Music

Adam Schlesinger obituary


Adam Schlesinger, who has died aged 52 from complications of Covid-19 infection, found critical kudos and a dedicated following with his band Fountains of Wayne, released a string of albums of airy and wistful pop with the band Ivy, and achieved some of his highest-profile success with his work for theatre, films and TV.

His first big breakthrough came with writing the title song to Tom Hanks’s film That Thing You Do! (1996), the story of an American pop group trying to cope with Beatlemania. Schlesinger’s title song, the solitary hit of the film’s fictional band the Wonders, was not only zingingly catchy, but perfectly captured the sound and feel of pop music in 1964.

“I was definitely a Beatles freak as a kid, and for a long time I only listened to the Beatles,” Schlesinger recalled. “[The film’s producers] said it should sound like an American band that was blown away by the Beatles and was trying to imitate them.” Life imitated art, and That Thing You Do! reached No 41 on the Billboard chart and 22 in the UK. Schlesinger was nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best original song.

This coincided with the early days of Fountains of Wayne. Schlesinger, playing bass, formed the band with the singer and guitarist Chris Collingwood, whom he had first met when they both attended Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. They were named after a lawn ornament store in Wayne, New Jersey, a clue to Schlesinger’s keen eye for the banal minutiae of American life. His songs would take in black humour (“he was killed by a cellular phone explosion”), the love lives of TV news anchors, the glamour of Hollywood as viewed from lowly Hackensack, New Jersey, and the American dream of social climbing (“Seth Shapiro got his law degree / He moved to Brooklyn from Schenectady, ’93”).

The group signed to Atlantic and released their self-titled debut album in 1996. The sleek and infectious single Radiation Vibe reached the Top 20 on the US alternative chart, but major sales eluded them. After their second album, Utopia Parkway (1999), also flopped, despite enthusiastic reviews, Atlantic dropped them.

Adam Schlesinger, left, with Fountains of Wayne bandmembers Chris Collingwood, Jody Porter and Brian Young, in Brussels, 1997.



Adam Schlesinger, left, with Fountains of Wayne bandmembers Chris Collingwood, Jody Porter and Brian Young, in Brussels, 1997. Photograph: Gie Knaeps/Getty Images

It was not until 2003 that they made a new album, now with S-Curve records. This was Welcome Interstate Managers, which gave the group their most successful single, Stacy’s Mom, sung from the viewpoint of a teenage boy infatuated with his girlfriend’s mother. A deliberate homage to the Boston band the Cars, it made No 21 on the US pop chart and 11 in the UK, but made its biggest impact with its video for MTV, which referenced the teen movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High and featured a titillating performance as “Mom” by the model Rachel Hunter. The song earned two Grammy nominations.

This was the peak of the group’s visibility, even though Traffic and Weather (2007) found them breaching the US Top 100 album chart for the first time, and their last outing, Sky Full of Holes (2011), reached 37. The album was a struggle to make, owing to friction between Schlesinger and Collingwood, and spelled the end of the group.

Born in New York City, Adam was the son of Barbara (known as Bobbi, nee Bernthal), a publicist, and Stephen Schlesinger, an executive at the grant-making John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He grew up in Manhattan and then Montclair, New Jersey, where he attended Montclair high school. At Williams College, he earned a BA in philosophy.

He played in several bands with Collingwood before they split up after graduation, Schlesinger moving back to New York. He first met up with Andy Chase in 1991 after answering his newspaper ad for a songwriting partner, which paved the way for the formation in 1994 of the trio Ivy, which ran in parallel with Fountains of Wayne. The band’s third member was the Parisian Dominique Durand, who had never sung before but slotted in perfectly on vocals.

Video for Stacy’s Mom, by Fountains of Wayne, 2003

Ivy released six albums between 1994 and 2011, building a committed following with their mix of alluring indie-pop with a distinctly British influence, as well as a hint of French exotica. They developed a habit of making cover versions of songs by their favourite artists, who included Edwyn Collins, the Cure, Steely Dan and Serge Gainsbourg. They also struck up a rapport with the film-makers the Farrelly Brothers, who used their music in There’s Something About Mary (1998) and Me, Myself & Irene (2000).

Schlesinger managed to slip in a quick stint with Tinted Windows, a band which included the former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, Hanson’s Taylor Hanson and Cheap Trick’s drummer Bun E Carlos and released an album in 2009.

He enjoyed more film-related success with his contributions to the soundtrack of Josie and the Pussycats (2001) and the Hugh Grant-Drew Barrymore vehicle Music and Lyrics (2007), for which he wrote the masterly Way Back Into Love.

With David Javerbaum, he wrote the music for the musical Cry-Baby (also 2007). The same pair wrote the music for the satirist Stephen Colbert’s Grammy-winning A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! (2008), and they were embraced by the theatrical and TV communities, writing songs for the Tony awards (2011 and 2012) and the Emmys (2011 and 2013.) The duo won a 2012 Emmy for their song It’s Not Just for Gays Anymore, from the 2011 Tonys telecast, and a 2013 Emmy for If I Had Time, from the 2012 Tonys ceremony.

For the TV musical-comedy series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Schlesinger was a major contributor to most of the 157 songs featured in its four-season run (2015-19). He won an Emmy for his song from the fourth season, Antidepressants Are So Not a Big Deal. At the time of his death, he was working on stage adaptations of Sarah Silverman’s The Bedwetter and of the TV show The Nanny.

Schlesinger married Katherine Michel, a graphic designer, in 1999, and they had two daughters, Sadie and Claire, before divorcing in 2013. He is survived by his partner, Alexis Morley, his daughters, his parents and his sister, Laurie Rose.

Adam Lyons Schlesinger, musician, songwriter and singer, born 31 October 1967; died 1 April 2020



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