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Author Topic: "My Sharona" The Knack Lead Singer Doug Fieger Dead at 57  (Read 4651 times)
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MuffyBee
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« on: February 14, 2010, 11:28:54 PM »

http://www.buddytv.com/articles/rosanne/my-sharona-singer-doug-fieger-34557.aspx
"My Sharona" Singer Doug Fieger Dead at 57
Sunday, February 14, 2010
("reality bites-my sharonna video available at link)


Doug Fieger, front man of The Knack, who sang the 1979 hit "My Sharona," died Sunday at his home in Woodland Hills near Los Angeles. He was 57.

Fieger, who appeared as Nick on three episodes of Roseanne, battled cancer for six years. He is survived by a sister, Beth Falkenstein, and a brother, attorney Geoffrey Fieger, who is best known for representing assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian.


After The Knack was formed by Doug Fieger in 1978, the band quickly became a staple of Sunset Strip rock clubs. The following year, he co-wrote and sang lead vocals in "My Sharona," which spent six weeks atop Billboard's Hot 100. Fieger said the song was inspired by a girlfriend of four years.

"I had never met a girl like her -- ever," Doug Fieger told The Associated Press in a 1994 interview. "She induced madness. She was a very powerful presence. She had an insouciance that wouldn't quit. She was very self-assured. ... She also had an overpowering scent, and it drove me crazy."

The song got further immersed into pop culture phenomenon as it was parodied by Weird Al Yankovic and was heard on shows like The Simpsons, and Saturday Night Live.  In 1994, "My Sharona" returned to the national charts after it was used in the movie Reality Bites.
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« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2010, 11:31:40 PM »

http://www.freep.com/article/20100214/ENT07/100214021/1319/Knacks-lead-singer-Doug-Fieger-dies-at-57

Posted: 7:47 p.m. Feb. 14, 2010
Knack's lead singer Doug Fieger dies at 57

By BRIAN McCOLLUM
Free Press Pop Music Writer


Doug Fieger in 1994. (Photo by NICK CHARLES)

With a keen musical ear and an early love of the stage, Fieger was a student at Oak Park's Clinton Junior High when he started his first professional band -- launching the path that would ultimately lead him to the top of the pop charts.

Fieger, best known as the founding vocalist-guitarist of the Knack, died this morning at home in Woodland Hills, Calif., after a six-year battle with cancer. He was 57.

He was the younger brother of well-known attorney Geoffrey Fieger, and is also survived by his sister, Beth Falkenstein.

Having moved to L.A. after cutting his teeth on the Detroit rock scene, Fieger became an overnight millionaire with the hit "My Sharona" in 1979. Though he never recreated that single's blockbuster success, he continued touring under the Knack banner, including a final hometown show at DTE Energy Music Theatre in July 2003.

Fieger was soon stricken with lung and brain cancer, and embarked on years of intense treatment.

Longtime friend David Weiss, a fellow Los Angeles transplant from Oak Park, was frequently by Fieger's side during the illness. He saw Fieger 10 days ago before leaving town for a scheduled trip.

"I think both of us thought it might be our farewell," said Weiss, who plays with the band Was (Not Was). "He was resigned, but with the same sort of philosophical calm that he had been showing -- this kind of steely determination. He never let his own troubles dictate the moment."

Fieger's leading claim to fame was "My Sharona," a vivacious blast of pop that spent six weeks atop Billboard's Hot 100 and endured as a staple of the genre that became known as power-pop.

Though the song is often regarded as one of rock's great one-hit wonders, it was in fact followed by two more top 40 hits for the Knack, "Good Girls Don't" and "Baby Talks Dirty." And Fieger's own career had already included the Detroit band Sky, which released a pair of albums with RCA Records.

That group's Brit-inflected sound separated it from other acts on the '60s Detroit rock scene, which was dominated by a raucous, heavy approach.
Obviously we were a Detroit band, and I'm from Detroit, but we weren't representative of that era," Fieger recalled during a 2003 Free Press interview. "Because the sound of what we did was something different. But to the credit of the scene, everything was allowed. We were totally accepted."

Sky led Fieger to Los Angeles in 1970, where he remained after the band's dissolution a year later. In 1978 he solicited musicians via a newspaper ad, formed the Knack, and quickly attracted label interest with a tape of catchy demo tracks.

Fieger was a Detroit rocker with a British heart, driven by a lifelong love of English bands such as the Beatles and the Who.

"I always believed he was really channeling Lennon-McCartney every time he opened his mouth onstage," said Weiss. "But I also think a single like ‘My Sharona' is every bit a Detroit record as anything else, with that bad-ass beat, that kind of direct sensuality. It was pretty hardball stuff for a band that was three-quarters Los Angeles and one part Detroit."

Even as a teen, Weiss said, Fieger "was already walking the walk, already looking beyond 9 Mile and Coolidge.

"I don't know where he got it from, but he was self-educated. guy who went from high school to Hollywood without passing go. He had this passion combined with a blind confidence that he was going to be a star."
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RIP Grumpy Cat :( I will miss you.


« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2010, 06:39:57 PM »

Doug Fieger… Leader of the Knack, Dies

After a long battle with cancer, Knack singer/guitarist Doug Fieger has passed away. To say that Fieger was an instrumental part of my musical youth would be quite the understatement. In the space of three albums, he and the Knack created a permanent soundtrack for my life.

Seeing them for the first time, during a brief reunion tour in 1993, I was floored at how easily they were capable of breathing new life into songs I thought I’d heard enough for one lifetime (the hits). I walked away from the show with a wide-eyed smile, an album flat autographed by three original members, and the hope that the band wouldn’t just go away, but stay together and keep on making new music. My hopes were answered and then some as the band remained a vital, active force right up until Fieger’s cancer battle took him off the road.

Still, those first three albums are ICONIC. Anyone who says otherwise is letting their own hipster delusions get the better of them and, in the process, is missing out on a lot of great music. Just like the Beatles were so much more than “Please Please Me” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, the Knack were more than “My Sharona” and “Good Girls Don’t”. In fact, anyone who has bothered to listen to the band’s third album, Round Trip, knows precisely what I am talking about.

On that record, the band dispensed with pandering to public and record company expectations, creating a record of absolutely breathtaking musical breadth. One could dismiss it as the band simply trying to make their own Rubber Soul or Revolver, but that’s a lazy argument at best. The range of genres explored; from the funky groove of “She Likes The Beat” and “Soul Kissin’” to the dreamy psychedelic jam “We Are Waiting” to the buoyant pop of “Radiating Love” and “Just You Wait And See”, proved this was a band capable of doing it all.

Sadly, Capitol Records quickly washed their hands of the album and the band. One can’t help think that, released in another time, when labels and radio formats were more open to such experimentation and genre-hopping, the album would have found its rightful place in the musical pantheon.

With Fieger’s passing, you can expect many mentions of “My Sharona” and Get The Knack. It’s a shame that, for many, the celebration of this man’s music will stop there because he certainly didn’t. This was a man – and a band – of stunning depth and complexity. A beautiful voice went silent today, but his music will live on.
http://www.zeitgeistyreport.com/articles/2010/02/15/doug-fieger-leader-of-the-knack-dies/
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RIP Grumpy Cat :( I will miss you.


« Reply #3 on: February 15, 2010, 06:43:36 PM »

OMG this was one of my Favs of the time! 

Good Girls Don't by THE KNACK

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Zc3KXwd8ZWQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Zc3KXwd8ZWQ</a>

 
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Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware/Of giving your heart to a dog to tear  -- Rudyard Kipling

One who doesn't trust is never deceived...

'I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind' -Edgar Allen Poe
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