Between the two halves of My Sharona with the incredibly recognizable hook, there is a long bridge where the song is almost completely different. The other day I was listening to a classic rock station and heard what seemed to be a very long version of Mellencamp’s I Need a Lover that begins with a very (very!) long introduction that follows the same chord structure, and has very similar arrangement (driving beat, long held electric guitar wails, etc). The Mellencamp song came first, but the two definitely sound like fruit from the same tree to me.
Would The Knack have any reason to insert that specific song snippet into their single? Were they mocking the incredibly long and totally superfluous intro (and was it the kind of joke that everyone would have been in on)? This was 1978/1979, so I was just a wee lad and was not plugged in to pop culture. Can anyone who was around then or who is up on their 1970s pop music lend a hand?
They just sound similar - there were a lot of examples of songs that had extended intros (Funeral For a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding by Elton John), middle breaks (Whole Lotta Love) and outros (Layla, Hey Jude) - it was an indulgent time, my child.
And Burton Averre of The Knack was a smokin’ hot guitarist - that Sharona lead (which I butcher mercilessly when we play the song in my mid-life crisis band) is really a well-structured, rockin’ lead.
As for John Cougar (wasn’t he just JC at the time? This was before JCM and finally JM…). I would hear that long-intro version on the radio back in the day - not bad, but it isn’t nearly as good as the Sharona break, IMHO.
fwiw, that whole album, Get the Knack is a pop gem - great songs, tight musicianship - it sounds great up to this day in a timeless rock sorta way, because it doesn’t have any/many of the “signature” New Wave sounds that can really date music from back then…
My guess is no, because **Johnny Cougar ** wasn’t famous then, and *I Need A Lover * wasn’t released in the US until late '79. *My Sharona * was released in June of the same year, and reached #1 in August. It’s a fairly common sort of riff, anyway, obviously meant to showcase Burton Averre’s excellent lead playing.
ETA: Should’ve known WordMan would be on the case…
Just to add to the two excellent replies already given…I vividly remember the summer My Sharona came out. At the time The Knack were far, far more well known than John Cougar. They were the teenybopper “It” band of the moment, I don’t really remember hearing much about John Cougar until a year or two later, and even then he wasn’t a huge star until the mid 80s.
It seems very unlikely to me that The Knack would choose to spoof such a relative unknown at that point.
Good album, fer sure. One thing I remember is how there were full page b&w, Beatle-esque, Dezo Hoffman style photos of them and Get The Knack come-on in Rolling Stone, Creem, Circus, et al, and thinking “whatta load of hype!”, and it was, for they shot right into the charts. But they were good, too. There were a handful of skinny tie-type bands coming out then that I still like, like The Plimsouls and The Romantics, that have endured (at least for me).
It’s interesting that your appraisal of The Knack’s first album is so positive because the backlash against the group began almost as soon as “My Sharona” hit the top of the charts. I remember there was a “Nuke The Knack!” movement that was as strong as the earlier “Disco Sucks!” campaign. Much of it had to do with the “next Beatles” hype surrounding the band that you mentioned in your post. In 1979, when a group started openly comparing itself the Beatles it was asking for trouble and the fact the group’s subsequent releases were artistically and commercially lackluster didn’t help things. Within a year, The Knack was playing to small clusters of apathetic fans and they were written off as a joke band that somehow got lucky.
As for my opinion, I could never completely hate The Knack. “My Sharona” proved to be the song that killed disco and for that, they earned my lifelong gratitude.
**NDP ** - I hear you and yeah, there was a Knack backlash, as you say, largely because My Sharona has one of those beats that can drive you crazy if it gets played too much, a la “Mickey” by Toni Basil (Oh Mickey you’re so fine - sorry for getting that stuck in your ear, folks) or Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne. And yeah, they didn’t handle the press well at all at the time and that contributed to a backlash. Edit: in hindsight, I would add that the whole punk/New Wave thing hurt them in a way, too - sure The Knack weren’t disco, but they weren’t angry, either, so they lacked the proper credibility vs. other great songwriters like Elvis Costello or Joe Jackson at the time…
But the songs themselves did well - they had Sharona and **Good Girls Don’t ** (great song!) on the charts, with plenty of others getting play on FM at the time, like Frustrated, Your Number or Your Name and a couple of others.
I loved the first album, and I really enjoyed the way they swiped and/or adapted the Beast Of Burden riff on Can’t Put A Price On Love on the second album. I have both of these albums on my MP3 player. Now I know what I’ll be listening to on the drive home. Thanks.
