‘My Sharona‘ is a song from 1979, which became an international hit group The Knack. This song was written by Doug Fieger and Berton Averre.
According to the singer and guitarist Doug Fieger, the lyrics are inspired when he met a girl named Sharona Alperin in a clothing store, who lived in Los Angeles, California, which left him madly. “It was like being hit in the head with a baseball bat, I fell in love with it immediately. And when that happened, caused something and I started writing a lot of songs feverishly in a short period of time”. Fieger claimed that “My Sharona” was written in 15 minutes.
In a interview Sharona Alperin said: “I was about 17 at the time. He was nine years older than me. And within a month or two later, he told me that, ‘I’m in love with you, you’re my soulmate, you’re my other half, we’re going to be together one day.’ And I was in love with my boyfriend at the time, and so it took a year for me to leave my boyfriend.”
Alperin remembers the day when she first heard “My Sharona” — before she and Fieger were an item. “One day, on my lunch break from my clothing store, I went to their [The Knack’s] rehearsal,” she says. “And I saw maybe Berton [Averee] or Doug [Fieger] say, ‘Should we play it? Should we play it? All right, let’s play it for her.’ And I sat down. Cut to: I’m driving back to the clothing store, and I’m thinking, ‘Did I just hear a song with my name in it?'”
The cover art of the single “My Sharona” actually features Alperin posing in a revealing tank top and tight jeans. For some time, she was famous in her own right.
Fieger and Alperin finally they married, but after a few years they divorced, but always kept in touch. Fieger died on Valentine’s Day in 2010, victim of cancer. He was 57 years old. Sharona Alperin often visited him in his last months. She said, “Doug changed my life forever. He left on Valentine’s Day, a day of heart and love and that was Doug – all heart and love.”
Today, Sharona Alperin is a real estate agent in Los Angeles, and she uses the domain name mysharona.com for her business.
