Andy Paley

Andy Paley
Born	Washington, D.C., United States
Origin	Albany, New York, United States
Genres	Power pop, film score
Occupation(s)	Songwriter, record producer, instrumentalist
Instrument(s)	Piano, guitar, drums, vocals

Andy Paley is an American record producer and musician, who has been active since the late 1960s. His work includes stints as a producer for Madonna, the Ramones, Jonathan Richman, Debbie Harry and Brian Wilson.

Personal life and early career

Andy was the son of Henry Paley, a college administrator and lobbyist, and Cabot Barber Paley, a teacher and therapist. He was the third of five children and grew up near Albany, New York. His younger sister Sarah is married to former U.S. senator Bob Kerrey. In 2010, he married Heather Crist in a ceremony officiated by Kerrey.

He began performing in his early teens as a drummer and singer for local Albany-area bands before moving to Boston. He was a founding member of and the drummer for the Boston, Massachusetts band, Catfish Black, which also included future Modern Lovers members Jerry Harrison and Ernie Brooks. The band was renamed the Sidewinders and was later joined by Billy Squier. The band performed around Boston and in NYC at venues like Max's Kansas City. They released an album, produced by Lenny Kaye, which featured songs written and sung by Paley. The Sidewinders broke up in the mid-1970s. Paley then played on Elliott Murphy's album Night Lights, and performed with Jonathan Richman after the break-up of the original Modern Lovers.

The Paley Brothers

Andy went on to form The Paley Brothers with his younger brother Jonathan, a guitar/bass player and singer who also was part of the early Boston punk scene and had played with Boston and NYC bands such as Mong. They first started appearing as The Paley Brothers while Jonathan was still in Mong in 1976. The Paley Brothers eventually signed to Sire Records. For Sire, they released a four-song EP, produced by Jimmy Iovine, and a self-titled twelve-song album in 1977, produced by Earle Mankey except for three tracks from the EP. The album is referred to as power pop, with the punk and straight rock roots of the brothers mixed in. The single from the album, recorded with the Ramones (another Sire group), was the Richie Valens song "Come On Let's Go", which was also included on the Ramones' Rock and Roll High School soundtrack. Shortly thereafter in 1978, a new track, "Baby, Let's Stick Together", was produced by Phil Spector for their second album. According the Sire Records head Seymour Stein, the recording was one of the last sessions done at Gold Star Recording Studios by the Wrecking Crew before the studio burned down.

Despite a lack of commercial success, The Paley Brothers achieved an underground cult following through their performances at CBGB's while also touring extensively, opening for acts ranging from bubblegum pop star Shaun Cassidy (at Madison Square Garden in 1978) to the Patti Smith Group. However, recording with Phil Spector caused problems among the brothers; as Jonathan Paley later said, "Working with Phil Spector was fantastic but also very exhausting and ultimately contributed to me wanting to try something other than being a Paley Brother." They disintegrated as an act in 1979 when Jonathan joined the Nervous Eaters. As a result, neither the second album nor the Phil Spector-produced single were released; instead, their last released product was a 1980 novelty single entitled "Jacques Cousteau" that was credited to The Young Jacques. Although the Nervous Eaters collapsed after Ric Ocasek, who had produced their demo, was not permitted to produce their second album, The Paley Brothers did not reform. Said Jonathan, "It was more of an evolution. Andy went on the road with Patti Smith's band and got into production work; I went and sailed around the world."

In late 2013, The Paley Brothers released a compilation album entitled The Paley Brothers: The Complete Recordings. The album includes 11 tracks of previously unreleased songs recorded in 1978 and 1979 and probably intended for the second album (including "Baby, Let's Stick Together"), along with the fifteen previously-released tracks from the 1977 Paley Brothers EP and album (remixed, plus a non-album B side) and the Young Jacques single.

Collaborative work

In 1979, Andy Paley played guitar on Jonathan Richman's album Back in Your Life, and continued to perform on and off with Richman and later incarnations of the Modern Lovers, and produce many of their recordings, through the 1980s. He produced Richman's 1985 album Rockin' and Romance. Andy then focused on songwriting, session work and record production and working with Madonna, k.d. lang, Mandy Barnett, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elton John, Brenda Lee, Little Richard and many others.

Paley has also worked extensively and co-written with Brian Wilson. In 1988 he produced and co-wrote songs on Wilson's solo comback album Brian Wilson and continued to work with him on unreleased material in the 1990s. He also co-wrote numerous tracks on Wilson's 2004 Album "Gettin' In Over My Head".

Film and television work

He produced the soundtracks for Dick Tracy (1990) and A Walk on the Moon (1999) and wrote the original music for Traveller (1997, starring Bill Paxton). In 2009 he contributed to the soundtrack of World's Greatest Dad, directed by Bobcat Goldthwait and starring Robin Williams. He also wrote the musical score for Season One of Showtime's The L Word.

Paley writes and produces the music for Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants. He and Tom Kenny - the voice of Sponge Bob - co-wrote the It's a Sponge Bob Christmas! album - released in 2012. He leads the Andy Paley Orchestra, which provides the music for The Thrilling Adventure & Supernatural Suspense Hour, a theater group in Los Angeles that performs original stage productions in the style of old radio melodramas.