First Published In The Music & Sound Retailer’s March 2007 Issue
Granted, when you think of the New Jersey music scene the first artist to pop into your head is not Fountains of Wayne. But with an RIAA-certified gold single and an Oscar nomination under his belt (for writing the title track to That Thing You Do), band co-founder Adam Schlesinger has had a fruitful indie rock career. Fountains of Wayne first hit the scene in 1996 with songs like “Radiation Vibe,” though they’re probably best known for 2003’s “Stacy’s Mom.” Schlesinger sat down with the Retailer in the midst of preparing the score to Music and Lyrics, starring Drew Barrymore, and mixing a new Fountains of Wayne record. He talks about his band’s rollercoaster ride to fame, his favorite gear, the state of the music industry, and much more.
The Music & Sound Retailer: How did you first start getting involved with playing music?
Adam Schlesinger: I guess I started with piano lessons when I was about 5. Both my parents were musicians. Not professionally, but they both played instruments. So there was a piano in the house. And they listened to a lot of music. I played piano until I got into junior high school. In high school I started playing other instruments like guitar and bass and drums and stuff.
M&SR: Did you take lessons in those too?
Schlesinger: The only thing I ever actually took any formal lessons on is piano. The rest of it I just started picking up on my own from starting to be in bands and hanging around with people who played those instruments.
M&SR: Do you have a preference for one in particular?
Schlesinger: Well, I mean, piano is the instrument that I really kind of trained on. The reason I wanted to learn other instruments once I got into high school is I didn’t want to be the guy in the band who was always trapped behind the keyboard. I like being able to move around a little bit. So I started playing bass first. I got better at guitar kind of late. I’m still not a great guitar player, but I’m good enough to do what I need to do.
M&SR: When you write songs, do you go to the piano or guitar first?
Schlesinger: These days, I usually write on the guitar, or actually with no instrument. Sometimes I just write, just kind of thinking of it in my head because, in a way, sometimes sitting at an instrument puts you into familiar patterns and rhythms and things. So if you want to try and break it up a little bit, it’s sometimes better to not play one.
M&SR: You’ve written songs for your own bands, as well as TV shows and movies. Is the process different when trying to convey someone else’s ideas in songs than when you’re coming up with something for yourself?
Schlesinger: It can be different, you know? For me, it’s having a clear sense of what you’re writing for before you start. So in a way I treat it like a bit of an assignment, even if it’s writing for one of my own bands. I kind of have to think of it in terms of, alright, what kind of song am I trying to write? Who’s going to sing it? What’s it for? I don’t really write in a vacuum and then figure out what I can do with the song I just wrote. Whenever I write anything, it’s usually because I know specifically what I’m writing for.
M&SR: Where do you like to shop for gear?
Schlesinger: I’m not really a big gear head, so a lot of times I’ll just use whatever is lying around. If I do, I’ll occasionally end up on 48th street [in New York City]; I’ll just go into Manny’s or Sam Ash or whatever’s around there and maybe check out some new toys. I’m lucky because I co-own a recording studio with two guys. Between the three of us we just have tons of gear. So I don’t buy a lot of new gear these days. I just went up and bought a couple of new little keyboard things at Sam Ash, just to have some new sounds. [I picked up] an Alesis Micron, which is sort of a cool little synth.
I used to go to a music store called Long & McQuade when I was growing up in Parsippany, New Jersey, and that was where I bought a lot of stuff. They were really cool too. They were always very helpful.
M&SR: What sorts of things did you like to buy when you were younger?
Schlesinger: I got a Fender Rhodes piano as a birthday present when I was maybe 14 or 15. That was huge. That allowed me to go play music with other people. And then I was pretty much into synthesizers, but I really didn’t buy a ton of them. I think I ended up borrowing a lot. I think basically I’m just a gear freeloader (laughs). No, I mean I bought stuff as I went along, kind of as needed. I bought a cheap bass when I first started playing bass. When I got a little better I got a slightly better bass. Now I own three or four basses, but I still don’t have a big collection of basses, even though I’m a touring bass player at this point.
M&SR: As a touring bass player, were there any exciting shops you got to see while traveling the world?
Schlesinger: One of the great things about touring is you do get to go to lots of cool music stores all over the place. You find interesting things. I’ve definitely bought quirky amps or found interesting guitars in offbeat places along the way. I mean, I think in the era of eBay and stuff, people are more savvy about what they have and what it’s worth. Ten years ago, it used to be that you could find stuff dirt cheap because people didn’t know what it was. But now it’s very easy for people to figure out the exact price something should be. I remember finding a weird old Gretsch guitar in a bookstore in Oregon somewhere. They didn’t sell instruments even, but they just happened to have one guitar and it was a cool, strange, brown Gretsch I had never seen before. I think it was a Japanese one. I bought that. And I remember finding a solid state Vox amp in a little used music store somewhere. I bought a Gibson Thunderbird bass in Nashville. So sometimes I’ll pick stuff up on the road if I see something interesting.
M&SR: What’s the next piece of gear you want to buy?
Schlesinger: I always tell myself I’m going to buy some nicer basses, and then I never do. I’m just too cheap, I think (laughs). I was given a Rickenbacker bass as a present by one of the guys in the band America because he knew that I was coveting one for a long time. When we were finished working with them, as a present he gave me his. So he saved me, again, from having to spend any of my own money, but he gave me a really nice ’74 Rickenbacker.
M&SR: You started Fountains of Wayne when you were in college?
Schlesinger: Not exactly. I started playing music with Chris Collingwood, who’s the other songwriter and the lead singer of Fountains of Wayne. We went to college together and we started playing then, but as Fountains of Wayne it didn’t actually start until 1996-ish. We played in a bunch of bands before that with different names. It was essentially the same thing. It was the two of us just writing songs and playing together.
M&SR: What are some of your favorite memories from that period, when you were just getting started, got your first record contract, etc?
Schlesinger: Well we went through a lot of kind of false starts. We played together in college just kind of casually. Then we got out of college and we started playing around in Boston, and then a little bit in New York. This was before it was called Fountains of Wayne. We were actually called The Wallflowers at the beginning, and then we had to sell that name to Jakob Dylan for his Wallflowers. Then we were called Pinwheel for a while. But anyway, we signed a little indie record deal with a company that never really got off the ground and our record never came out. The company went bankrupt. It was sort of a big mess for a couple of years until we got really despondent about the whole thing and really stopped trying for a while and did other things. Then we got back together in ’95 and started working on the stuff that would be Fountains of Wayne.
M&SR: Is there any particular song or album you worked on that you’re most fond of?
Schlesinger: It’s hard for me to say one particular thing over anything else. I mean, I actually was really proud that we pulled our last record together, which is called Welcome Interstate Managers. That was a point where we had lost a record deal and we just didn’t really know if we wanted to keep doing it and it was sort of a little bit of another dark period for us. I think, despite it, we managed to pull a good record together and it turned things around for us. So I was very proud of the fact that that happened and it didn’t just all fall apart.
M&SR: And that’s the album that yielded your biggest hit (“Stacy’s Mom”). Is it a shock, after putting stuff out for so long under the radar, to suddenly reach that level of success?
Schlesinger: It was fun. And I think part of the reason it was fun was because we knew that it was very temporary, so we could enjoy it. It was kind of a fluke thing. Luckily, we had been around for long enough that…at least some people knew who we were outside of that song. So we weren’t totally pinned as the band with that one song.
M&SR: There’s been a lot of talk about the state of the music industry, especially with Tower Records and CBGBs closing last year. What are your feelings about where the industry needs to go next?
Schlesinger: I really don’t know. It does seem like the digital thing is inevitable and as people get used to it, it’s going to become more and more prevalent. There’s no lack of interest in music in general. I think people still love music. As a working musician, I’ve always found the best thing to do is be involved in a lot of stuff and just sort of keep a lot of options open. Hopefully you can piece together a living like that. It’s not always going to be as easy for people to just make money by selling a truckload of records anymore, but hopefully you can build something up where if that’s not where you’re making money then you can make money playing or you can make money because someone’s using one of your songs in a movie or whatever it might be.
M&SR: Is the closing of Tower a symbol of people moving away from catalog and established artists? Some instrument retailers worry that the focus on flash-in-the-pan artists creates a lack of “guitar gods” and such and less people will play without idols to emulate. Do you agree with that?
Schlesinger: No, I don’t think that’s really true. There are always going to be people wanting to play instruments. I think the people even who play drum machines and synthesizers are playing instruments, as well. I mean, the technology may change and people might be more interested in making beats than in learning to be a drummer, but I don’t think people are going to stop wanting to learn how to play things.
