The Knack’s Doug Fieger died of lung cancer earlier this week.
Though he may be best known among politicos as the younger
brother of Michigan’s 1998 Democratic gubernatorial nominee and
Jack Kevorkian lawyer Geoffrey Fieger, Doug Fieger saved rock ‘n’
roll more than thirty years ago.
In the late 1970s, there was no escaping disco. To put disco’s
dominance into perspective, members of the Gibb family occupied
the top spot on the Billboard Top 100 chart for 28
of the 52 weeks between July 30, 1977 and July 29, 1978. In the
year prior to The Knack’s takeover of the top spot on
Billboard’s Hot 100, the only #1 songs that could be
categorized as embracing a rock style were Nick Gilder’s “Hot
Child in the City” and The Doobie Brothers’s “What a Fool
Believes” — which Billboard magazine accused, perhaps
unfairly, of “jumping on [the] disco bandwagon.”
To the frustration of their hardcore fans, established rock acts
adopted an if-you-can’t-beat-‘em-join-‘em approach to prevailing
trends. Rod Stewart found number one again with “Da Ya Think I’m
Sexy?,” the most maligned rock crossover, rivaled only by Kiss’s
shameless 1979 hit “I Was Made for Loving You.” Musical
chameleons The Rolling Stones, who had earlier aped Gram Parsons
on “Honky Tonk Woman” and T. Rex on “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll,”
enjoyed their final stay at the top of the singles chart with
1978’s disco-infused “Miss You.” Incorporating a rollicking
high-hat and tight, chicken-scratch chords ensured that Pink
Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” enjoyed four weeks
at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1980.
Blondie, coming out of New York’s punk scene, ironically lost
little in street credibility when they hit #1 with the 1979 disco
song “Heart of Glass.”
Partly on the strength of the disco-drenched “(I Wish I Could Fly
Like) Superman,” The Kinks scored the highest charting studio
album of their career with “Low Budget.” ELO for all intents and
purposes became a full-fledged disco act for several years. The
disco-ball mesmerized Queen, David Bowie, and Roxy Music into
embracing the latest musical fad.
When not permeating rock radio, disco permeated pop culture.
Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” provided the Pittsburgh Pirates a
ubiquitous theme song for their 1979 championship run. It invaded
the silver screen through 1977’s Saturday Night Fever.
Disco wasn’t just music. It was a lifestyle that guided fashion
tastes (leisure suits, roller skates, polyester pants), where to
go on weekend nights, and what chemicals to ingest, imbibe, and
inhale: in — cocaine, poppers, Quaaludes; out — pot, acid,
beer.
So, in the summer of 1979, an oversaturated public was rife for a
rebellion against the gods of pop culture. Aggressive shirts,
boasting such slogans as “Disco Sucks” and “Death to Disco,”
began appearing on young inebriated mustachioed ruffians. On June
12, 1979, the pandemonium at Disco Demolition Night at
standing-room-only Comiskey Park became so uncontrollable that
the Chicago White Sox forfeited the second game of a
double-header against the Detroit Tigers.
Riding this cultural tsunami, The Knack’s “My Sharona” hit number
one on August 25, 1979. It stayed there through September, making
it Billboard’s top song of 1979.
Outside of the context of the late 1970s, there is little
remarkable about the song Doug Fieger sang and co-wrote. It
offers an infectious bass line, a slightly less catchy guitar
riff, and universally accessible lyrics about the pursuit of a
pretty girl that together occasionally erupt in a saccharine
power-pop crescendo (“My, My, My…Wooo!”). You
could dance to it, just not in a leisure suit beneath a mirror
ball amidst a cloud of amyl nitrate.
But in the context of the late 1970s, a lust song backed by
simple guitar, bass, and drums stood out. The Knack eschewed not
only the pretentiousness that led pop musicians to compose “rock
operas” about King Arthur, but the amateurism that resulted in a
“punk” movement of nasty untalented dilettantes more interested
in insulting the mainstream than in producing listenable music.
“My Sharona” was as much a rebellion against stale rock as it was
against vapid disco. The Knack aimed for the mainstream that
disco had captured and rock had abandoned. Capitol Records, which
had marketed them as the next Beatles, was only too happy to aid
The Knack in their commercial crusade to conquer the music world.
Preceding its six-week reign atop the charts, number ones
included Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell,” Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls,”
and Chic’s “Good Times.” By week five of its reign, “My Sharona”
had purged the entire top ten of disco. The Knack’s “My Sharona”
made Billboard’s #1 spot safe for Steve Miller, The J.
Geils Band, Men at Work, Joan Jett, and other rock acts that
would top the charts in its wake.
Disco certainly persisted, boasting chart toppers as late as
1981. But it never regained its late seventies stature atop the
music world. It survived by influencing other genres (club, pop,
rap), but as a distinct genre it largely disappeared by the early
1980s.
Pre-“My Sharona,” rock acts appropriated signature scratchy
guitars, rolling hi-hats, dance-groove bass lines, and even the
symphonic strings and happy horns that characterized Club 54’s
playlist. Post-“My Sharona,” disco acts denied their genre. Like
hair bands Poison and Cinderella post-grunge, KC and the Sunshine
Band, the Village People, and Chic struggled for an audience
after “My Sharona” had left its mark.
The post-punk attitude that condemned rock musicians who found a
popular audience as “sell outs” condemned the overhyped Knack to
obscurity. Ironically, the same purists who cringed at The Kinks
or The Stones adding a disco song to their oeuvre, and thus laid
the groundwork for the success of a back-to-basics rock song such
as “My Sharona,” looked askance at any band, such as The Knack,
that had achieved mainstream success. The Knack released two
other top forty hits — including, notably, “Good Girls Don’t” —
and faded into rock lore.
More than thirty years after “My Sharona” hit number one, the
Billboard singles chart is more of a cultural wasteland
than the one that Doug Fieger and company confronted in the
summer of 1979. The absence of a “My Sharona”-style song to break
through the pop juggernaut today makes one appreciate what The
Knack accomplished over three decades ago.
