THE KNACK RISES OUT OF THE ASHES

Remember the Michael Jackson backlash? You think Madonna and Sean are facing one now? Those are nothing compared to the greatest rock backlash of them all, back in 1979. . . .

After the Knack’s single “My Sharona” and the album “Get the Knack” became overnight sensations, the L.A.-based quartet suddenly stood accused of sexism in its lyrics, recycling in its music, manipulation in its career, arrogance on stage, desecrating the Beatles on its album cover--you name it. There was even an quasi-organized campaign called “Nuke the Knack.”

“We were blamed for everything short of Jonestown,” summarizes the Knack’s leader Doug Fieger, still defending the band’s first incarnation even while discussing the group’s recent decision to re-form. They’re starting fresh, hitting the same Los Angeles rock-club scene that launched them to stardom seven years ago. (They’ll play the Roxy on Sunday night.)

And while Fieger still takes issue with most of the Knack attacks, he admits that there really was something wrong with the group--it just wasn’t what people thought.

“I was very sick,” he explained. “I was in heavy throes of alcohol and drug poisoning.”

That’s hardly a unique admission these days, but it really throws mud in the face of the Knack’s image as the well-scrubbed, white-shirted, buoyant-sounding voice of teen-age longing and desire.

“At the beginning, the Knack was a real joyful experience, and I think the music really reflected that,” Fieger continued during an interview at the Sunset Strip office of the band’s publicist. “And once I had enough money to really indulge my self-destructive nature, the dark side was what was prevalent in my experience, so the music reflected that. It became perverse.

“At that point, people could sense that what we were attempting to tell them we were was something much different than what was going on, and you could feel it. You could really feel it.”

The quality and sales of the Knack’s music had nose-dived by the time Fieger broke up the band after its final show--on New Year’s Eve of 1981 in Acapulco.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but I had to do it,” he said. “It was either do that or die. . . .”

Alienated from his former mates--guitarist Berton Averre, bassist Prescott Niles and drummer Bruce Gary--Fieger tried to get another group, Taking Chances, off the ground. He says he doesn’t remember much about that period. Eventually, things came to a head.

“I was given the opportunity to see very clearly what it was that was going on in my life, and the better part of my nature chose to live, and I got sober. . . . I got committed to a mental hospital. . . . A good friend of mine convinced my wife of the time--I’m happily divorced, but for this I really thank her--to have me committed.

“I was having some physical problems and I asked to be driven to the hospital, and the next thing I knew I was in the mental hospital. I got sober there. . . . I have a daily reprieve. One day at a time. That’s over three years ago.”

Fieger, 34, emphasizes that he’s not religious, but he does tend to wax mystical when talking about his personal turnabout.

“I thought money, property and prestige were the things that were gonna make me happy,” he said. “I thought that having a No. 1 album and No. 1 single and money and the chick of my dreams and the car of my dreams and the house of my dreams was gonna make it all better, and when I got all of them, then I was really in trouble. And that’s when it got really dark.

“But in truth, I wouldn’t do anything different. Because had I not done what I did, I couldn’t be here, and that’s not just a sour grapes answer. It’s reality for me. Happiness is an inside job. It comes from the inside out, and this is something I never understood before, and I wouldn’t have understood had I not gone through the horror, if you will, of the years 1980 to 1983 when I got sober.

“It was an interesting experience. I don’t regret any of it. Without it I couldn’t be here today in the way that I am, and I couldn’t have learned the lessons that I’ve learned. And I believe that life is an initiation specific to the challenges and the lessons that we’re supposed to learn, and that was my specific initiation.”

Fieger’s ego and arrogance of old appear to have have given way to an even self-assurance, and he emphasizes his points with piercing, wide-eyed stares.

He says that the reunited foursome has some of the energy, rhythmic attack and melodic touch of the old Knack, but they’re no longer attempting to work from the teen perspective, and the songs sound “as if we had continued writing for six years.” Their game plan right now is simple: Get out and play.

Said Fieger: “I know there are places to play, and I know there are audiences to play to, and I know that there will always be an audience for good rock ‘n’ roll. We’re not really concentrating on a record contract now. We always knew from the very beginning that the songs and the performances were the thing. They’re undeniable.”

After all these years, Fieger still relishes defending the Knack.

“Let’s put it in perspective,” he said. “ Some people reacted negatively. Most people--we sold almost 6 million records, and people who don’t like you don’t buy your record. All over the world, the Knack was overwhelmingly liked, as opposed to overwhelmingly disliked.

“There was a small but vocal group of people, and a powerful group of people, that did not like what they thought we represented. And basically the problem was miscommunication and misunderstanding.

“A lot of people assumed we were this calculated, put-together creation by this guy who had to be in his mid-30s. I remember reading that in Rolling Stone. I was 26 years old when the Knack started, and I was 27 when the album came out and went gold overnight.

“I was this marketing genius or mad manipulator of young minds. That’s the impression that came out. . . . The impression that people got of me was not the me that I was. It unfortunately was the me that I became. . . .

“As far as the backlash, I think that whole ‘Nuke the Knack’ campaign just became a nice little catch phrase that people could use, and it became a media thing and all of a sudden it wasn’t fashionable to like the Knack for a lot of different reasons, and it had nothing to do with our music.

“I mean, when you read in a magazine that your mother should never have had you and she should be shot for that, that tends to (bother you), especially when you’ve got a little chemical delusion going of your own that sort of intensifies it.”

One thing Fieger never understood was why the Knack’s teen’s-eye-view of life was branded as sexism.

“I’ve said it before, go and listen to ‘Under My Thumb’ and if you want to talk to me about sexism, talk to Mick Jagger too. . . . Call him out on the carpet for a song about a ‘squirmin’ dog who’s just had her day.’

“If anything, the Knack spoke from a place of awe, that adolescent awe of the power of the little girls. That’s what we were really talking about, and that’s not sexism. Every man who was ever a boy felt what we were writing. And that’s what I think the hypocrisy of that was. And I also think that became a convenient catch thing to knock us with.

“However--I just thought of this--part of that rap came because people could sense there was something wrong with the band, so they ascribed it to something they could understand. Because they couldn’t understand what was really going on. What was really going on was inside my head, and it was like a vacuum-packed can of snakes.”