The Smithereens
American rock band from Carteret, New Jersey
The Smithereens are an American rock band from Carteret, New Jersey. The group formed in 1980 with members Pat DiNizio (vocals and guitar), Jim Babjak (guitar and vocals), Mike Mesaros (bass guitar and vocals), and Dennis Diken (drums and percussion). This original lineup continued until 2006, when Mesaros left the band and Severo Jornacion took over on bass guitar until Mesaros' return in 2016. After DiNizio died in 2017, the band continued performing live shows as a trio (Babjak, Mesaros and Diken) with various guest vocalists.
The band had a string of hits in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, including "Only a Memory", "A Girl Like You" and "Too Much Passion". The Smithereens have collaborated with numerous musicians, both in the studio (Belinda Carlisle, Julian Lennon, Lou Reed, Suzanne Vega) and live (Otis Blackwell, Graham Parker and The Kinks). The band named themselves after a favorite word of cartoon character Yosemite Sam.
History
Babjak, Diken, and Mesaros are all from Carteret, New Jersey, and graduated from Carteret High School in 1975. In 1980, they formed the band with DiNizio, who was from Scotch Plains, New Jersey. DiNizio had placed a classified ad in The Aquarian Weekly looking for a drummer to help on a demo tape – Diken answered it and later introduced his schoolmates Babjak and Mesaros as well.
The public source identifies “The Smithereens” as american rock band from Carteret, New Jersey. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Smithereens, American and rock.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q128443. VIAF identifies the subject as 159579839. The Library of Congress control number is n91069578. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2006, 2016 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Smithereens” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.