Andy Paley, who produced 1988’s Brian Wilson and oversaw the Beach Boys mastermind’s last sessions with sibling Carl Wilson, died on Wednesday. Brian Wilson reportedly once described Paley as the “most frighteningly talented person” that he’d ever met.
Ironically enough, one of Paley’s earliest concert experiences was seeing the Beach Boys in the early ’60s at the RPI Fieldhouse in Troy, New York. “It was a big act; it was a big deal,” Paley admitted to the Daily Gazette. “It was amazing.”
Paley representatives confirmed his death, after a brief bout of cancer. He “passed away in hospice care in Colchester, Vermont, with family members present,” according to the official statement. A virtual wake was held on Tuesday night with friends and fellow industry figures. Paley was 72.
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He co-founded the Paley Brothers with Jonathan Paley after an initial move from New York to California, and was signed to Sire Records by Seymour Stein. When the Paley siblings went their separate ways, Andy played keyboards in Patti Smith’s band before going into production work.
Over the years, Paley worked with Elton John (2001’s Good Rockin’ Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records), Madonna (“I’m Going Bananas” from 1990’s Dick Tracy), NRBQ (1989’s Wild Weekend), Jerry Lee Lewis (Dick Tracy and 1995’s Young Blood) and Little Richard (“Elevator Operator” from 1991’s [Music From the Film] A Rage In Harlem), before serving as a songwriter and producer for Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants.
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Stein later connected Wilson with Paley, who was then overseeing other sessions at a studio in England. “I talked to Brian on the phone, which was an incredible thrill for me,” Paley told the Daily Gazette. “It was 3AM in London. I don’t know what time it was in New York when I got that phone call – but I was wide awake.”
Wilson had signed a new two-album comeback solo contract with Stein, leading to the critically hailed, though curiously low-selling Brian Wilson. Paley was credited with co-writing and co-producing “Night Time,” “Meet Me in My Dreams Tonight” and “Rio Grande,” while contributing on guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, harmonica and backing vocals.
Though Wilson had been away from music for an extended period of time, Paley said he hadn’t lost a step. “The best things about writing, producing and collaborating with Brian Wilson in general are his energy, creativity and his brilliant sense of humor,” Paley said in Back to the Beach. “He is always underrated as a lyricist, but I saw him come up with great lines all the time.”
He also produced Wilson’s update of “Goodnight, Irene” on the Grammy-winning 1988 album Folkways: A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly. Sessions for an aborted 1990 follow-up, to be called Sweet Insanity, attempted to catch lightning in a bottle again by keeping most of the personnel from Brian Wilson – but the album was eventually scrapped.
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‘We May’ve Written a Hundred Songs’
Paley’s “Where Has Love Been?” later showed up on Wilson’s 1998 album Imagination. The 2007 career-spanning compilation Playback included Paley’s “Some Sweet Day” as one of two previously unreleased Wilson songs. “Soul Searchin'” and “You’re Still a Mystery” were featured on Made in California, the 2012 Beach Boys box set.
“We were having lots of fun writing and recording back then,” Paley remembered in 2015. “We may’ve written a hundred songs. It was a real creative explosion.”
They got back together in the mid-’90s for the so-called Andy Paley Sessions, which focused on original material recorded with the other members of the Beach Boys. None of it had been released when Carl Wilson died in 1998. Instead, the Paley co-written songs “Soul Searchin'” (featuring Carl), “Gettin’ In Over My Head” and “Saturday Morning in the City” were reworked with others for Wilson’s 2004 studio album, also titled Gettin’ In Over My Head.
Later the same year, Paley’s song “The Best Day Ever” was memorably featured in The SpongeBob Movie after another chance introduction to Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants. A second career was born: “We thought of it like the cartoons for the Monkees or Jackson 5 or the Beatles,” Paley told the Daily Gazette. “We just thought, ‘Why not just do good pop songs and have SpongeBob and Patrick and Plankton and everybody sing?'”
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Gallery Credit: Allison Rapp
