Fountains Of Wayne bassist and songwriter Adam Schlesinger has died at the age of 52 due to complications from COVID-19. He had been hospitalized due to the coronavirus for the past week and was on a ventilator.
Scheslinger formed Fountains Of Wayne in 1995 with guitarist Chris Collingwood. The band released two albums with little impact, although Scheslinger gained recognition for writing the Oscar-nominated title song to the 1996 movie That Thing You Do!
The group scored a major alternative hit in 2003 with “Stacy's Mom” from its third LP, Welcome Interstate Managers. The track's raunchy video featured model Rachel Hunter.
After Fountains Of Wayne disbanded in 2013, Schlesinger continued working as a songwriter, contributing tunes to the TV series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — for which he earned three Emmys — and writing the Tony-nominated score to the 2008 Broadway musical Cry-Baby.
Scheslinger once told us how song ideas come to him: “I think a lot of times they're inspired by some real-life thing, or you start by thinking about some real-life kind of setting. A lot of times the stories just write themselves in the sense that you just start putting lines together and you're not exactly even sure where it's gonna end up. I mean, I don't really map it out too much beforehand.”
Scheslinger, who was divorced, was survived by two daughters. Representatives for Scheslinger, his family and Fountains Of Wayne had not issued a statement at press time.
