This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way.
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This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. For a very brief period in 1979, the band the neck looked like the future of rock and roll. It was the summer of the infamous disco demolition night at Comiskey Park in Chicago. and many old school rock fans were ready to embrace a new band. into this void stepped the Nack and their song, My Shirona.
Here's our own Greg Hengler. With the story. Even now, multiple decades after the biggest single of 1979. Shirona Elpren can't escape it. Almost any time someone hears my name, Miss Alprin says, they say, Oh, like my Shirona?
And then they say, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to say that. You probably hear that all the time. They have no idea. She's not just a Shirona, she's the Shirona, the object of the NAX bopping 1979 hit.
My Shirona. The band's lead singer, Doug Feiger, Wrote the song's lustful lyrics about her when she was 17 and he was 26. Here's Doug Feiger. It is a song that has a life of its own. It's not just a song.
It's a cultural Icon, if you will. The song became Billboard's number one single of 1979. Here's the next bassist, Prescott Niles. People do know the name of the band, but my experience is they go, yeah, um. You know, MyShirona.
Oh yeah, that's my favorite song and my kids and my wife and you know, and then all of a sudden everybody's got a story about my Shirona. My Shirona has never gone away. Ben Stiller built a memorable scene around the song in his 1994 directorial debut, Reality Bites, claiming it for Generation X. Nirvana did a grunge version, and the tune was reported to be on President George W. Bush's iPod in 2005.
Here's Sharona Elprin. People stay like my sharan. And very, very often I say, yes, I'm the same girl that the song was written about and they Can't believe it. Lead singer Doug Feiger explains how My Shirona all started with lead guitarist Burt Nevere. Burton had a drum figure that he played me.
Now he's since told me that it was only months. But I seem to remember it was a couple of years before we actually wrote the song. You know, beat it out on his on his legs showed me this drum beat. It was before he told me what the riff was going to be, even. He just said, I have this beat.
Here's Burton. I'd been listening a lot to this second Elvis Costello album, and there was this appeal of this kind of. Demented approach to rock and roll, you know, just kind of balls to the wall and slamming. And I had this riff. and I brought it into one of our rehearsals and I just started playing it.
I didn't even say, you know, hey, here's something. I just started playing the riff. And I was telling Bruce I imagined No symbols, just kind of a Tom Snare kind of thing, and he came up with the riff. Here's drummer Bruce Gary. My roots are very much surf music.
My first band was a surf band, and there were surf stomps. And I can show you. You know, a flam- surf stomp is like a flam thing, it's like a. Which is, which is basically, he wanted it to be in a country. And I interjected the flam thing.
Which gave it its own characteristic to it. Here it is, the only Mai Schroener rehearsal tape in existence. It's Burton's Lake, of course. This is where we fueled everything off of the main roof. We have been playing around locally for for A couple of months and there were a couple of girls that used to actually three of them, we used to uh kinda affectionately call them the Nackettes, you know.
They used to come down to hear us perform and one of them was named Sharona. And my lead singer, Doug, had quite a crush in Shirona. Here again is Sharona Alpren. One time I went and I remember, I think it was Burton or Doug or someone's like, should we play it? Should we play it for her?
And doesn't even know what they're talking about. I was sitting on the couch. It could have been anything. It was a normal day like any other day. And then the next R the next memory I have, I was in my car.
Thinking, did I just hear a song with my name in it? It was recorded at MCA Whitney Studios on Glendale Boulevard in uh Glendale. It's not there anymore. Here's producer Mike Chapman. They played the song.
Right there and then. And I said, well, stop. Eva said.
Well, you don't like it? And I said, yeah, of course I like it. I said, That's a number one. Absolutely. Yeah.
You've got to know you have a number one song. You ready? Yeah. Okay, let's do it. He said start the tape.
I don't mean that in a sliding way. Mike's contribution was saying, I think the way you should record this Album is as if you were playing your club set. Probably my main contribution was to Leave It Alone. And my job was to put it on tape and to make it sound the way it sounded when they did it live. Within months of their live debut, popular club gigs on the Sunset Strip, as well as guest jams with musicians such as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Ray Manzarek.
led to the band being the subject of a record label Bidding War. The band was pursued by 10 record labels, but decided on going with Capital Records. Here's Doug. They didn't release the single until two weeks after the album had been released. But the day the album was released, to radio.
My Shirona became the most added record as an album cut. in the world. It went from nobody ever having heard it to being in heavy rotation. in one day. It was a phenomenon.
It was on every single minute, no matter where I went. The minute it was on the airplanes, then I'd get off an airplane, I'd get in a limousine or a cab. It was in the limousine or cab. I'd get to the hotel, it was in the hotel. We would go on vacation.
The top 40 band who was playing in the lobby or in the piano bar played my sharona. You couldn't escape it. At one time, I would turn it off sometimes. I even think that they might have made it musec in dentist's office or in the grocery stores without the words. I got the girl.
Sharona did become my girlfriend. It took me a year. You know? after I wrote it. You know, having it become a hit again.
in the 90s. was a remarkable thing, getting to tour America. With a whole new audience of young kids that didn't know it had been a hit 15 years earlier. That was remarkable. And and there are people, you know, my age who it was their youth too, because we all had that experience when.
When it first happened, And now, I mean, people play it, I mean, you know, all over the place. They play it at sporting events.
So I think because of the youthfulness of it, And because it's not so much restricted stylistically to the 70s or the 80s or the 90s, I just think it keeps reinventing himself. And I'm for it, and I'm happy about that, because it doesn't sound... Like it's 19, you know, it's this particular year. It's got a real timelessness about it. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler.
And you heard from members of the band, and you also heard from Sharona Alpren herself. the woman who inspired the number one song. People kind of knew the band. I was there at the time. But my goodness, everybody knew the song.
And it became, I think, the greatest one-hit wonder band of all time, the NAC. It was recorded in Glendale. North of Los Angeles. At the recording studio, the producer and engineer said his greatest contribution. was to leave the song alone.
The story of Maya Shirona and How It Came to Be Here. on our American stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way.
The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q.
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