Richard Perry, music producer behind Barbra Streisand ‘Stoney End’ album, other hits, dies at 82

LOS ANGELES — Richard Perry, a hit-making record producer with a flair for both standards and modern 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 with all four Beatles, died Tuesday. He was 82.

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

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

Perry was a former drummer, oboist and doo-wop singer who at home with a wide range of musical styles proved that the rare producer had no. 1 hits on pop, R.&B, dance and country charts. He featured on Harry Nilsson’s “Without You” and The Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited,” Tiny Tim’s novelty smash “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” and the Willie Nelson-Julio Iglesias lounge standard “To All the Girls I” have loved before.” Perry was widely known as a “music producer” who treated artists as peers rather than vehicles for his own tastes. Singers turned to him whether trying to update their sound (Barbra Streisand), turn back the clock (Stewart), revive their career (Fats Domino) or fulfill an early promise (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 for 1950s performances by Little Richard and Chuck Berry, sat in the third row at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival during Otis Redding’s memorable set, and participated in a recording session for the Rolling Stones’ classic “Let It Bleed” album. Any given week might find him dining 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 would recall Perry’s home in West Hollywood as “the scene of a lot of late-night swindling throughout the 1970s and onward, and a place you knew you could always drop into at the end of a evening for a full blown knees up with drink and music and dancing.”

In the ’70s, Perry helped facilitate a near-Beatles reunion.

He had produced a track on Starr’s first solo album, “Sentimental Journey,” and had grown closer to him through Nilsson and other mutual friends. “Ringo”, released in 1973, would prove that the drummer was a commercial force in his own right – with some well-placed names passing by. The album, featuring 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-topping “Photograph,” written by Starr and George Harrison, and a remake of the 1950s favorite “You’re Sixteen.”

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

But for Perry and others, the most memorable number one non-hit was custom. John Lennon’s “I’m the Greatest” was a mocking anthem for the self-effacing drummer who brought three Beatles into the studio just three years after the band’s breakup. Starr was on drums and sang lead, Lennon was on keyboards and backing vocals and long-time Beatles friend Klaus Voormann played bass. They were still working on the song when Harrison’s assistant called and asked if the guitarist could join. Harrison arrived soon after.

“Looking around the room, I realized I was at the very epicenter of the spiritual and musical quest I’d dreamed of for so many years,” Perry wrote in his 2021 memoir, “Cloud Nine.” “By the end of each session, a small group of friends had gathered, standing quietly along the back wall, just excited to be there.”

McCartney wasn’t in town for “I’m the Greatest,” but he helped write and arrange the ballad “Six O’Clock,” with ex-Beatle and Linda McCartney on backing vocals.

Perry had helped make pop history the year before, producing “You’re So Vain,” which he would call the closest he’d come to a perfect record. Simon’s wistful ballad about an unnamed lover, with Voormann’s bass run starting the song and Jagger joining in on the chorus, hit No. 1 in 1972 and began a long-term debate about Simon’s intended goals. Perry’s response would echo Simon’s own delayed response.

“I want to take this opportunity to give my insider’s scoop,” he wrote in his memoir. “The persona that the song is based on is really a composite of several men that Carly dated in the ’60s and early ’70s, but mainly it’s about my good friend, Warren Beatty.”

Perry’s post-1970s work included such hit singles as The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance” and DeBarge’s “Rhythm of the Night,” along with albums by Simon, Ray Charles, and Art Garfunkel. He had his biggest success with Stewart’s million-selling album “The Great American Songbook,” a project made possible by the rock star’s writer’s block and troubled private life. By the early 2000s, Stewart’s marriage to Rachel Hunter had ended, and Perry was among those who consoled him. As Stewart struggled to come up with 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.”

“We sat at a back table in our favorite restaurant, exchanging ideas and writing them down on a napkin,” Perry wrote in his memoir. Stewart softly sang the possibilities. “As I sat there listening to him sing, it was clear that we both sensed that we were on to 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 pioneering manufacturer of instruments for young people. With his family’s help and encouragement, he learned to play the drums and oboe and helped form a doo-wop group, the Escorts, which released a handful of singles. A music and theater major at the University of Michigan, he originally dreamed of performing on Broadway. Instead, he made the “life-changing” decision in the mid-1960s to form a production company with a recent acquaintance, Gary Katz, who would go on to work 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 Tiny Tim and Ella Fitzgerald’s “Ella,” featuring the jazz great’s renditions of Beatles songs. Smokey Robinson and Randy Newman. In the early 1970s, he would oversee Streisand’s million-selling album “Stoney End”, where the singer turned from the show tunes that made her famous and covered a range of pop and rock music, from the title track, a Laura Nyro composition, 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 mop of dark, curly hair and a big smile like his big heart,” Streisand wrote in her memoir. “At our first meeting, he arrived loaded with songs and we listened to them together. Whatever hesitation I may have had about our collaboration quickly disappeared and I thought, ‘This could be fun and musically liberating’.”

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