The Smithereens and Buddy Holly, you say? Surely they have nothing in common. Their sounds couldn’t be any more different, right? Well, as Buddy might have said, think it over…Charles Hardin Holley, known to most as "Buddy," touched off a spark in one Pat DiNizio to compose pop music. Oh, the two never met in person of course, but when DiNizio saw Hollywood’s "The Buddy Holly Story" he knew the bespectacled singer-songwriter from Lubbock, Texas was onto something magical. DiNizio sought out the recordings for this wonderful music, and the re-introduction of Buddy Holly gave Pat a direction , one that he would pursue as a songwriter.
One night in the fall of 1979, Pat and a friend went walking in New York City in search of the famous Brill building, where some of the legendary songwriters from the 50’s and 60’s were based. They wound up at a record store there called Colony Records. Pat recounted that moment to an interviewer:
…So we went in to browse and I came across an original copy of the second Buddy Holly album – the one with the portrait of him wearing those glasses – and I took a chance and bought it. It cost twenty dollars.Holly’s music led DiNizio to dig out his old Beatles, Rolling Stones and Beach Boys records again, and to quit the family business at age 24.. Teaming up with Dennis Diken, Jim Babjak and Mike Mesaros in 1980, Pat had a definite plan in store for the young Smithereens. He wanted to make music with the same style of simple pop structures and pretty melodies that Holly used two decades before. Pat explained his intentions:Eventually my dad came in and picked us up, and after we got home, I can remember being up ‘til three or four in the morning on this rainy night, listening to this then twenty year old album. I was so touched by the simplicity of what he was doing, the beauty of the melody and the very basic nature of the song structure that it literally almost brought tears to my eyes. After all the other stuff I had heard over they years, all the musical phases I had been through, this struck me, for whatever reasons, as the genre that I wanted to work within.
I think what I was trying to do was re-create Buddy Holly & the Crickets, but performing songs that I wrote. In my mind, it started as almost a minimalist thing. We all liked the same music and appreciated the no-nonsense approach. A lot of the music we saw around us we viewed with disdain. We felt there weren't a lot of people who had any integrity at all. So it was difficult for us to fit in.That desire for musical simplicity and integrity often caused members of the media to slap a "retro-rock" tag on the band in the early days. DiNizio found himself constantly defending his three minute pop songs against such labels, commenting to the press that Black Sabbath and Budgie were as likely influences as were the Beatles and the Beach Boys.
But certainly very early on, there was a conscious decision by Pat to imitate Buddy Holly, and the DiNizio-penned songs on their first EP, Girls About Town, bear this out. Further, Pat went to some length to physically emulate Holly. He even took to wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and picked up a Buddy Holly model guitar.
Up to 1978 I was more interested in jazz-rock. Then I re-discovered Buddy Holly and went back to basic stripped-down playing. I traded a Wurlitzer electric piano for a Holly Strat. It had a sunburst body with a white pickguard and pickups. I think Fender had stopped making it by then.Pat later added that he still sometimes uses a Buddy Holly Model Reissue Fender Stratocaster, because "maybe it puts me in the right frame of mind."
Offering more proof that he saw similarities with himself and the legendary songwriter, Pat said, "I even identified with Holly on a physical level. Neither of us looks like a typical rock star. I’ve always thought of him as a kindred spirit."
Clearly, Buddy Holly is a hero to Pat DiNizio, but by the time of the "11" album, his adoration had manifest itself in more overt ways. He wrote the song "Maria Elena" around the Holly title "True Love Ways," in honor of Holly’s widow, Maria Elena Santiago. Again, Pat explained:
I had for years in the back of my mind that I wanted to write some sort of off-handed tribute to Buddy Holly. I just couldn’t get it though, and I found all the others hokey." After watching a PBS tribute to Holly, I had the whole song written, chord changes and melody, and it became about her.Pat wanted to write about Buddy without mentioning his name, so he centered on the love of Holly’s life. "It’s not really subtle," said Pat, "but maybe a little more subtle than what’s been done before. I thought to focus on Maria Elena. I haven’t met her, but I was charmed from afar."
To make sure that Buddy’s widow was aware of the song written about her, Pat sent a copy of the "11" album to her, along with a note. She received it all right, and the desired effect was achieved. "She called me to thank me for the song and said she's really touched," DiNizio told an interviewer. Not only was the song written as a tribute to Holly and his widow, it also was written with an obvious Holly style: "It wasn't really intentional," Pat continued. "You just follow your instincts. It turned out that way because it was meant to sound that way. We have a tendency to purposely not think about things -- to let it flow."
DiNizio and the rest of the Smithereens eventually met Maria Elena in February 1990 in Dallas.
In a 1991 Sotheby’s auction, DiNizio paid $14,300 for the Ampex reel-to-reel-tape recorder and microphone Holly used to compose songs such as "That’ll Be The Day" and "Peggy Sue." Pat bid by telephone, and took out a loan to purchase the recorder. Said he, "I'm not trying to build a shrine to Buddy, but there was something so special about his approach, a heartfelt simplicity. He always tried to be real, not avant or arty."
In his "American Pie," Don McLean may have sung about "the day the music died," but Smithereens fans can rest assured that as long as Pat DiNizio is writing songs, the music of Buddy Holly lives on.