Smithereens pay Beatles back in unusual way

updated 2:25 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2007

NEW YORK - Pat DiNizio was brushing his teeth, preparing for another day in the third grade. On his transistor radio, a WABC disc jockey mocked the name of the band whose new record he was about to play.

After hearing the first few chords of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” a stunned DiNizio dropped his toothbrush into the sink.

“I felt as if I was hearing some strange new music from the moon,” he said. After school that day, he made his father drive through a snowstorm to find that record.

Hearing the Beatles for the first time changed his life, as it did for countless others. Now 51 and lead singer of the Smithereens, a rock band that owes an obvious debt to the Beatles, DiNizio is paying that back in an unusual way.

The Smithereens recently released a complete remake of the “Meet the Beatles” album starting, of course, with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The original may not be the best or most memorable album in rock history, but DiNizio contends that it was the most influential, simply because of what it set in motion.

The veteran New Jersey band, which has turned out hits like “Blood and Roses” and “A Girl Like You” in a 25-year career, titles its version “Meet the Smithereens.”

A few years ago, his band was asked to play an all-Beatles set at a Beatles convention in Louisville, Ky., DiNizio said. It wasn’t hard to rehearse for, since the Smithereens already had a lengthy list of Beatles songs in its repertoire to play during encores.

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Many of the hard-core Beatles fans in the audience called out for Smithereens songs, making DiNizio recognize the connection between fans of the two bands. When he returned home, some of those fans sent e-mails suggesting the Smithereens make an all-Beatles album.

He asked fans through the band’s Web site which songs they would like to see covered.

“It was everything from ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ to ‘I Am the Walrus’ to ‘Let it Be’ to ‘Misery,”’ he said. “I realized that to attempt to record songs from every phase of the Beatles’ career and have any sense of continuity would be almost impossible.”

Around that time he also read an article in American Heritage magazine about how 1964 — the year “Meet the Beatles” was released — changed so many things in the world.

DiNizio thought back to all the things that changed in his world then. Within weeks of first hearing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and seeing the Beatles perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” kids all around him were buying guitars, growing their hair long, starting bands. He was, too.

Which is the Beatles’ best album? A look at the top five albums by the Fab Four, and one not-so-good one.

So the Smithereens decided to remake the album that started it all.

“Meet the Beatles” wasn’t a collection of hits. Besides “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the best-known songs were “I Saw Her Standing There” and “All My Loving.” It was filled with moody, minor-key songs written by men barely beyond their teen-age years.

“People tend to look at ‘Meet the Beatles’ as a teeny-bopper album because they’re only looking at it in terms of Beatlemania,” he said. “But it’s a much different world from that. It’s not a bubblegum album at all. It’s really a great collection of songs. It’s an album. It’s meant to be listened to as an album.”

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