'My Sharona' drummer dead at 54 Bruce Gary, who played drums for The Knack, died Tuesday at age 54, the Associated Press reports. But his signature "My Sharona" beat lives on.(Note: Gary's site was disabled sometime this morning sometime after my original post, so the link above -- which I left live but marked out -- is no good at the moment.)
"He was an integral part of our sound not to mention a great drummer," Doug Fieger, lead singer for the Knack, said in a statement.
Update: there seems to be some confusion about Gary's age. Some MSM reports say he was 54, others 55. Whisky says he was born in 1961, which would make him 44 or 45. But Whisky also suspects Gary ripped off his drum style on the 1979 hit "My Sharona" from Judas Priest's 1980 track, "Living After Midnight." Oh, it's a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, covered in riddle sauce. We may never know his true age, or whether the godz of metal ripped off the power pop princes of '79.