Subject:  new story on Doug - The Detroit News |
Author:
Chris
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Date Posted: 01/11/10 6:47pm
In reply to:
Chris
's message, "Statement from Doug Fieger" on 10/12/08 7:23pm
Last Updated: January 11. 2010
The Detroit News
by Neal Rubin
Knack singer, battling cancer, ponders mortality
Geoffrey Fieger, the lawyer, says his brother is dying. Doug Fieger, the musician, says we all are.
In 1979, Doug Fieger played rhythm guitar in a band called the Knack and sang a song called "My Sharona" that stayed at No. 1 for six weeks. More recently he's been a cancer patient, lung and brain and beyond, pondering questions of mortality while not quite admitting to a stranger how personal the thoughts have become.
"Everybody is in the same spot," Doug Fieger says. He's on the phone from his home in Southern California, and his voice is soft. "I just know there is something that will potentially end my time here."
He searches for a word. Mostly he sounds fine, unaffected by the three craniotomies and the whole-brain radiation and the rest of it, so a pause stands out.
"My ... grandmother," he says. "My grandmother from Brooklyn used to come visit my family in Oak Park for the summer." One year she was diagnosed with cancer while she was there, and the doctors gave her maybe three months.
"She lived 21 more years," he says, "and didn't die of cancer. So you can never tell."
Or maybe you can only tell the people who matter most.
Performer from the start
"It's very difficult not to be obsessed with your own passing, your own demise," Geoffrey Fieger says. "The way he puts it, he's preparing to die, and it's difficult to do that."
Geoffrey, 59, is the older and truly bigger brother. Doug, 57, was the childhood star, the one who put on a sixth-grade production of "West Side Story" at Eleanor Roosevelt Elementary and played Riff instead of Tony because he thought it was a more nuanced role.
He was five days out of Oak Park High School and still had braces on his teeth when he signed his first recording contract and flew to England to cut an album. That band, Sky, remained largely earthbound, but the one he formed in Los Angeles a few years later took off.
"Get the Knack" sold 6 million copies. The next album didn't crack the top 10, the one after that peaked at No. 93, and the Knack dissolved. But it re-formed periodically, and Fieger was on stage in Las Vegas in 2006 when he forgot the words to a power-pop standard an entire generation can still sing along with on the radio.
He'd had a piece of a lung removed two years earlier and considered his problem solved. Twenty-two brain tumors later, it still isn't.
Worst-case scenario
Day-to-day, Doug says, he's weak but pain-free. The cancer has never hurt; it's the treatment that's laid him low, and he's declining any more of it. His ex-wife, Mia, has been taking care of him, and she's helped him regain weight. At 6 feet tall, he's up to 140 pounds.
He's accepted his mortality, but conditionally. He's says he's ready to go, "if that's the case." He's also ready to stay, and he dismisses the notion of a worst-case scenario.
"I'm not sure it's the worst," he says. "When we get there, we might kick ourselves and say, 'Why didn't I show up sooner?' "
Whenever he leaves, he'll depart with no significant regrets. He lived the rock star life, and that was good. He got straight and sober 26 years ago and that's been good, too. It strikes him that he should have visited Egypt, and he concedes that "I may not get there." Just in case, he's been paging through a coffee-table book with big pictures.
His brother and their younger sister Beth, who moved to L.A. and wrote sitcoms, have been encouraging him to go out more. "I understand waiting to die," Geoffrey says, "but in the meantime, live."
A few weeks ago, Doug mustered the strength to see "Avatar," which he loved; he says to make sure to catch it on IMAX.
"It's not difficult to talk to him," Geoffrey says, because you can't bring up anything he hasn't already thought about. The tough part is "ultimately facing that reality" -- of surviving his kid brother and living in a world without him in it.
Doug has more immediate concerns. He owns dozens of guitars, but hasn't had the strength to play them.
He says he will, though. The voice is still soft, but maybe a bit more forceful. "I'm sure of it," he says.
nrubin@detnews.com
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