To those who love a good beat, ‘My Sharona’ was all his

Maybe you didn’t know Bruce Gary. But I guarantee if you were capable of conscious thought in the summer of 1979, you knew Bruce Gary’s handiwork. You may, in fact, have been driven to the brink of insanity by it.

Da da boom, da da boom, da boom, da da boom....

No? Let me supply the lyric:

“M-M-M-My Sharona!”

That was the Knack and that was Bruce Gary, the band’s original drummer, who died of cancer Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 55.

Drummers everywhere -- from Def Leppard’s one-armed skins basher to amateurs whose only percussion is pencils-on-desks, fingers-on-steering-wheels -- should mourn his passing. Few are the drummers who so resolutely pound their way into the nation’s skull.

I spoke to Gary a few years ago for a profile of the Knack. The drums are not typically an instrument that attract the shy and retiring, and Gary, the son of a tile and linoleum salesman in Canoga Park, was a bundle of pre-Ritalin energy in search of an outlet. He found it in an older cousin’s drum set. When the cousin got bored with the drums, he gave them to Gary, who set them up at home and played along with his older sister’s Little Richard and Ray Charles records.

A drum set in the house! His parents must have been thrilled.

“The reason they allowed that was that I was a very hyper kid and they thought that would help physically get that steam out,” he told me.

It certainly got Gary out. He left home at 15, then played with the likes of Albert Collins, Jack Bruce, Mick Taylor and Dr. John. In the 1970s he linked up with Doug Fieger, a Detroit native who had written a bunch of songs about adolescent lust. One day Fieger and lead guitarist Berton Averre unveiled a song they’d penned about Sharona Alperin, a teenage girl Fieger was obsessed with.

“When the song was first brought in, I was a bit dubious of it,” Gary said. “I remember saying, ‘No, I don’t want to play that.’ ”

Drummers don’t stay employed long by refusing to play the singer’s songs, so Gary came up with something to match “My Sharona’s” stuttering style.

“The way I approached that beat was very much like a surf stomp,” he said. “Surf bands play lots of songs with no cymbals, just toms and snare drum.” He also borrowed from “Going to a Go-Go,” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Then he added something he considered central to the song’s success, something called a flam.

A flam is a technique in which two drum strokes are slightly staggered, first one drumstick, then the other, just barely apart. It gives a fuller sound. And that’s the sound at the beginning of “My Sharona,” a ditty that gets under your skin and never goes away.

The song swept the country, reached No. 1 and spurred sales of 6 million copies of the “Get the Knack” album. When the inevitable backlash came it was in the form of parodies with titles including “My Bologna,” “My Menorah,” “My Corolla” and “Ayatollah,” each goofy lyric prefaced with Da da boom, da da boom, da boom, da da boom....

The Knack’s original lineup released two more albums and then split up acrimoniously, much of the animus stemming from the fact that drummer Gary and singer Fieger couldn’t stand each other. They have different memories of the day “My Sharona’s” beat came together. Fieger insists he demonstrated exactly what he wanted Gary to play. Gary grumbled to me that he should have received some of the hit song’s publishing royalties, so essential was his drumming.

I saw the squabble as another example of the timeless battle between the Singer and the Drummer. The former perpetually tells the latter to keep it down, as if an instrument that is meant to be hit with a stick could be played quietly. In the decades since “My Sharona,” an industry has arisen to create “quiet” drumsticks, unsatisfying assemblages of plastic and rubber, bundles of thin dowels. They all appear to have been designed by singers.

Fieger has had his own health problems recently. Earlier this month he underwent surgery to have two brain tumors removed.

The band posted a message on its website: “On behalf of The Knack, we are shocked and saddened by Bruce’s death. He was an integral part of our sound not to mention a great drummer. Our hearts go out to his family, friends and loved ones.”

I asked Gary if he ever got sick of hearing that song, of playing that beat. No, he said.

“What came out of me was something that was unique. I’m very proud of it. How many drummers can say they have a drumbeat that is a total signature beat? Not a lot.... I can go up to somebody’s door and do the ‘My Sharona’ beat and they know who I am.”

If, as I hope, Bruce Gary is knocking on heaven’s door, I think I know the beat he’s rapping out. In fact, I can hear it right now.