 The Knack
The Knack exemplified American New Wave - a short haired,
60s-influenced band playing straight-ahead pop-rock while sporting
skinny ties and modish suits.
Charting worldwide in 1979 with the catchy, syncopated My
Sharona, The Knack were briefly a bona fide pop
sensation. The single blared on car radios throughout that summer,
and their debut album, Get The Knack, sold 5 million
copies in the US.
In the States, the beaty, swinging follow-up Good Girls
Don't stalled just outside the Top 10, but in the UK it
didn't
even reach the Top 50. Because their success was based on one
thing (Sharona) they were never allowed to do anything
different and the British press - who viewed The Knack
suspiciously as bandwagon-jumpers - grew very hostile to the
band.
 Suddenly
it was all over. The records stopped selling and the girls stopped
screaming.
Critics began to attack the band's Beatlesesque 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 they
reunited to record Round Trip, the band gave their final
performance at an Acapulco nightclub in December 1981.
The Knack were later embraced by Nirvana's Kurt Cobain,
who rated the Get The Knack album in his Top 20
all-time favourite records, and declared that Nirvana sounded
like "a 90s version of Cheap Trick or The
Knack".
The band reformed in 1991 without drummer Bruce Gary, but he
rejoined them to make a Badfinger tribute album in 1997.
Gary passed away in Los Angeles on 22 August 2006, aged 54.
Doug Fieger battled brain and lung cancer until his death on 14
February 2010, in Woodland Hills, California. He was 57.
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