Richard Perry, music producer behind Barbra Streisand’s “Stoney End” album and other hits, has died at the age of 82

LOS ANGELES – Richard Perry, a successful record producer with a flair for standards and contemporary sounds, whose many successes included Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain, Rod Stewart’s The Great American Songbook series, and a Ringo Starr album featuring all four Beatles , died Tuesday. He was 82.

Perry, a recipient of a Grammys Trustee Award in 2015, died in a Los Angeles hospital after suffering cardiac arrest, friend Daphna Kastner said.

“He made the most of his time here,” said Kastner, who called him a “friend of his father” and said he was her son’s godfather. “He was generous, funny, sweet and made the world a better place. The world is a little less sweet without him here. But she’s a little sweeter in heaven.”

Perry was a former drummer, oboist and doo-wop singer who was at home in a variety of musical styles, the rare producer to have number one hits in pop, R&B, Dance and Country charts. He was on Harry Nilsson’s “Without You” and the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited,” Tiny Tim’s novelty hit “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and the Willie Nelson-Julio Iglesias lounge standard “To All the Girls I’ ” included. I have loved before. Perry was widely known as a “music producer” who treated artists as colleagues rather than as vehicles for his own tastes. Singers turned to him whether they wanted to update their sound (Barbra Streisand), turn back the clock (Stewart), revive their careers (Fats Domino) or fulfill early promises (Leo Sayer).

“Richard had a knack for matching the right song to 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 at performances by Little Richard and Chuck Berry in the 1950s, sat in the third row during Otis Redding’s memorable set at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, and took part in a recording session for the Rolling Stones’ classic album “Let It Bleed.” In a given week he might dine with Paul and Linda McCartney one night and Mick and Bianca Jagger the next. He dated Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Fonda, among others, and was briefly married to actress Rebecca Broussard.

In Stewart’s autobiography, “Rod,” he recalled Perry’s West Hollywood home as “the scene of many late-night scams in the 1970s and beyond, and a place you knew you could always fall into for a while at the end of an evening.” .” full-blown squats with drinks, music and dancing.

In the 1970s, Perry helped facilitate a reunion close to the Beatles.

He had produced a track on Starr’s first solo album, Sentimental Journey, and was introduced to him through Nilsson and other mutual friends. Ringo, released in 1973, was intended to prove that the drummer was a commercial force in his own right – and some well-placed names came along. The album, which featured contributions from Nilsson, Billy Preston, Steve Cropper, Martha Reeves and all five members of the band, reached No. 2 on Billboard and sold more than 1 million copies. Hit singles included the chart-topper “Photograph,” co-written by Starr and George Harrison, and a remake of the 1950s favorite “You’re Sixteen.”

SEE ALSO: The 26-year-old Swiss Olympic snowboarder Sophie Hediger dies in an avalanche

But for Perry and others, the most memorable track was a tailor-made song that wasn’t a hit. John Lennon’s “I’m the Greatest” was a mock anthem for the reserved drummer that brought three Beatles into the studio just three years after the band broke up. Starr was on drums and sang lead, Lennon was on 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 the guitarist could come along. Harrison arrived soon after.

“As I looked around the room, I realized that I was at the epicenter of the spiritual and musical quest that I had dreamed of for so many years,” Perry wrote in his 2021 memoir “Cloud Nine.” “On At the end of each session, a small group of friends would gather, standing silently against the back wall, just excited to be there.”

McCartney was out of town for “I’m the Greatest,” but he helped write and arrange the ballad “Six O’Clock,” which featured the ex-Beatle and Linda McCartney as backing vocalists.

Perry had helped make pop history the year before by producing “You’re So Vain,” which he said was the closest he could get to a perfect record. Simon’s devastating ballad about an unnamed lover, with Voormann’s bass lines introducing the song and Jagger joining in on the chorus, went to No. 1 in 1972 and sparked a long-term debate about Simon’s intended destination. Perry’s response would mirror Simon’s own delayed response.

“I will take this opportunity to give my insider insight,” he wrote in his memoirs. “The person the song is based on is actually made up of several men that Carly dated in the ’60s and early ’70s, but primarily it’s about my good friend Warren Beatty.”

Perry’s post-1970s work included hit singles such as the Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance” and DeBarge’s “Rhythm of the Night,” as well as albums by Simon, Ray Charles and Art Garfunkel. His greatest success came with Stewart’s million-selling “The Great American Songbook” albums, 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 had failed and Perry was one of those who consoled him. Since Stewart was having a hard time finding original songs, he and Perry agreed that an album of standards could work, including “The Very Thought of You,” “Angel Eyes” and “Where or When.”

“Sitting at a back table in our favorite restaurant, we shared ideas and wrote them on a napkin,” Perry wrote in his memoirs. Stewart quietly chanted the options. “As I sat there listening to him sing, it was clear that we both felt we were on to something,” Perry added.

Perry was from New York City and was born into a musical family. His parents, Mark and Sylvia Perry, were co-founders of Peripole Music, a pioneering manufacturer of instruments for young people. With his family’s help and encouragement, he learned drums and oboe and helped form a doo-wop group, the Escorts, which released a handful of singles. He studied music and theater at the University of Michigan and initially dreamed of acting on Broadway. Instead, in the mid-1960s he made the “life-changing” decision to start a production company with a new acquaintance, Gary Katz, who later worked with Steely Dan, among others.

By the end of the decade, Perry was an industry star, working on Captain Beefheart’s acclaimed cult album “Safe As Milk” and the debut recording of “Ella” by Tiny Tim and Ella Fitzgerald, which featured the jazz greats interpreting songs by the Beatles, Smokey Robinson and Randy Newman. In the early 1970s, he oversaw Streisand’s million-selling Stoney End album, which saw the singer move away from the show tunes that made her famous and cover a range of pop and rock music, starting with the title track, a composition by Laura Nyro , to Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind”.

“I liked Richard from the moment we met. “He was tall and lanky, with a shock of dark, curly hair and a big smile that was his big heart,” Streisand wrote in her memoir. “At our first meeting he arrived loaded with songs and we listened to them together. Whatever misgivings I had felt about our collaboration soon disappeared and I thought, ‘This could be fun and musically liberating.'”

AP Music Writer Maria Sherman and AP Entertainment Writer Jonathan Landrum Jr. contributed.