Say no more. Fieger took a number of years off to clear his head and live life. He wrote occasional songs, one of which won a Grammy for the Manhattan Transfer (Baby Scats Dirty"?) and guested on a Was (Not Was) album. Astute couch potatoes may also have spotted Fieger playing cards with Dan Connor on Roseanne. "I've done three Roseannes," says Fieger. "Tom and Roseanne are good friends of mine and wonderful people. And they love to have their friends on the show. See, I'm a cigar smoker, so they said I could come smoke cigars and play cards. I jumped at the chance. I was an actor before I was a musician. I studied with Lee Strasberg and was a Shakespearean actor when I was a kid."
Fieger just finished a solo album with Don Was producing, to be or not to be released after he sees the reunited Knack thing through. He's certainly not averse to the band recording together again, but as yet there are no set plans.
The interest certainly seems to be there, unlike 1991, when the band first returned to active duty. L.A.'s legendary deejay Rodney Bingenheimer, whose radio station KROQ played "My Sharona" to death when it first came out, is thrilled that the Knack are back in the Top 20 in Los Angeles.
"There's a whole Eighties thing happening in nightclubs right now," says Bingenheimer, "where they will only play Blondie, Duran Duran and Knack songs. There's a renewed appreciation." Peter Case, onetime member of the Plimsouls, another Los Angeles New Wave group that signed a record deal in the wake of the Knack's meteoric rise, confirms that people are after him to reunite with his old band. With a new album of his own out, he doesn't much feel like second-guessing what the Knack's return to the music world means. "It's not good to despise anyone's work. Work is holy," Case says. "You could do misguided work for years and then turn around and do something brilliant. Maybe they're gonna rock the house down, who knows?" So what does it all mean? A day of reckoning? A resurgence in popularity for the Knack?
"Nah!" says Ron Fair, also the VP of A&R at RCA. "I think there's a handful of people out there who'll enjoy the nostalgia of it. The single's doing really good . . . but it's not something that's going to catapult the Knack to the forefront of pop culture." RCA's not putting any money into pushing "My Sharona," but Fair hopes "things go well for them, because they're really nice guys."
Will RCA's A&R department consider re-signing the Knack if "My Sharona" becomes a runaway hit?
"We're not planning on re-signing them," Fair says.
Fieger, for his part, has no illusions of what the Knack's place is in the grand spectrum of pop, or what rock's place is in this ever-changing world. "We're a live band, and, if I do say so myself, a damned good one. A really fun rock n' roll experience. I'm not going to say coming to see the Knack or putting on a Knack album is necessarily going to change your life, but I'm not sure any rock experience is going to do that anymore."
Maybe not. But the rock experience the Knack provides is simply a damned good time. And that should be enough.
