copies sold, and was Capitol Records' fastest gold status debut single since the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in 1964.

Inspiration

The characteristic riff of "My Sharona" was written by the band's guitarist, Berton Averre, years before he joined the Knack. He had played the riff as well as a drum groove for Doug Fieger, the group's lead singer and rhythm guitarist, who loved it and promised to make it a song, although he did not have any ideas for the lyrics.

When Fieger was 25, he met 17-year-old Sharona Alperin, who inspired a two-month-long run of songwriting, as well as becoming Fieger's girlfriend for the next four years. Fieger recounted that "It was like getting hit in the head with a baseball bat; I fell in love with her instantly. And when that happened, it sparked something and I started writing a lot of songs feverishly in a short amount of time." Fieger and Averre worked out the structure and melody of the song. Averre was originally averse to using Alperin's name in the song, but Fieger wanted it to be a direct expression of his feelings; Averre ultimately relented. Fieger claimed that "My Sharona" was written in 15 minutes.

Knack

Knack or The Knack may refer to:

See also

Sharona

Sharona (Hebrew: שׂרוֹנָה /saˈʁona/, but publicized in English as /ʃəˈɹoʊnə/) is a moshav in the Lower Galilee Regional Council, Israel.

History

In the early 13th century, the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi described Sârûniyyah as "a pass near Tabariyya, you go up it to reach At Tûr".

Ottoman era

Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, Sharona appeared under the name of Saruniyya in the 1596 tax registers as being in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Tabariyya under the Liwa of Safad. It had an entirely Muslim population consisting of 17 households. They paid taxes on wheat, barley, occasional revenues, goats and beehives; a total of 3592 Akçe.

A map from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 by Pierre Jacotin showed the place, though unnamed.

In 1875, Victor Guérin visited Sarona and noted:

In 1881, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine noted "basaltic stone houses, containing about 250 Moslems, situated in arable plain, without trees."

According to Avneri, Sarona was settled by Circassian refugees from the Caucasus in 1878, but by 1910 they had moved elsewhere and had been replaced by Arabs. The land was purchased from the Arabs by the Jewish Colonization Association in 1910.