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Pat DiNizio just wasn't made for these
times. Interview by Rob Galgano Bet you thought the Smithereens were dead. Not so fast, Sparky. They've been fairly quiet these last few years, with their last album released in 1994 (A Date With The Smithereens on RCA). Frontman Pat DiNizio broke the silence with his first solo record in the fall of 1997. Songs And Sounds (on the Velvel label) marks a new era for Pat and the band, and signals their return to the scene. The Smithereens have also signed to Velvel and will put out a concept album about the end of the world in 1999. Good news for fans of heartbreaking power pop! I talked with Pat on the phone last year after the CD was released. What struck me hardest is this is a guy who really cares, someone who has a sense of history, of right and wrong, of how to live. Pay attention, now! Smart Ass: There's a misconception going around that the Smithereens broke up because it's been so long since you did a record. What's going on with the band right now? Pat DiNizio: It is indeed a misconception that we've broken up. We're gonna sign a contract at 10 a.m. this coming Thursday with Velvel. Is that specific enough? SA: That's excellent. Pat: We've been quietly doing gigs all spring and summer, at least two or three a month-mainly festivals, outdoor events, where there's no real pressure on us to draw. You know, part of a larger attraction. It's the kind of thing that at this point is probably more appealing for our audience who have gotten older, and who like yourself have children, and have more adult responsibilites than they had before. But you can't go out on tour unless you have a record to promote, so these are what we call "safe gigs" and we're able to go and perform for our audience and still continue doing it. Sometimes you just need to take a step back from your career as it were, and take a look at what's going around. Music had changed dramatically from underneath us at a certain point. I think that what we were doing musically had become somewhat obsolete. It was time to take a step back and reinvent ourselves. SA: That's interesting that you say "obsolete," because I wouldn't say... Pat: I don't think what we're doing is obsolete at all. SA: Certainly. "Timeless," I like to say. Pat: I would say that it's more in the nature of something that might be called "timeless." That's my opinion and obviously the opinion of a lot of other people, too. Looking at it with the general overview of what people were buying a few years ago-the so-called grunge movement had rendered our type of three-chord pop somewhat obsolete-but now, we look at what's going on around us and we're still here and most of these bands are gone, and most of these records by Pearl Jam or Nirvana, if you hear them on the radio at all at this point, they sound somewhat obsolete. They really have not stood the test of time, as I predicted four years ago. I'm not being arrogant, I'm just stating a fact of why I chose initially to do this kind of music. I wanted to write songs that would last and make records that would stand the test of time. SA: I wouldn't say that they were gonna be obsolete, but everything just sounded like more metal. Metal with a death wish. Pat: Yeah, well there's a lot of negativism going around. The Pope calls it the culture of death. SA: I call it the culture of ugliness myself, but I think we're talking about the same thing. Pat: Yeah, in essence it is. There's a sort of consensual death wish in our society. People are attracted to images of hate and loathing and ugly imagery. The whole way that the whole '70s pop culture look has ben reinvented-it's ugly, actually. I can say that and I don't care what people think, really, because I was there the first time, you know what I mean? The corrosive spirit that pervades the country at this point was not prevalent then, despte Watergate and those times we lived in. It was much more positive then. Look at it this way; you probably grew up with the Go-Gos. Today, they grow up with Marilyn Manson. That's a big leap, from happy, quirky pop music to Marilyn Manson. The imagery is just horrifying. SA: What I can't figure out myself is-now we sound like a couple of old men complaining about these kids today, which I thought I would never do! Pat: You know what, I've given this a lot of thought and I don't feel old. I still feel like I'm 15 because I've been afforded this wonderful opportunity to do music for a living. I've been lucky in that I have not had to go back to hauling garbage, like I did for many years, so I'm blessed in that regard. I'm not a curmudgeonly old man! I'm as active and aware of what's going on around me as I ever was, probably more so. I've given this considerable thought. Is it just me getting older? I just think it's me preseving values that I think are real. We're living in a time that is sort of valueless and is very much spiritually devoid of anything real. That's not me complaining, getting older. I'm not complaining aboout the success of younger bands, that's the way of the world - it's necessary and it's good. It's the way that it's being done that upsets me. SA: What I can't figure out is what these kids are going to listen to. You're not gonna listen to Slayer in twenty years. You can't have kids and listen to Ice Cube. It's not practical. Pat: I might also add that it's not designed to last a long time. It's part of the disposable quick-fix nature of society these days. The music that is really popular right now is not designed to stand the test of time. It's designed to make a lot of money very quickly. SA: Rap, for example, has an incredibly short shelf life. Pat: Yeah, and it changes, which is interesting. Some people will say that it's great because it's a constantly evolving musical form. And I guess you can be original by sampling and stealing and doing collage work set to music. They're really doing collage work-it's assemblage more than songwriting. If you're a pure head-to-toe songwriter like I am, you look upon that sort of craft with considerable disdain [laughs]. SA: Have your expectations and priorities hanged over the years? Have they diminshed? Are you older but wiser? Pat: I think that my priorities are in the right place. The thing that I cherish most is the ability to be able to continue to write what I consider excellent pop songs. That's the priority. Anything else that happens is wonderful beyond that, but the main thing is that I continue to maintain and cultivate my unique voice as a writer. Despite what's going on, we never did try to do what anyone else was doing, no matter what was going on around us at the time, dating back to an era when there were a lot of synthpop bands and the fake rockabilly revival. There was a lot of stuff that we viewed with a fair amount of reprehension, and we refused to cave in, although many of our contemporaries would try to get on that bandwagon, mostly unsuccessfully. You could see it all the time. The first wave was Guns ‘N' Roses and the legion of followers, the people who knew it was selling and styled their image and sound after them. Then it was Nirvana. Now it's God knows what. The success of bands like Live totally baffles me. I really just don't get it. They're not good songwriters, they're not particularly good players. For them, it was probably just being in the right place at the right time. Oasis is okay, but some of it is such a blatant ripoff. "Supersonic"-they stole the whole B section of "Blood And Roses." It's just painfully obvious. SA: Was it painfully obvious enough to bring in the lawyers? Pat: That's not the way that I do things. I don't know whether they did it purposely or not, but if you listen to it, you'll hear what I'm saying. SA: They seem to be ripping off the Beatles without being conscious of the history. Pat: The whole thing just seems like a calculated, arch sort of approach. The whole drug addict image that they have seems very much thought out. It's timely for these days. Back in the hippie days, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, and Jim Morrison, these people were stone drug addict alcoholics. It was a fact, it was really counterculture stuff. Oasis is nothing. SA: There's no culture to counter! Pat: It's the culture of the franchise, it's the culture of the BK Broiler, Starbucks, and Barnes And Noble, and Boston Market on every corner in every town. It's the demise of the mom and pop store. It's the demise of the individual. And the music is a reflection of the culture. Try to start a business as an entrepreneur and you're gonna be squashed by the corporations. You've got like four corporations running the entire country. SA: At best, you'll get co-opted. You can come up with a really great idea and start a company. Bill Gates comes along with a million dollars and takes it. Pat: Well, on the surface of it, and I don't really know anything about him, he appears to be a fairly reprehensible human being in the sense that he's making three billion dollars a day and he's not putting anything back into society. He's just doing computer software, which is a big waste of time anyway. Most people online are just goofing around; lonely people in their rooms in the dark in front of their computer screeens, gossiping. It's not saving civilization. If Bill Gates were a little more like Mother Teresa, then I'd have some respect for him. SA: Supposedly, he's gonna give 90% of his wealth away when he retires. Pat: Do it now. We all have an obligation to put something back into society. You'll find as your child grows older, your feelings, if they're not already there, they'll change to some sort of notion of trying to create a better world for your child. I guarantee it! We're in trouble as a culture and as a society. Do you know what the problem is? It's greed. People spending money on things that they don't need and not living simple lives. There's also a lack of spirituality, a lack of a belief in God; there's real problems here. I am from a different time and a different generation. In a sense, I'm a relic. I'm an iconoclast in that I believe in God and country and the family and things that people would like to step on. If I say that in my business, which is run by leftist liberals living in gated communities in Beverly Hills, who really in the end will not do a single thing for anyone else if it doesn't help their career-these are the people that espouse these liberal attitudes that are undermining the moral fabric of the country. They're living away from reality. Did that make sense at all? SA: Yeah, even though I don't agree with a lot of it, being a liberal myself. PAt: I'm kind of a moderate! I'm a humanist! My philosophy is compassion for everybody. I wish that everyone was rich and that no one was starving and no one was poor. I have a real problem going out of the house every day, or listening to the radio, buying the newspapers, or watching TV for more than five minutes. I don't want to hear about another mom throwing her child off a balcony or a baby left in a garbage can. SA: Or a kid shooting up a school in Missisippi. Pat: Or about gangs. I don't want to hear about gangs. I don't want to see gangs. There were never gangs before! SA: Well, there were, but they weren't so heavily armed. Pat: It's not even a matter of the media prmoting them.There were gangs, but there were very few of them, and they weren't that large. Now it's a cool thing to be in a gang. SA: It all goes back to one thing: bad parenting. Pat: I agree with you completely. Why do you have bad parenting? Why do you have parents who would approve that sort of lifestyle? It's because there's some sort of flaw in them and where's that flaw? You have to talk in terms of morality. Right and wrong! Everyone knows intuitvely right from wrong. You know it. Unless you're a genetic sociopath! [laughs] There's reasons why the country has gone wrong and I think I've been around long enough to know what they are. Anyway, let's talk about music, I don't want you to think I'm a nut or something! SA: This is excellent, because I usually just talk about the band or the album, but I do like to get sidetracked like this. Pat: But the band and the album are things I care less about than what's going on in the world. SA: But since this is what you do best... Pat: I think that what I do helps in a small way, if it can take people out of the reality of them having a bad day, they put a CD on in the car on the way to work, and they feel refreshed or they feel like they've gotten something from it on some sort of emotional level. It's not just crap, it has some sort of substance. It's like a good meal. The difference between what I do and what the Smitheeens do is like eating a filet mignon as opposed to eating a Wendy's burger, that's how I look at it. [laughs] SA: OK, getting back to the music-would you want to be on a major label again? Pat: I'm delgihted to be on Velvel quite frankly. It's like being back on Enigma Records except everyone at the label has worked their whole careers at major labels. I consider Velvel a major that just happens to go through major independent distribution. You've got Walter Yetnikoff, who obviously is one of the smartest guys in the business and is a record industry legend. He nurtured and developed the careers of Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson and Billy Joel. It was no accident that these guys became successful, and it wasn't just about their talent. Bob Frank ran Polygram in Nashville for five years. My product manager John Raffel worked at Atlantic, Ben Nygard worked at BMG, Mike Abbatista, who does radio, worked at EMI as head of national alternaitve radio promotion. Laura Hynes was head of publicity at Tommy Boy. These are not mamteurs. This is a major label, but it has the spirit of an independent organization in that when Walter formed Velvel he did not want to be beholden to any major label. Velvel could easily have been distributed by any of the so-called Big Five. He wanted to control his world and I'm very pleased to be a part of it. There's absolutely no interference from this label in terms of creativity, which was my main thing. I can walk up to their office in Greenwich Village and I can get things done. I thought I'd be able to do that with RCA when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. RCA was so corporate in their approach, and it didn't work. They could have been selling shoelaces or carpet. It was a fluke that I got signed to Velvel. I was invited out to see a musician perform a show, where I was introduced to Bob Frank. We agreed to have lunch together, and at that lunch he offered me a record deal. The Smithereens were between record deals, there was no interest. We had been dropped from RCA. The perception in the industry was that we were done, no one was interested. After what we had achieved in our career, I certainly was not going to do demos and shop them. I found the idea completely humiliating and contrary to my personality. I made a fairly decent record and Velvel liked it enough to offer the Smithereens a deal, so we shall continue. SA: What's your favorite Smithereens album? Pat: That loaded question! I really don't know. They're all a different world unto themselves. They're all different in terms of production values, the mood of the songs. I can't say that I really listen to any of the records. After the demos are done, they're old for me. I'm actually surprised at how good they are and how timeless they sound. I think that we were smart in our devotion to rock and roll and making the right decisions, like not going for whatever drum sound was hip that week. We were traditionalists in that sense. I like all the albums for different reasons. I really like A Date With The Smithereens, which was the ill-fated RCA album. Green Thoughts was special for me because it was written under pressure-we were on the road promoting Especially For You for 15 months. We didn't expect it to be any kind of success, thought it would sell maybe 3,000 records, and we would have been happy with that. I was faced with the dilemma of having to come up with an album's worth of new material in a month to stay on schedule. It just sort of poured out of me, all of the experiences of being on the road and in the particular relationship that I had been in during that time that had gone bad. It turned out well. A lot of people that I've met over the years have said that that album provided the soundtrack for their life that year. SA: Well, you just met another one. That brings me to another point-you've written so many tragic love songs over the years. Are you really unlucky in love that much? Pat: I was always what you'd call a minor key sort of guy. I like lyrics that are sort of downtrodden. We weren't Haircut One Hundred. I don't know if I've been unluckier in love than most people. I can't say that for sure. It makes for more interesting subject material. When I decided to get off of that because I'd gone to that well lyrically a bit too often. I was trying to write more topical things; I got criticized for it. So I'm back to what I do best. On ther other hand, certain things have to be said and done, so you just do the best you can. SA: For the new album, besides having the new band, how different is it than a Smithereens LP? Pat: I think it's really different, but only because of the players on the record. These songs are in essence Smitehreens songs. I don't know how to do it any other way. I just sit down with the guitar and maybe a song title or a riff and work and work for hours until I come up with something, and hopefully it's good. There's no mystery to it. It's just about sitting down, working, and getting lucky with the songs. It's ridiculous for me to say "I'm gonna write an album of tunes for my solo record, but I'm gonna try to make it unlike the Smithereens." It's impossible. I think the reason the album does sound different is because of what the players I chose for the record brought to the project. SA: How did you meet them? Pat: I met J.J. Burnel from the Stranglers back in '84 when I wrote a press release for Epic Records for an album they had put out [Aural Sculptures]. We became friendly over the years. He was delighted at the success of the Smithereens. We stayed in touch for a long time and agreed that at some point in our lives we would work together. The timing was right for this project. Next to the Beatles, the Stranglers were my favorite band of all time. They were a gloomy, minor key, almost an art rock band whose sound remained the same but their albums changed conceptually from disc to disc. No two albums sound the same, but you know it's them. They were realy adventurous, they had as many hits as the Beatles in the UK. They were fabulously suucessful, and they were role models for the Smithereens in many ways, including their image and how they dressed, the "men in black" thing. It was an opportunity for me to work with one of my musical heroes and someone who was a friend as well. With Sonny Fortune, I had been a devotee of Sonny's for 20, 25 years. When I was 17 years old, I would go see Sonny in New York at the Village Vanguard and sit through all three sets. The notes woud just cascade, pour out of his horn, you know? He was one of my musical heroes. The opportunity came up a few years ago for me to help Sonny in terms of his career. I was supposed to produce what became a series of three albums for Blue Note Records, that famous jazz label. I ended up not producing it, but Sonny's been active again. Sonny played with Miles Davis, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Buddy Rich-virtually everybody who was legendary in jazz. It's ridiculous for Sonny to be on my album because he's one of the purest jazz players you'll ever meet. It was my trying to cross-pollinate, or create a hybrid of different styles-my three-chord pop with the punk sound of J.J.'s bass and his musical sensibility and the pure jazz style of Sonny, and then you bring Tony Smith into the mix, who is a fabulous, hard-hitting, amazingly proficient drummer who can play just about anything. I met Tony when we were touring with Lou Reed. He played with Lou Reed, Jan Hammer, Jeff Beck, Santana. I wanted to play with cats who could play just about anything any way and that had really unique musical personalities and were gonna bring something to my record that wasn't standard, that was unique, and I think they did it. SA: The big surprise was the covers that open and close the record. I really don't know too much about them. Pat: The song that opens the record, it's almost like an overture to a Broadway show. It's called "Where I Am Going." The real title of it is "Jenny's Theme." and it's from a movie that was made in the '40s called Portrait Of Jenny. It was a fantasy/supernatural film, a ghost story set in New York in the '20s and '30s. The actress Jennnifer Jones sings it in the movie, and it's completely eerie. The first time I heard it, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I knew that one day I would do my version of it. I did a demo of it and it worked, then we recorded as a band. Then we were trying to track down the authorship of the song, which doesn't appear in the credits of the film. We found that it was writen by Bernard Herrmann, who is my favorite film composer. He did Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver, Psycho, North By Northwest, Vertigo, all the Hitchcock movies. He had an amazing career. "Jenny's Theme" was probably the only pop song that he ever wrote, if it could be called that. The song that closes the record is called "I'd Rather Have The Blues (The Blues From Kiss Me Deadly)" Kiss Me Deadly was one of the original film noir thrillers. It was directed by Robert Aldridge who did Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? and The Dirty Dozen. It was a Mike Hammer detective mystery. You hear the song play on Mike Hammer's car radio at the beginning of the movie, but you can barely hear it because there are sound effects and noise over the top as the credits roll. The original version was recorded on Capitol by Nat "King" Cole. It was never on an album until 1990 when Capitol, in the reissue frenzy of that era, put out an album called Nat "King" Cole Goes To The Movies. I decided to deconstruct it to a jazz quartet format and remove it from the corny big band arrangement that it came from originally. My version is considerably different from the movie version. It all makes sense to me because I get a lot of thematic ideas for the songs from films. I tend to watch movies more than listen to music. SA: Have you ever considerd doing a whole album of film music, or even scoring a film? Pat: It's not a bad idea, but I don't know. I remember having a meeting with this guy who represented all the great film composers in Hollywood. I wanted to branch out into that about five years ago. He said "I hear what you're doing, I hear that you're good at arranging for strings. This is what I'm really into. This is going to be a big guy in film composition!" Then he played me Marc Cohn's record. You remember "Walking In Memphis"? [Unfortunately, I do.-ed.] I was constantly encountering people who had their heads up their ass in Hollywood. And it's like, do I really want to do it, or do I want to do what I do best? I would say that I would do it for the money because everybody needs money to live. But am I really intersted? I don't know. Do I really have the talent? I don't know. If someone offered me something good, I would attempt it, but I don't feel passionate about it. SA: I wanted to ask you about your town, Scotch Plains, New Jersey. You grew up there and you live there now. Was it a case of you coming full circle or more that you never really left? Pat: I would say that I left in a big way twenty years ago, and now I'm back in a big way as a homeowner and a citizen; someone who derives a certain comfort and sense of security from being back with the people from where I came. The neighborhoods are still the same. I'm back in my old sort of peripheral Italian-American neighborhood, across the street from the church where I was baptized in an old house built in 1885; a house I used to walk by every day on the way to school. We called it the haunted house. It feels better for me to be here than in New York City. I still keep an apartment in Manahattan, but I haven't been there in six months. Apparently, it's safer and it's got no soul right now. It's good to be back home. |
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