Sound standards that have seen many successes, including Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” Rod Stewart’s “The Great American Songbook” series, and the Ringo Starr album featuring all four Beatles. Richard Perry, a hitmaking record producer with a flair for both and contemporary sounds, has died. tuesday. He was 82 years old.
Perry, who won the 2015 Grammy Award for Trust, died at a Los Angeles hospital after suffering a heart attack, said friend Daphna Kastner.
“He made the most of his time here,” Kastner said. Kastner called him “dad’s friend” and said he was her son’s godfather. “He was generous, funny, sweet, and he made the world a better place. The world is a little less sweet without him. But it’s a little sweeter in heaven.”
Perry has demonstrated a variety of musical styles, at one time at home as a drummer, oboist and doo-wop singer, and the rare producer with a number one hit in pop, R.&B, dance and country charts. He was featured on Harry Nilsson’s “Without You” and The Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited,” Tiny Tim’s breakout hit “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and the Willie Nelson-Julio Iglesias lounge standard “To All the Girls I” . “I’ve been loved before.” Perry was widely known as a ‘musician’s producer’ who treated artists like colleagues rather than vehicles for his tastes. Singers turned to him when they wanted to update their sound (Barbra Streisand), turn back the clock (Stewart), revive a career (Fats Domino), or fulfill an early promise (Leo Sayer).
“Richard had a knack for pairing the right song with the right artist,” Streisand wrote in her 2023 memoir, “My Name is Barbra.”
Perry’s life was partly a story of famous friends and the right places. He was backstage for performances by Little Richard and Chuck Berry in the 1950s, sat third row at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival during Otis Redding’s memorable set, and sang the Rolling Stones’ classic “Let It Bleed” album. I attended a recording session. During the week he might be dining with Paul and Linda McCartney one night, and Mick and Bianca Jagger the next. He dated Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, and was briefly married to actress Rebecca Broussard.
In Stewart’s autobiography, “Rod,” he remembered Perry’s home in West Hollywood as “a hot spot for late-night fornication through the 1970s and beyond, a place you could always indulge in after dinner.” “We got down on our knees with alcohol, music, and dancing.”
In the ’70s, Perry helped facilitate a near-Beatles reunion.
He produced tracks on Starr’s first solo album, “Sentimental Journey,” and became closer to him through Nilsson and other friends. Released in 1973, “Ringo” proved the drummer to be a commercial force in his own right, and several well-known names were heard. The album, which featured Nilsson, Billy Preston, Steve Cropper, Martha Reeves and all five members of The Band, reached number two on the Billboard and sold over one million copies. Hit singles included the chart-topping “Photograph,” co-written by Starr and George Harrison, and a cover of the 1950s hit “You’re Sixteen.”
But for Perry and others, the most memorable tracks were not hits but tailor-made ones. John Lennon’s “I’m the Greatest” mocks the self-deprecating drummer who brought three Beatles into the studio just three years after the band broke up. Starr played drums and sang lead, Lennon did keyboards and backing vocals, and longtime Beatles friend Klaus Voormann played bass. They were still working on the song when Harrison’s assistant called and asked if a guitarist could join. Harrison arrived soon after.
“As I looked around the room, I realized I was at the epicenter of a spiritual and musical exploration I’d been dreaming of for years,” Perry wrote in her 2021 memoir, “Cloud Nine.” “At the end of each session, a small group of friends would gather and stand quietly along the back wall, delighted to be there.”
McCartney wasn’t in town for “I’m the Greatest,” but he helped write and arrange the ballad “Six O’Clock,” which featured former Beatles member and Linda McCartney on backing vocals.
Perry had helped make pop history the previous year as the producer of “You’re So Vain,” which he called the closest thing to a perfect album. Simon’s poignant ballad about an unnamed lover, with Voormann’s bass player opening the song and Jagger joining the chorus, became a number one hit in 1972 and began a long-running debate about Simon’s intended target. Perry’s response may reflect Simon’s own belated reaction.
“I will take this opportunity to provide my inside information,” he wrote in his memoir. “The guy the song is based on is actually a composite of several men Carly dated in the ’60s and early ’70s, but it’s mainly about my good friend Warren Beatty.”
Perry’s post-1970s work includes hit singles such as “Neutron Dance” by The Pointer Sisters and “Rhythm of the Night” by DeBarge, and albums by Simon, Ray Charles and Art Garfunkel. He achieved his greatest success with Stewart’s million-selling “The Great American Songbook” album. The album was a project made possible by the rock star’s writer’s block and troubled personal life. In the early 2000s, Stewart’s marriage to Rachel Hunter ended and Perry was among those comforting him. While Stewart struggled to produce original songs, he and Perry agreed that an album of standards, including “The Very Thought of You,” “Angel Eyes” and “Where or When,” would work.
“We sat at a back table at our favorite restaurant, exchanging ideas and writing them down on napkins,” Perry wrote in his memoir. Stewart softly sang the options. “As I sat there and listened to him sing, it was clear to both of us that we were onto something.” Perry added.
Perry was a New York City native born into a musical family. His parents, Mark and Sylvia Perry, co-founded Peripole Music, a manufacturer of musical instruments for young people. With the help and encouragement of his family, he learned to play the drums and oboe and formed a doo-wop group, the Escorts, releasing a handful of singles. After majoring in music and theater at the University of Michigan, he initially dreamed of acting on Broadway. Instead, he made the “life-changing” decision to form a production company with a recent acquaintance, Gary Katz, who would go on to work with Steely Dan in the mid-1960s.
By the late 1990s, Perry had become an industry star, working on Captain Beefheart’s acclaimed cult album “Safe As Milk” and Tiny Tim and Ella Fitzgerald’s debut recording of “Ella.” , Smokey Robinson, Randy Newman. In the early 1970s, he oversaw Streisand’s million-selling “Stoney End” album, in which Streisand moved away from the show tunes that made her famous and covered a variety of pop and rock music, starting with the title track, a Laura Nyro composition. , see “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot.
“I liked Richard from the moment I first met him. He was tall and lanky, with dark, curly hair and a big smile, as did his big heart,” Streisand wrote in her memoir. “At our first meeting he arrived with a bunch of songs and we listened to them together. Any hesitation I felt about our collaboration soon disappeared and I thought, ‘This could be fun and musically liberating.’”
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AP Music Writer Maria Sherman and AP Entertainment Writer Jonathan Landrum Jr. contributed.
