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From	Mark London <mrl@psfc.mit.edu>
Subject	Story about the actual Sharona, from WSJ.
Date	Mon, 29 Apr 2019 00:11:39 -0400

[Part 1 text/plain utf-8 (6.5 kilobytes)] (View Text in a separate window)

By  Don Steinberg
April 24, 2019 9:52 a.m. ET

Even now, approaching the 40th anniversary of the biggest single of 
1979, Sharona Alperin can’t escape it.

“Oh my God, almost daily, almost anytime someone hears my name,” Ms. 
Alperin says. “They say ‘Oh, like ‘My Sharona?’ And then they say, ‘Oh, 
I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. You probably hear that all the 
time.’ ”

They have no idea. She’s not just a Sharona. She’s the Sharona, the 
object of the Knack’s bopping 1979 hit “My Sharona.” The band’s lead 
singer, Doug Fieger, wrote the song’s lustful lyrics about her when she 
was 17 and he was 26.

“Half the time I’ll say that’s me, and most of them don’t believe it,” 
says Ms. Alperin, who today sells high-end real estate around Los 
Angeles. She tells people that was her in the revealing white undershirt 
on the sleeve of the “My Sharona” 45. The single sold 500,000 copies, 
going gold within weeks of its June 1979 release.

“My Sharona” has never gone away. Ben Stiller built a memorable scene 
around the song in his 1994 directorial debut, “Reality Bites,” claiming 
it for Generation X. Nirvana did a grunge version. The tune was reported 
to be on President George W. Bush’s iPod in 2005. These days hipster 
bands like Royal Blood play covers of the song. It still has life on 
classic rock radio stations, terrestrial and satellite, streaming 
services and with college pep bands and party DJs.

It’s an odd kind of fame, being the person in the song.

“There was a time where if I met anybody younger whose name was Sharona, 
I’d say, ‘I just want you to know: You were named after me. It’s no big 
deal, I just want you to know,’ ” Ms. Alperin says. “And they’re like, 
‘Oh, my God, I totally was named after you.’ ”

Capitol Records released the single “My Sharona,” along with “Get the 
Knack,” the debut LP from the Los Angeles-based band. The photo on the 
back showed the four skinny-tied Knack members posed in front of 
old-school TV cameras, as if ready to perform for Ed Sullivan, in a nod 
to the Beatles, another Capitol act.

Rock critics mostly forgave the Beatles comparison. Billboard was among 
the publications praising the energy of the music at a time when 
crisp-sounding new-wave rock was on the rise.

“It was just a great, utterly radio-friendly pop song that called back 
to the classic tunes of the British invasion,” says Simon Glickman, 
managing editor of music industry publication HITS magazine. “The 
energy, that guitar attack.”

The Knack’s lead guitarist, Berton Averre, came up with the choppy riff 
that has made listeners pogo for decades. “I was listening to Elvis 
Costello’s second album, ‘This Year’s Model,’ and the drum break in 
‘Pump It Up’ was so primal,” says Mr. Averre, whose soaring guitar solo 
also fills most of the song’s second half. “I picked up the guitar and 
played something as simplistic and staccato as I could.”

“My Sharona” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart by August and 
stayed for six weeks.

“It was on every minute,” Ms. Alperin recalls. “It was on the airplane. 
I’d get off the airplane, and it was in the cab. I’d get to the hotel, 
and the top 40 band in the lounge would be playing it.”

“Get the Knack” separately went platinum, with a million copies sold.
The Knack on stage in Chicago in 1979. Their song ‘My Sharona’ became 
the No. 1 song of the year. PHOTO: PAUL NATKIN/GETTY IMAGES

Mr. Fieger had a mad crush on Ms. Alperin, who’d started attending Knack 
performances at L.A. clubs like the Troubadour and the Starwood before 
the band had a record deal. She says he chased her for a year, but she 
was happily in another relationship when the song came out.

Mr. Fieger also wrote “Frustrated,” “(She’s So) Selfish,” and other 
songs on the debut album with her on his mind, Mr. Averre says. His 
lyrics were so suggestive that some of the lines feel inappropriate even 
to Google today. Mr. Fieger, who died in 2010, said he was writing from 
the perspective of a 14-year-old boy.

“Lyrically, it was a truly hormonal record,” Mr. Glickman says.

Mr. Fieger eventually did woo Sharona. They were together for three or 
four years, she says. The Knack issued a second album in 1980, and 
others later, but remained famous mostly for just one song.

Ms. Alperin posed for the “My Sharona” single, and a photo of her became 
the cover of the Knack’s second album, titled “…But the Little Girls 
Understand.”

“I literally am a girl who went to yeshiva—and then was plastered 
everywhere,” she says. “That was when a music store like Tower Records 
would have gigantic albums hung on the outside.”

Her parents, she says, were cool about it. “And the band was accessible. 
They came over for Shabbat dinner.”
Doug Fieger, lead singer of the Knack, backstage with Sharona Alperin, 
subject of many of his lyrics, in the early 1980s. PHOTO: SHARONA ALPERIN

She enjoyed her time in the rock world. “I remember being at dinner with 
Cher and the Kiss guy [Gene Simmons]. I spoke Hebrew with him.” But she 
looks back with open eyes on those years dating an older rock star.

“Is there a more possessive word than ‘my’?” she says now. “I mean, 
calling somebody ‘mine?’ ”

She married someone else. Terri Nunn of the band Berlin sang “Take My 
Breath Away” at her wedding. Now Ms. Alperin is a single mom with a 
daughter, Eden, in college and a son, Adam, in high school. (Sharona is 
her middle name. Her given first name, which she never really used, is Eve.)

She’s also a cancer survivor who kept working through 36 rounds of 
chemotherapy. “I didn’t want people to feel bad for me,” she says. “I 
live and breathe real estate, no joke, seven days a week. Of course 
people want to see a house on a Saturday. Of course there are Sunday 
open houses.”

In 2002, she set up her real estate website at mysharona.com. Her office 
receives a steady flow of fan mail, ranging from flattering to creepy. 
While she was showing a house the other day, a package arrived 
containing a six-page letter plus three versions of her famous photo and 
a white tank-top undershirt to autograph. She signed it all.

She hasn’t really tried to escape the song, just take control of what it 
means.

“I remember people used to say, like, ‘Why are you breaking up with 
Doug?’ ” Ms. Alperin says. “I’d tell them, because I want to be my 
Sharona now.”

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