In the 1960s, Brooks composed advertising jingles for clients including Pepsi ("You've Got a Lot to Live") and Maxwell House ("Good to the Last Drop Feeling").

[7] Credited as "Joey Brooks", he also wrote the song "My Ship Is Comin' In", a Top Ten UK hit in 1966 for the Walker Brothers.

[18] Brooks attempted to follow up his success with a similar romantic drama, If Ever I See You Again (1978), which he not only co-wrote, produced, directed, and scored, but also starred in, as a composer of TV commercial jingles much like himself, despite no significant acting experience.

[3][4][9] The title song became a moderate hit for Roberta Flack, peaking at #24 on the Hot 100 chart, but the movie received very bad reviews and was a box-office bomb.

[7] Brooks also worked on stage productions, composing and writing for the 1989 West End musical adaptation of Metropolis and writing, directing, and producing the Broadway musical In My Life (2005), a love story about a Village Voice personals editor with obsessive-compulsive disorder and a musician with Tourette syndrome who are brought together by a jingle-singing God.

[2][20] Robert Simonson wrote in Brooks's Playbill obituary that In My Life was "generally regarded as one of the strangest shows ever to have graced a Broadway stage.

[23] In June 2009, Brooks was arrested on charges of raping or sexually assaulting 11 women lured to his East Side apartment from 2005 to 2008.

"She picked the victims, set up travel arrangements, and reassured them", said Lisa Friel, chief of the district attorney's sex crimes unit.

[3] In the late 1970s, Brooks married Susan Paul,[4] an English model and actress who appeared in the films All That Jazz (1979) and Invitation to the Wedding (1983).

[19][29] In 1975, Brooks had a relationship with actress Cindy Williams, who was starring at the time in the movie The First Nudie Musical, written and co-directed by her friend Bruce Kimmel.

He broke up with Williams before the film was made, and the role went to Didi Conn.[31] In 2009, Brooks sued a 22-year-old ex-fiancée, claiming that he had spent $2 million on her before learning she was already married.

[7] At the time of Brooks's death, Nicholas, a former student at the University of Colorado, was awaiting trial in New York City for the murder of his girlfriend, swimwear designer Sylvie Cachay, in a Soho House hotel room on December 9, 2010.

[35] On May 22, 2011, Brooks was found dead in his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with a plastic bag over his head near a hose attached to a helium tank.

[36] According to a law enforcement source, Brooks wrote in the note that he would be exonerated of the charges against him, but complained about his failing health and a woman he claimed had abused him and taken his money.