Day After Day #36: Behind the Wall of Sleep

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Behind the Wall of Sleep (1986)

The '80s was a decade about flash and style over substance. The popularity of MTV made musicians make some crazy fashion choices (see the Stones circa Dirty Work), but every so often an act would break through that looked like they could be fixing your car or serving you a beer. One such example was the Smithereens, a quartet from New Jersey that specialized in playing catchy power pop. Unlike their Garden State compatriots Bon Jovi, the Smithereens weren't trading on their looks. Frontman Pat DiNizio wasn't going to be appearing in Teen Beat, but he had a smooth voice and could write killer '60s-influenced pop songs, and the rest of the band provided the power to memorably drive them home.

DiNizio and the band wore their influences on their sleeves--the Who, the Kinks, the Beatles--and the results were songs that burrowed into your brain and stayed there.

After signing with Enigma Records, the band released its debut album Especially for You in July 1986. The lead single "Blood and Roses" was included in a movie called Dangerously Close; the movie totally stiffed but the video got a lot of airplay on MTV, interspersing the band playing with clips from the film. It's a great, dark song with a grabber of a bass line and it got the band a lot of attention.

The second single, "Behind the Wall of Sleep," was written about Kim Ernst, the bassist of a Boston band called the Bristols that the Smithereens had shared a bill with. DiNizio had developed a crush on her and wrote the song while flying home to New York City from Boston. 

"She had hair like Jeannie Shrimpton, back in 1965/She had legs that never ended/I was halfway paralyzed/She was tall and cool and pretty/And she dressed as black as coal/If she'd ask me to, I'd murder/I would gladly lose my soul."

"Behind the Wall of Sleep" captured the tale of a fanboy who's in love with a female musician but will likely never meet her. "Now I know I'm one of many who/Would like to be your friend/And I've got to find a way/To let you know I'm not like them."

The video did well on MTV and the song hit #23 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock Chart and #8 on the UK Indie Chart. Especially for You got up to #51 on the Billboard 200. The Smithereens rode that initial success and made a few more excellent albums (Green Mind and 11) and scored several rock radio hits ("Only a Memory," "House We Used to Live In," "Drown in My Own Tears," "A Girl Like You," "Blues Before and After," "Blue Period"). The album 11 reached #41 on the Billboard 200, but their subsequent releases didn't fare as well, getting lost in the post-Nirvana shuffle. After 1999, the band didn't release another album until 2007 and then 2011, with some other collections in between (a Christmas album, a Beatles B-sides comp and a covers album of the Who's Tommy). 

I saw the Smithereens on the 11 tour in 1990 when they played the Orpheum in Boston; I was in the second row and it was one of the loudest shows I'd ever seen. When I was working at Webnoize in 2000, I interviewed DiNizio about a subscription service he was starting; he was also running for the Senate in NJ at the time (he finished fourth). He then started doing living room tours and I saw him twice up in Portland, Maine, where my buddy Andrew's band backed him up on Smithereens and other songs. And I saw the Smithereens one last time playing a short set at Old Town Hall in Salem in 2013. 

DiNizio died in 2017 at the age of 62 after a series of health problems. The Smithereens have been playing shows in recent years with guest vocalists like Marshall Crenshaw and Robin Wilson of the Gin Blossoms on lead vocals.