We don’t mock the recently departed… rule of thumb is give it a day or two. But Doug Fieger, the leader of the Knack who died on Sunday at the age of fifty-seven, would be used to it if he knew.
The Knack were a flawed disaster who managed, who knows how, to express the post-punk moment perfectly. All skinny ties and sexism everybody hated them -I think I called em the antichrists in a review, something like that.
But we were older than -we believed in stuff.
Today “My Sharona” deserves its place in the rock pantheon because it sounds good and it isn’t mean at all. “Good Girls Don’t” wasn’t half bad either.
Doug got a life and a career between the two and why shouldn’t he?
RIP Doug, you had the knack at least twice.