How Adam Schlesinger built a career like no other songwriter's, from Fountains of Wayne to 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' and beyond
But on April 1st, the songwriter, producer, and musician behind some of the most heartfelt, hilarious songs of the past 25 years died of complications from COVID-19 at a hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York. “He was a One-der,” Tom Hanks wrote, referencing the fictional band that Schlesinger’s songwriting made so real in 1996’sDays later, Schlesinger’s friends are still reeling from the loss of this one-of-a-kind talent, gone far too soon. “He had so many more hits in him,” Gold says.
“A lot of our time was spent listening to records and saying to each other, ‘This band made it, how hard could it be?”” Collingwood recalls. “Neither one of us had written a good song, and I remember we were both going about it all wrong in so many ways. But he was always so confident, even then.” Most importantly, he reconnected with Collingwood, who’d been writing new songs on his own. One of their recordings from this era made its way to the desk of Michael Krumper, who became their manager. “I was immediately blown away,” he says. “It reminded me of a lot of British bands that I loved that weren’t particularly fashionable. Aztec Camera, Prefab Sprout — jangly sad-boy music. Even on a poor-quality cassette, you could hear the songs were that good.
Schlesinger and Collingwood could hardly believe their good fortune. “Who wouldn’t want to be in a band with their best friend?” Collingwood says. “We had both had the same dream since we were teenagers, and the idea that some giant company was going to give us more money than we’d ever seen to go around the world playing music seemed too good to be true.”
“The promotion department at the time went, ‘Oh my God, we have a single!’ And the guys in Fountains were just like, ‘No fucking way,'” Krumper says. “Matchbox 20 said yes to everything.” Life on the road got wild at times, in a fashion not typically associated with Fountains of Wayne. “Bigger tours and venues meant more time to act like idiots,” Collingwood says. “Throwing deli trays out the bus window, smashing shit just for kicks. We drank a lot.”
As Fountains of Wayne fractured, Schlesinger kept busy in his usual way. He teamed up with comedy writer David Javerbaum to write the music for a Tony-nominated 2007 Broadway show based on John Waters’and for Stephen Colbert’s 2008 Christmas special. In 2009, he put out an album with Tinted Windows, an unlikely power-pop supergroup whose other members were Iha, Cheap Trick’s Bun E. Carlos, and Taylor Hanson.
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