KNUKING THE KNACK INSIDE THEIR OWN REACTOR

KNUKING THE KNACK INSIDE THEIR OWN REACTOR

Connubial Alliance Invades the Heart Of the Beast

by

Richard Riegel

Teresa and I are shuffling down the ramp of the 707, still groggy from the many time zones we’ve breached coming out here to Los Angeles, when we’re met by the first symbol of the Knack’s largess. The furiously smiling fellow from the limousine service, a huge Conway Twitty-lookalike, is holding a big sign that proclaims: “REIGELL”.

My fuzzy brain re-examines the various vowels and consonants normally contained in my surname, and decides, yes, that does seem to be me, or us. We’re still not convinced that we’re worthy of such limo transportation—we paid our way into the Cincinnati Knack concert that got us started on this magic carpet ride, after all—but our driver, Tom, has already snatched up our bag, and is propelling us over the moving sidewalk toward the parking lot.

Tom asks, “What are you folks out here for?” “Oh, I’m doing a story on a rock group, the Knack.” “A rock group? Which one?” “Uh...I think they’re called ‘The Knack’.” “ ‘The Knack’, eh? I don’t believe I’ve ever driven any of them.” Well, Andy Warhol never promised you guys more than fifteen minutes of fame, after all, even if this is your home base.

We’re blinking with pleasant disbelief at the warm December sun, and at the exotic palm trees lining the driveway, but Tom is already hustling us into the back of a two-block-long Cadillac limo. Teresa and I stare at the maroon plush upholstery and at the crystal bar set with awe and dumbfoundment, not daring to touch a thing, as Tom speeds off toward our hotel. The back seat of this limo reminds me of nothing so much as those days when I was about thirteen, and my father had acquired an ancient Cadillac hearse to scavenge the mechanicals. I used to lie on the rich blue plush in the spooky rear of that abandoned hearse, wondering how death would feel... Jim Morrison, we are here!

. We’re staying at the Continental Hyatt House, right in the heart of the fabled Sunset Strip the Doors and Love mythologized for me back in the mid-60’s, when L.A. seemed the very antithesis of mellow. But as Teresa and I lunch in the coffee shop, at the dead hour of 2 p.m. on a Wednesday, the restaurant appears to be filled with those Nathaniel West grotesques that outsiders always suspect Los Angeles of harboring. The middle-aged ladies in the booth ahead, haggard beneath the suntans of their discontent, look like a coven of witches in their expensive clothes, as they linger over their drinks.

This time we’re ripping off Phil Spector rather than the Beatles. -Doug Fieger

The pre-geriatric businessmen at the table behind us are regaling each other with tales of complex (and successful) tax dodges, and Teresa decides that one of these codgers is a dead ringer for Ed Sullivan, while 1 hold out for Jack Benny; we’re reasonably sure that both those celebs expired during the decade just now coming toitsclose, so it-can’t-be-him etc., when Ed Sullivan/Benny graciously gives us the word from beyond the grave. A little deaf to the ' tax-saving discussion, he suddenly booms forth to his fellows (and thus to the whole restaurant): “Did surgery affect your memory? It did mine!”

Quicker than we can consult our own fading memories of Ohio, a black man wearing a matador’s hat and jacket made entirely of green and gold rhinestones and spangles enters the restaurant^, and walks briskly through the tables, solemnly and silently sizing up each set of diners from behind his inscrutable shades. Could this trick-or-treat apparition be our driver to the Knack’s secret recording sessions?

But he leaves without claiming us, and the real driver, Stephen Bronstein of the Knack’s Upstart IVlanagement, arrives to take us in hand. As Bronstein is driving us down Sunset Blvd., among the generalissue Porsches and BMW’s, beneath the gigantic billboards promoting LPs I dismissed after hearing one cut, we spot the green & gold Mr. Bojangles again, charging down the sidewalk with two extravagantly voluptuous black women in tow. “Oh, yes,” says Stephen, to our incredulous visitors’ stares,“he’s a pimp, out with his women looking for some business.”

We pass Burbank, and the faithful queuing up for Carson at NBC at midafternoon, and plunge deeper into suburbia, to Glendale’s MCA-Whitney Studios, where the Knack are laying down their second album,. ...But The Little Girls Understand Bronstein informs us that the Knack have picked this relatively out-of-the-way location to keep the press (excluding me, of course) and the other curiosity-seekers away, so that they can record this album with the efficiency and dispatch of their first set,.that $18,000 bargain, Get The Knack, double-platinum-and-still-counting as they returned to the studio. The Knack began work here a little over a week ago, Stephen tells us, but already have all the instrumental tracks, and most of the vocals, safely in the can..

"Rock 'n' roll...Is not something to belleve in. It's just music...Berton Averre"

We stride boldly into MCA-Whitney, poised to confront the profoundly elusive Knack on their own turf, and, yep, there’s one of ’em now, big as life: Knack symbol Doug Fieger, easily recognizable from certain controversial album cover photos of recent months, is locked in a consuming kiss with a rather knubile Knack constituent. Bronstein pries Fieger out of the embrace article we thought it was fair to us.

’TsmiTinto fiege/e Jffl ning face, dnd c up “Beatle-clones stone donemaster close * peter Townshend’s prepowerful sensors in my bionic journalist’s hand have been probing Doug’s own paw, and are printing out the essential Fieger-data on my brainscan: “RACE: HUMAN; SEX: MALE; ORIGIN: OAK PARK, MICHIGAN; AGE: INVALID TRANSACTION, PLEASE RESUBMIT.”

Sharona (yes, the Sharona), Fieger’stop ten-validated girlfriend, arrives with a copy of the Rolling Stone “1979: The Year In Music” issue, and Doug snatches it and begins systematically scanning each page, until he locates the inevitable photo of the Knack, on page 72. Guitarist Berton Averre comes in purposefully studying the California Motor Vehicle Code rulebook, in preparation for his driver’s test scheduled for the next morning.

After several more minutes of desultory conversation among those of us gathered in the studio lounge, Fieger suddenly jumps to his feet, says, “Let’s do it, gentlemen!”, and he and Averre and the thus-far-anonymous, sandy-haired, vaguely English guy who’s been making quietly sardonic remarks between sips of his coffee, march off down the hall to the recording rooms.

When the principals have had sufficient time to get. settled into their studio roles, Teresa and I are allowed to enter the control booth to witness the proceedings. We tiptoe stealthily behind the sandy-haired stranger, now enthroned on a huge leather chair, in front of a control board gleaming with hundreds of switches and yellow dials and green and red lights; it’s finally hit us that celebrities really do grow on palm trees in this burg, and that our supposed Knack roadie is none other than ace producer Mike Chapman, at this moment white-hot off his successes producing Blondie, Exile, the first Knack album, and a bag of other North American smashes.

Teresa and I squeeze into the comer of the couch, behind the fearsome Chapman, and watch the headphoned Fieger and Averre beyond the control room window, intently singing repeated “You’re my destiny” ’s into the suspended microphone, while Chapman studies his gauges. Doug and Berton are adding harmony vocals to what sounds like an already very polished new song, and they go over and over these few seconds of the total cut, until Chapman has exactly what he wants, and tersely advises his engineer, Lenise Bent: “Track it.” When she then plays bad* the finished product, with all 24 tracks suddenly massed upon each other, the overwhelming volume and superb clarity of the song seem to bombard us from all corners of the control room.

Doug comes into the booth to catch the playback himself, and plops down by us on the couch. Sharona also enters, and as we slide over to make room for her beside Doug, he protests, “Don’t bother, she’s used to sitting on me,” the comers of his grin already arching up toward his glinting eyes, ecstatic over his Knack-lore joke. Sharona hops neatly onto his lap, and Doug comments, in reference to the exactitude of the just-finished recording, “That was our big production number...” “...all the other cuts were done in one to three takes,” finishes Sharona, Louie to Doug’s Huey or Dewey. “Yeah,” says Doug, “this time we’re ripping off Phil Spector rather than the Beaties,” and again he grins that extravagantly sardonic smirk.

"We could be 40, we know all the rock songs back that far. —Doug Fieger"

When Fieger and Averre return to the booth to add more harmonies, I notice how smoothly they’re able to work with Chapman, in a relationship liberally lubricated with mutual sarcasm. When Fieger comments on a track, “The level’s much better already,” Chapman fires back, “How would you fucking know? That’s my decision/’ Averre and Fieger come right back at Chapman with the retorts, and when their barrage gets too heavy, Chapman merely turns the speaker volume all the way down, and we’re left with the spectacle of Fieger’s rubber face, contorted with silent laughter beyond the glass. j

After Chapman and the boys have several more polished tracks salted away, we retire to the lounge to begin to get at all those pressing Knack queries that brought me out here. Perhaps as a consequence of not being interviewed for so long, Fieger and Averre have a whole stack of aphorisms, and of rationalizations (of the Beatlesborrowing for which they’re eternally scolded) ready for me.

Berton: “The only thing to believe in about rock’n’roll is that it’s not something to believe in. It’s just music, entertainment.” Doug: “Back in the Midwest I had to have rock’n’roll fantasies to live with the reality around me. Out here in California, I need the reality of rock’n’roll to live in the fantasy world of this place.” Berton: “That stun about Us stealing from the Beatles, that’s just our generation, we grew up with those influences all around us.” (Reminding me that just a few hours before, in the restaurant, I had noticed an insidiously subliminal muzak version of “Yesterday” wafting over us.)

Okay, fair enough so far, these Knackconfessions would appear to fit right into the preconceptions of either friends or enemies of the band, but it seems that Doug Fieger wants to play, along with the “calculatedrock” tag hung on his group, for all it’s worth. We mention the Monkees, as having occupied a Knack-parallel role in the “hip”-vs. mass-taste clashes of the 60’s, and Dpug’s mouth is off and running: “The Monkees made great records! They should’ve, they had Hal Blaine on drurfis, Larry Knechtel on keyboards, Carole King and Neil Diamond writing songs for them...,” he goes on down the line, emphatically telling off the studio stars on his fingers.

Of course, not that I’ve actually seen or heard the Knack playing their own instruments here in the studio, so far, and Fieger’s no help, In his next breath, he’s assuring me that he’s really a bassist, and is not yet that adept on a six-string guitar: “It’s true, when we first do a new song, Berton has to show me the fingering, I have to follow him note by note. Isn’t that right, guys?” “Sure!” confirm Knack roadies Peter and Jeff, grinning like.. .like regular Doug Regers. In the meantime, Doug is quietly picking out an expert “She’s A Woman” on his justcustom-rebuilt Rickenbacker six-string.

The Monkees made great records! —Doug Fieger

Fieger also plays fast and loose with the concept of the Knack’s ages, which I’ve steadfastly avoided asking about, thus far. Doug teasingly drops all kinds of chronological references from his rock background, which I don’t even need a pocket calculator to know don’t add up. Fieger: “What am I? Like 13? And my parents are going to let me got to a Beatles concert in downtown Detroit?” (ca. 1964?) “I was in a band at 14Y2, opening for all the big groups at the Grande Ballroom.” (ca. 1969?) “I mean,” he says, with an even more wicked gleam in his eye, “We could be 40, we know all the rock songs back that far.” (ca. I960?) “Right,” piles on Averre, “and our families were good liberals, we grew up hearing all that stuff like the Weavers.” (ca. 1962?)

“Enough, guys,” I say, “you can cut the kidding. You realize, don’t you, that when you finally grant Rolling Stone an interview, that they’// use Carbon-14 technology to date you once and for all. I’ll just read about it then.” Fieger’s face breaks into that consuming send-up of a grin one more time.

A few minutes later, after bassist Prescott Niles and drurtimer Bruce Gary have come into the studio to add their talents to the evening’s further recording, the Knack are suddenly wholesaling the age clues once again. A brief discussion of classic TV shows has rapidly returned the Knack to the womb of The Rifleman, and instantly the four members of the Knack are drawing and firing at each other with smoking, blue-steel index fingers. The Knack have become nostalgically naked here in the hallway of the MCA-Whitney Studios, in fond remembrance of what they assure me were “Fanner 50” cap pistols.

Okay, there it is. Anybody out there want to check back through their comic book collection, and let me know the exact year ‘ Fanner 50’s were popular? I’ll work out the rest of the math.

N Next morning, Teresa and I take a bus tour of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, thirsty to soak up the stars’ homes and the other sights, just like normal tourists. Our bus driver turns out to be the folksy-philosophical type I thought we’d left back in the Midwest. Undaunted by all the genuine Californian glamour surrounding him, our driver zeroes in on the real tidbits of the local ambience: “I haven’t seen Jimmy Durante out in front of his house there for some time, and they’ve even taken away the bars he used to lean on, there by the driveway. I expect Jimmy must be in a rest home by now.” And, on passing our own Continental Hyatt House: “Gene Autry built that hotel to be a showcase on Sunset Blvd., but he sold it later when all the hippies started moving onto the Strip. No, you don’t see those hippies down here much anymore, I think they all went to Sweden or somewhere about 19 and 69, to dodge the draft. ” Or somewhere.

Back at MCA-Whitney for our second day of watching the Knack record, we find Berton Auerre’s good-liberal mother likewise in attendance, astoday (December 13) happens to be her son’s first birthday since the long-aspiring Knack became an overnight sensation. Appropriately enough, Mrs. Averre’s gift to Berton is a board game, Beverly Hills: “The Game of Status and Power”.

This anniversary reminds expert gamesman Doug Fieger just how far the Knack have come since last December, and he’s already tallying their legend, in a futureshock This Is Your Life scenario for Mrs. Averre: “And I remember all those times I’d sit in your kitchen and tell you and Mr. Averre, ‘This year we’ll make it!’, and then the next year I’d be sitting there saying the same thing.”

Sharona smiles blandly when Fieger then informs us, “I didn’t get any sleep last night, either, all this ‘physical fitness’.” (big eyes at Sharona) “is keeping me from getting my rest. ” As with many of the other members of the Knack entourage, it’s difficult to estimate Sharona’s age (19? 21? 24?) on first encounter, but there does seem to be something of the eternal rock-infatuated teen in Sharona’s relentless adoration of Fieger’s every mpve. Her dark eyes dart around after each of his words or gestures v and seem particularly entranced when he’s singing (to her!) in the studio.

Prescott Niles buttonholes me at this juncture, mock-indignant that I’m spending all my time interviewing common ornery lead vocalists and lead guitarists, when it’s obvious that bassists are essential to the success of groups like the Knack, too. I’ve just read in a Knack tour program that Niles is the “sensitive” Knackster, given to keeping a journal of his impressions on tour, and I’ve noticed him reading Hesse’s Magister Ludi in the studio. So I’m all set to pump Prescott for the literary angle on the whole Knack saga, when he excuses himself to go outside with the roadies and toss a football around. Sorry, kids, it was high school all over again for me, couldn’t compete with the jocks then, either.

After several more hours of successful recording, the entire group of people adjourns to a larger room in the studio building, where two birthday cakes (one cake has 4 candles, but who’s counting?) and other goodies have been set out in Berton Averre’s honor. I’ve long since absolved the Knack of the nefarious commercial calculations universally ascribed to them—they are calculating, but benignly so, it would seem—when Mike Chapman commits the first noteworthy fraud of thiis whole encounter. Deputized to slice and serve Berton’s cakes (apparently in recognition of his infallible glued-to-thepulse-of-pop fingers), Chapman takes a step toward the cakes, and then falls forward, in an elaborately staged lunge, so that his flu-laden face lands smack in the center of the chocolate cake. Mike stands up again, and leers at us through his frosting-sticky brownface, as though he’s made up as a sweettoothed aborigine for some bizarre new Chinn & Chapman studio-readymade group.

“Oh, gee,” I think, gratefully, “They knew that Teresa and I came all the way from Cincinnati, and they wanted us to see some realrockstar decadence before we left L.A.” I carefully carve myself a hunk of chocolate cake, from just outside the impression of Chapman’s miilion-dollar face, and wolf down all the ambience. Could be a good story to pass on to my grandkids someday.

Don't botherf she's used to sitting on me. —Doug Fieger

Chapman retires to get cleaned up, and we find that the champagne is making Doug Fieger more nostalgically aware of the Knack’s (and everybody’s) Americanprayer roots by the moment. He points to the Jim Morrison badge on his lapel, and says, “Wasn’t it great that I happened to be wearing this when Robby dropped by?” “Robby who?” I ask, instantly fearful that 1 may very well have cake on my own face. “Robby Kneger. The Doors’ guitarist. Didn’t you see him?” Of course I had seen him, that shy, unassuming spectre with the frizzy, receding gray hair, speaking quietly to the Knack members before they recorded. This isL.A., the land of rock fantasy, check, and I didn’t believe that I was seeing Krieger, at the same time that my subconscious was recognizing him. “Just imagine,” says Doug, with a Patti Smith-like madness burning in his eyes, “he was on stage with Morrison!”

So the Knack’s rock’n’roll roots are as right-thinking as yours or mine, after all. Not that Doug Fieger’s the new Lizard King, not by a long shot (he also speaks in tongues of recent communications from another soul brother, Peter Tork, once a Monkee, lately a singing waiter curious to know just how the Knack grabbed that elusive rock success), but the Knack’s music turns out to be inspired by some of the same r’n’r ghosts that’ve haunted us all...

Back at our hotel late that night, as we’re exiting the cab that’s returned us from the Knack, we find at least one hippie who didn’t flee the Strip in 1969. A long-haired guy with a face pocked with scars that could be either syphillis or leprosy (at best), asks us for the obligatory spare change. He shrugs off the cab driver’s advice to get lost, and our curious stares, with: “A Mexican gang did this to me. Don’t ever leave your money in aTiotel room, it’ll get ripped off, that’s what happened to me. Hey, I’m a musician, I was in a band, too.”

Hey, man, aren’t we all. W