UPDATED with Nickelodeon statement: Andy Paley, a prolific songwriter, producer and musician who collaborated with such artists as Brian Wilson, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Ramones, Madonna, Elton John, Patti Smith and Deborah Harry and composed the scores for SpongeBob SquarePants and other TV shows, died Wednesday of cancer. He was 72.
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“We are saddened to learn of the passing of Brian’s friend and collaborator, Andy Paley,” a post on Brian Wilson’s official Facebook page reads. “Andy was literally instrumental in Brian starting his solo career with his critically acclaimed 1988 album, Brian Wilson. Andy played electric and acoustic guitars, bass, drums, percussion, keyboards, harmonica, and provided backing vocals. He co-wrote three of the songs, including ‘Rio Grande.’ Andy collaborated again with Brian on the legendary, unreleased Wilson-Paley Sessions, counting more than twenty songs. Brian always called him ‘The Genius Andy Paley.’ Love and mercy goes out to Andy’s family and friends.”
Born Andrew Douglas Paley on November 2, 1952, in Washington, D.C., Paley launched his music career in the mid-1970s as a member of the rock band Catfish Black, a group that played clubs in Boston, Albany and New York City, recording an album produced by Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye.
Within a couple years, Paley and his brother Jonathan Paley began performing as the power pop duo the Paley Brothers. Although the brothers had built a fan base in New York’s famed underground club CBGB, sometimes opening for the Patti Smith Group, the duo failed to achieve commercial success and broke up in 1979. Andy Paley then took a job as a staff producer at Sire Records, a prominent label on the CBGB scene.
With his shift toward producing, Paley would work on albums in the ’70s and ’80s by Wilson, Lewis, Jonathan Richman, NRBQ, John Wesley Harding and the Greenberry Woods. He worked as a songwriter and producer for Madonna, John, k.d. lang, Mandy Barnett, Brenda Lee, Little Richard and others.
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In 1988, Paley produced and co-wrote songs on Wilson’s solo comeback album Brian Wilson, and their collaboration would continue into the 1990s, largely on initially unreleased material.
By the 1990s Paley largely had pivoted to film and TV work, producing soundtracks for the 1990 film Dick Tracy starring Warren Beatty and Madonna. He wrote music for Traveller, the 1997 film starring Bill Paxton, and in 2009 contributed to the soundtrack of World’s Greatest Dad starring Robin Williams.
In the mid-2000s, Paley began an association with Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants franchise, writing and producing music for the series and composing for the 2004 The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. In 2012 he and Tom Kenny, the voice artist behind SpongeBob, co-wrote It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! Album.
Some of Kenny and Paley’s songs also were used in the 2017 SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical starring Ethan Slater (Wicked) in the title role.
“We are saddened by the passing of Andy Paley, a longtime friend of Nickelodeon and a creative genius who was instrumental in bringing the wonderful world of Bikini Bottom to life through music and sound,” Nickelodeon said in a statement. “He is greatly missed.”
Paley was diagnosed with throat cancer earlier this year. He is survived by wife Heather Crist Paley; sons Jackson and Charlie; sisters Sarah, Brewster and Debby; and brother and former singing partner Jonathan Paley.