Earlier today, a friend of mine posted an antiquated photo on Facebook of the deservedly late Jeffrey Epstein that dated back to his days as a math teacher at the prestigious Dalton School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. His reasons for posting the image were a little foggy — something about trying to establish a jokey conspiracy theory about Epstein having ties to John Lennon, whose son Sean was a Dalton student.
In response to same, someone pointed out that the shot of the young Epstein bore a resemblance to Ben Stiller, but I countered with the observation that he more resembled a member of The Knack, as sleazily immortalized on the sleeve of their debut album from 1979, Get The Knack. This tenuous connection was made all the more fitting given the Knack’s notoriously brazen affinity for the pruriently verboten — as best exemplified on songs like “Good Girls Don’t,” “Baby Talks Dirty,” “That’s What the Little Girls Do” ….I’m not making these up…. and, of course, “My Sharona,” wherein Knack vocalist/songwriter Doug Fieger famously conceded that he always got it “up for the touch of the younger kind.” Yeah, that hasn’t aged too well, has it.
Sure, it’s easy to recoil from this inarguably unseemly aspect of The Knack, but who among us — of a certain age, at least — did not warm to the inimitable strains of “My Sharona” in its heyday? While I can say that I’ve never owned a copy of Get The Knack, I'd be lying through my teeth to say I don’t enjoy that song, even this many years after the fact. While I didn’t buy the LP when it came out, I vividly remember buying the cassette of Chipmunk Punk, a dubiously assembled clutch of deeply debatable “punk” songs of the day covered by Alvin & The Chipmunks, which featured no less than three Knack compositions, “My Sharona” foremost among them. Even then, I was struck by the lazy or oblivious inclusion of that “touch of the younger kind” line, to say nothing of Fieger’s assertion of the sense of “victory runnin’ up the length of [his] thigh” on what was ostensibly a children’s record.
Since the dawn of rock’n’roll, questionable, provocative, risqué and downright objectionable lyrics have been a part of the proceedings. Whether chalked up to poetic license or shifts in sensibility, popular culture has long overlooked myriad examples of lyrical narratives that skirt the lines of taste, propriety, morality, good judgement, etc. We forgave Johnny Cash for shooting that guy in Reno just to watch him die, Bob Marley for shooting that sheriff and Robert Smith for killing that Arab (itself an allusion to Albert Camus’ “L’Etranger”), but something about The Knack’s unmissable focus on carnal knowledge of underage girls remains pretty uncomfortable. Of course, as someone who owns albums by cretins like GG Allin & The Murder Junkies, I can’t exactly feign any outrage with any credibility. But unlike ol' Geeg, The Knack took their icky schtick nationwide, and nobody really blinked.
Check out this clip of The Knack playing Carnegie Goddamn Hall in 1979 as a prime example. CARNEGIE HALL!!!
And yes, …. it still cooks. Sure, the Knack were largely considered an ironically “safe” alternative to the more volatile Punk Rock of the day (if you believed the sensationalism), given their clean-cut image and taut power-pop stylings. They were the squeaky-clean, skinny-tied New Wave prototype to offset the allegedly slovenly safety-pinned hordes. But whatever your stance on the band’s authenticity, chops, fashion sense or street cred, you can’t argue with the infectiousness and longevity of “My Sharona.” It remains a classic, for better or worse.
And even given all that I’m able to read into and project onto “My Sharona,” I still cannot deny my sheepish appreciation of it.
When people stop playing “P.Y.T.” by Michael Jackson, maybe I’ll reconsider.
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