When the Tribune’s Tom Popson wrote about them a dozen years ago, the Smithereens were riding the wave of acclaim that greeted their first major-label release, “Green Thoughts.” They’re still going strong 12 years later, and play Joe’s Sports Bar, 940 W. Weed St., on Friday.
If you listen to a copy of the Smithereens’ latest album, “Green Thoughts,” you can’t help but notice the strong pop-songwriter sensibility that winds its way through the record. If they were not written with radio play in mind, many of the numbers at least sound as though they were put together and recorded by people who have listened extensively to the outpourings of the AM band–which, according to Smithereens vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Pat DiNizio, is exactly the case.
“The goal of the band has always been to write good songs–good, three-minute pop songs,” says DiNizio. “We were very much under the influence of AM radio in the 1960s, which we grew up listening to, specifically WABC in New York City. As a songwriter, my role models were people like Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Leiber-Stoller, Lennon-McCartney, Ray Davies. I’d imagine those are fairly good role models for anyone who wants to write songs.
The Smithereens, all of whom hail from New Jersey, started their career in March, 1980. Early on, the band released a four-song EP, “Girls About Town.” A second EP, “Beauty & Sadness,” came out in 1983.
The Smithereens’ first [full-length] album, “Especially for You,” released in 1986, has sold some 375,000 copies so far, a respectable showing if not one that will allow the band to settle into Hollywood mansions. But money, saysDiNizio, is not the factor that has kept the Smithereens lineup (besides DeNizio, it’s guitarist Jim Babjak, bassist Mike Mesaros and drummer Dennis Diken) intact since the group started.
“You can’t keep four different personalities in a band situation for almost six years without a record deal if it’s not about the love of music,” says DiNizio. “Everything else that happens is a happy consequence of doing good work. I’d feel terribly unfulfilled if I were writing terrible songs and they were hits. It’s just very nice to have the opportunity to write and perform songs for an audience that enjoys what we’re doing. It’s a gift, something we’d never take lightly.”