The Knack: And How NOT to Get It

OK, I was 14, white, and male in 1979, and this means that I was demographically obligated to purchase "Get the Knack." And I liked it. I still think the cover of Buddy Holly's "Heartbeat" is pretty good. And the record as a whole has a kind of jumpy energy (unfortunately larded with more than its fair ration of misogyny) that qualifies it as a really good powerpop record. Over time I've come to regard it as a musically great record with lyrics written by a preening jerk. I was even pleased to see The Knack in good form when I stumbled across their performance on "Hit Me baby One More Time." They covered a Jet song that was perfectly suited to their own style, and looked and sounded good considering the mileage on the odometer.

Well this news story sure appears to confirm my "preening jerk" assessment. Doug Fieger has initiated a lawsuit against Run-DMC for their use of the signature riff of "My Sharona" in the Run-DMC hit "It's Tricky," released in 1986.

So Doug Fieger is, in effect, asking us to believe that the last 20 years have been agony for him and his bandmates, as their precious song was cruelly ripped from them, reimagined and reconstituted, and they have been cheated, cheated of their rightful due, and they thought they could endure it until one fine day in 2006 Fieger woke up and said, "twenty years of torment is enough . . . I can bear it no longer . . . I must sue, sue and thereby restore the rightful order that is my right as a holder of intellectual property in the United States."

Here's what a court should say (but won't):

"Mr. Fieger, in 1986, your band's career was dead as a doornail. Your 1981 album "Roundtrip" was a stiff. And then you had the good fortune to have one of the most popular bands in the country, Run-DMC, remind everyone of how enjoyable your insanely overplayed hit 'My Sharona' was by incorporating a smidge of your song in one of their songs. Run-DMC thereby invested your overplayed hit with a fresh veneer of hipness and increased the marketability and viability of both the song and your band. By current standards, yes, Run-DMC would be required to secure permission for this use, but way back then, people hadn't figured out the legal niceties just yet, as you well know. There's a tenuous legal claim here, and yes, Run-DMC should probably throw you a buck or two. But don't pretend that you've been egregiously ripped off. The members of the band never concealed their use of your work -- here's DMC acknowledging the use in a 2006 interview -- because they knew they had brought enough novelty to the table to pass any fair threshold for collage, bricolage, reinvention. Further, your silence for twenty years leads this court to question the timing of your suit, and whether you belatedly noticed that the legal climate had OVER 20 YEARS changed enough to make a formerly unsustainable claim marginally viable. But the real reason we're throwing this case out of court with prejudice is as follows.

"Here is the cover of your debut album . . .



"And here is the cover of the biggest band in rock and roll history's American debut . . .



"Your band got a lot of mileage out of the comparison you invited with the image and the title of your debut. In short, you grabbed onto the Fab Four's coattails and rode them into the mainstream of American popular culture. And good for you. Many others have tried and failed to get this equation just right. You did it. You were both derivative and novel, and people found your particular formulation pleasing, and you are lucky enough to have a big enough pop hit that licensing fees should be delivering steady income to you and your bandmates for many years.

"But here's the thing. You borrowed at least as much -- if not more -- from the Beatles as Run-DMC borrowed from you. If you agree to turn over every dollar you win in this suit to the Beatles, then let's press forward. If, on the other hand, you view your reconstitution of the Beatles' image as a reasonable reinvention of the source material, and the kind of thing that ought not trigger a lawsuit, then be consistent, and be quiet!"

Fieger has just had an awful month, surviving life-threatening surgery and enduring the loss of the band's original drummer. One can only hope that this suit as an expression of Fieger having momentarily stepped away from his better impulses under understandably trying circumstances. Still, the spectacle of -- of all bands -- The Knack pointing the finger and shrieking, "DERIVATIVE!" is so fundamentally absurd that I will not let it pass without observing the laughable irony.