POP CULTURE : Sharona’s Lyrical Life

Even after 15 years, it’s a rare day when someone doesn’t remind Sharona Alperin of the raunchy rock ‘n’ roll anthem that made her first name a household word.

The pulsating, pounding “My Sharona” first catapulted to No. 1 in 1979 and enjoyed a brief revival when it surfaced in the soundtrack of the film “Reality Bites.”

“M-m-m-myyyy Sharona.” The insistent beat and yelping mating cry of her former lover, Doug Fieger, lead singer of The Knack, are etched into many a memory--for better or worse. For Alperin, it’s usually worse.

To this day, the mere mention of her first name provokes raucous laughter and off-key renditions of the notorious song. Telephone operators have sung it to her. It’s a conversation starter at every party. What began as a simple Israeli name chosen by parents who sent their daughter to a private Hebrew school in Beverly Hills became inextricably associated with the wild excesses of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

“People were not sure what a sharona was. . . . In Japan, they thought it was a penis,” Alperin recalled.

Alperin, 34, acknowledges that she led a “decadent” life back in the early ‘80s. But she has left those days behind. Although still single, she has settled down. She sells real estate on the Westside and usually makes lunch and dinner reservations under an assumed name to avoid the Sharona jokes.

She was permanently changed by a detour her life took years ago, when she broke up with a steady boyfriend in L.A. and accepted Fieger’s invitation to join him on The Knack’s nationwide tour. The four-year liaison with Fieger transformed her from a teen-age clothing store sales clerk to a rocker’s “main squeeze,” a woman who wore dark glasses at night, signed autographs, lived the lifestyle of limos and trashed hotel rooms, and hung out with the likes of Cher and Debbie Harry of Blondie fame at Le Dome restaurant on Sunset Boulevard.

“We used to call it ‘The Home,’ ” Alperin said.

When Alperin eventually split with Fieger, she kept up with her contacts. The years on the fast lane opened doors and laid the foundation for her successful real estate business with Dalton Brown & Long.

Today, the raven-haired, sapphire-eyed Alperin does business with entertainment industry types, totes a cellular phone and closes million-dollar deals over lunch at House of Blues, one of her favorite Sunset Boulevard haunts. Her social calendar is busy with “in” parties.

But she still keeps a file of the old press clippings and a 45 single of “My Sharona.” The cover of the single, which sold 6 million copies, is graced with a photograph of a pouty, teen-age Alperin--hair dyed a punk jet black, face turned away from the camera ever so slightly.

For years, the press has described the song disparagingly as an ode to a “groupie,” the young women who gather at the backstage door after rock concerts, eagerly awaiting a chance for one passionate night with a star.

But Alperin was the pursued, not the pursuer. Fieger, now 42, remembers his attraction to her as romantic in the most traditional sense. He says she was “instrumental” in the band’s success, recruiting friends to attend the band’s early concerts, establishing the group as a local phenomenon.

Fieger “discovered” her one day in 1978 when he walked into the Fairfax clothing store where Alperin was working.

“He was my groupie,” Alperin recalled.

Fieger says he was “extremely taken with her.” She entered his life at a critical time. He was breaking up with a longtime girlfriend and had just put together a new band--The Knack--a group designed to give a bunch of guys in their mid-20s a chance to write songs from the perspective of their “14-year-old selves.”

With songs like “Good Girls Don’t” and “My Sharona,” The Knack established itself in the late 1970s as the voice of teen lust and angst. But when Alperin and Fieger first met, the band was rehearsing in a humble warehouse near the shop where she worked. Sometimes she would stop by for lunch.

All that year, Fieger pursued Alperin, but she wasn’t interested. One day, she walked into a rehearsal session and the band surprised her by performing “My Sharona.”

As Fieger remembers it, the band had written the song the day before. They wanted a signature piece for their encores, and band member Berton Averre had had the distinctive drum riff in his head for years.

To Sharona, who still wasn’t dating Fieger, the song was an ode to sexual frustration.

“Frustrated was the basic reality,” she said.

Four months later, after the song went through the L.A. club circuit and such stars as Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty jammed onstage with The Knack, several record companies bid to release the band’s debut album, “Get the Knack.” Within months, Fieger and his group were touring Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Even as his band took off, Fieger was still a man obsessed with one woman. He recalls that most of the songs in the first two albums were about Sharona. Her picture appeared on both album covers. To him, she was more than just another rocker chick--she was his muse.

When Sharona agreed to accompany Fieger on the Hawaiian leg of the group’s tour, it marked the beginning of a “fire and gasoline” relationship that ultimately burned out in 1982. As the years have gone by, the two have remained friends. Fieger has married. Alperin hopes to be married by the time she’s 40.

“It was all about heartbeat,” Alperin said. “It wasn’t about sex.”