Andy Paley, a prolific musician and producer who worked on records by Brian Wilson, Madonna, Jonathan Richman and Jerry Lee Lewis and who wrote music for popular animated series “The Ren & Stimpy Show” and “SpongeBob SquarePants,” died Wednesday in hospice care in Colchester, Vermont. He was 72.
His death was announced by a representative, Bob Merlis, who said the cause was cancer.
A performer himself who led a mid-’70s power-pop combo with his younger brother Jonathan, Paley was widely credited with helping to shepherd Wilson back into musical relevance in the late 1980s when he produced the Beach Boys founder’s debut solo album. Recorded amid Wilson’s controversial treatment by psychologist Eugene Landy, 1988’s warmly reviewed “Brian Wilson” opened with the song “Love and Mercy,” which provided the title for director Bill Pohlad’s 2014 biopic focusing on Wilson, Landy and Wilson’s second wife, Melinda (who died in January).
Two years after the Wilson LP, Paley oversaw the soundtrack of Warren Beatty’s Oscar-winning adaptation of “Dick Tracy,” writing songs in a 1930s-ish style and assembling a varied cast of artists to perform them; among the acts featured were Ice-T, Erasure, k.d. lang, Brenda Lee, Darlene Love, Take 6 and Al Jarreau.
Both the Wilson and “Dick Tracy” projects were the result of Paley’s relationship with Sire Records founder Seymour Stein, who hired Paley to be a staff producer at the label. Paley went on to make records there with John Wesley Harding and the Mighty Lemon Drops before helming a would-be comeback album by Lewis called “Young Blood” in 1995.
Paley was born Nov. 2, 1952, and grew up in the small town of Halfmoon, New York, “with a population of 50 and 200 cows,” as he told The Times in 1990. His three older sisters exposed him to rock music, and after dropping out of high school he moved to Boston, where he started a short-lived band called the Sidewinders that also included Jerry Harrison, who went on to play in the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads.
“I never got a diploma and maybe I didn’t pay attention in some of the classes, but I definitely paid attention to Darlene Love, and I paid attention to Brian Wilson,” Paley said in 1990. “That’s what I really cared about.”
Andy and Jonathan Paley formed the Paley Brothers in 1976; the band opened shows for both Shaun Cassidy and Patti Smith and cut a single for Sire with producer Jimmy Iovine. The Paley Brothers released an LP in 1978 and teamed with the Ramones to cover Ritchie Valens’ “Come on Let’s Go” for the next year’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” movie. According to Merlis’ announcement, the brothers also worked with Phil Spector at L.A.’s storied Gold Star studio on Santa Monica Boulevard, where the Beach Boys recorded portions of “Pet Sounds” and “Good Vibrations” and where Spector developed his so-called Wall of Sound technique in the early 1960s.
After the Paley Brothers broke up, Andy Paley joined Smith’s touring band and began producing other acts. He worked on soundtracks for movies including “Shag,” “Wild Orchid” and “A Rage in Harlem” and wrote songs for “SpongeBob SquarePants” with actor Tom Kenny, who voices the show’s title character; their song “Best Day Ever” is featured in the SpongeBob musical that opened on Broadway in 2017. Paley and Kenny also performed in a group called the Hi-Seas.
In 2017, Paley collaborated with Victoria Meyer, an environmental scientist at Southern California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, on a set of songs inspired by the ’60s French pop style known as yé-yé. Last year, he took part in a 50th-anniversary tribute to the influential “Nuggets” garage-rock compilation at Glendale’s Alex Theatre.
Paley’s survivors include his wife, Heather Crist Paley; their sons, Jackson and Charlie; his sisters Sarah, Brewster and Debby; and his brother.
As a producer, Paley didn’t have “a signature thing that I do,” he told The Times in 1990. “I just want the thing to sound good, whatever it takes. The main thing I can say about any project is to have a vision of what the ultimate product is going to be in your head. That end carries over into everything, even to questions like, ‘Should they order lunch now?'”
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