I’m sad to report that musician/producer/old-school record man Andy Paley died yesterday of a fast-moving cancer. He was seventy-two years old. I got to work with Andy the last couple years on a bunch of recording sessions with Grey DeLisle. What an experience it was.
Grey flew Andy Paley out to produce the sessions, which was a thrill for me, as I’d been a huge fan of his work for years. Andy was in the Paley Brothers with his brother Jonathan back in the 1970s, they had an album on Sire and a song on the Rock and Roll High School soundtrack album. After that, he produced albums by Brian Wilson, Jerry Lee Lewis, NRBQ, Jonathan Richman, The Real Kids, Chris Isaak, Mandy Barnett, k.d. lang… Then he did soundtrack music for the The Ren & Stimpy Show, Spongebob Squarepants, and a ton of other stuff. That’s a heck of a body of work!
Andy was one of those guys, nearly extinct in today’s world, who oozed music out of every pore of his body. Yes, he worked with Brian Wilson. He could put together those beautiful, difficult Beach Boys guitar and vocal arrangements as easy as taking a breath. But Andy could also hear one of Grey’s rough song demos (usually sent to us with just Grey’s vocal and autoharp accompaniment), go to the piano, start working out chord voicings, and within minutes he had the rough demo worked into a lush pop arrangement (“Okay, the bass should double the left hand on the piano. The guitar needs to be playing a minor seventh into a diminished here to transition to the bridge—but keep playing the root on the bottom. The six string bass needs to play this figure that stays out of the way of the guitars and piano. When we add the background vocals, if one girl sings an A, the other sings an F below, and the other sings a D above, it’ll all line up with the chord voicings on the piano and guitar”). Just off the top of his head. It was a marvel to watch in action, watching a song turn into a production.
If a song needed something odd, like a harmonica part, he could quickly overdub it himself. Hearing something missing, he would quickly suggest to Grey or myself or Stephen McCarthy or Murry Hammond or Bernie Dresel what he heard in his head. Within seconds, the arrangement would come together, and he’d start bopping his head and grooving, clapping his hands and laughing maniacally. That’s how you make a record, I thought to myself. There’s still no better way to make a record. You need an old-school record man or woman who knows their shit backward and forward to make it come alive. Andy knew his shit better than anybody I’ve ever worked with.
You’ll read lots of posts and obituaries about Andy today, mostly about his time working with Brian Wilson. But he was that and so much more. What I’ll remember most about the guy (besides his musical and arranging ability) was that he had a great story for EVERY occasion. Link Wray? Oh, here’s a photo of Andy and his brother hanging with Link Wray in 1977 at CBGB’s. The Shangri-Las? Oh, Andy produced an album by them in the 1970s that never came out. Jerry Lee Lewis? Andy had a shoebox of DAT tapes of unreleased studio conversations from the time that he produced Jerry Lee Lewis, which he told me hilarious stories about what tales were on the DAT tapes, but sadly, I’ll probably never get to hear now. He had a great story for just about anybody you could think of. As I mentioned, the guy had music coming out of every pore of his body. His legacy in that window of time from the mid-1970s through the present is secure. Boy, did he do a lot of stuff. Great stuff.
The great stuff we recorded with Grey DeLisle and Andy Paley producing hasn’t come out yet, but according to Grey it will be released over the next year or two. The stuff is fabulous and I was proud to play a part in the process. I know you’ll be thrilled to hear it when it is all released.
“Call me anytime,” he told me, every time I saw him. “Doesn’t matter if it’s late—I’m always up late.” He gave me a business card. The card only had his name on it. Nothing else. Nothing on the back. I thought that was freaking hilarious (and yes, he did give me his phone number, and we spoke many times, but I laughed at the mind who would come up with printing a business card with no contact information on it, then handing out said business card). It makes me sad to think this living encyclopedia of musical greatness has now left our granite planet and moved on to the celestial plane. I’m very grateful for the time I got to spend with him, and for the free education I received (one other thing I’ll mention—he was always generous with his knowledge, he never guarded his musical secrets, he was happy to pass along ideas about guitar chords, arrangements, vocal stacking, etc. to anybody who wanted to know. This also makes him fairly unique, as almost all the “geniuses” I’ve met in my life have also been…how do I say this…colossal dicks who took all their secrets to the grave). As they say, the guy was a real mensch. I will miss him greatly. Condolences to his family and all of his friends, of which there were many. Rest in peace, my friend, and go make some more great music, at the party upstairs.
Find numerous additional photos and video of Andy in action at Deke’s original post.
