Pat DiNizio, lead singer of the Smithereens, passed away Tuesday. One of the band's best albums and biggest challenges was when they took on a remake of "Meet The Beatles," which came about when DiNizio saw a classic magazine while sitting in the dentists office. "It was 1964, the year everything changed and talked about the Vietnam war, America dealing with the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights movement but it was really about Beatlemania and the release on Dec 26th of '63 of I Wanna Hold Your Hand," DiNizio says.

"I was looking for a way to reintroduce the Smithereens to all those nice people who had given us a career and bought the records and had sort of taken themselves out of the game in the sense that they weren't an active audience anymore going to as many concerts, not really buying as many records. They've got jobs and children."

DiNizio called the head of the record label with an offer they couldn't refuse. "The Smithereens vs. The Beatles," and thus was launched another phase of their career. So how did it go over with the Fabs? "We heard back from Beatles, Paul and George Harrison, and they enjoyed it. Also people were starved for Beatles since there were no Beatles downloads on iTunes so they bought our record because they couldn't buy the Beatlles."

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