Richard Perry (1942-2024)
26th December 2024
Hitmaker and Nobody Does It Better producer Richard Perry has died at 82
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 - Hitmaker and Nobody Does It Better producer Richard Perry has died at 82)
Prominent hitmaker Richard Perry who produced The Spy Who Loved Me’s main title song Nobody Does It Better dies in Hollywood at the age of 82.
From the dancing piano plinks to the final bars of its booming crescendo, 1977’s ‘Nobody Does It Better’ has since become a Bond standard. Eschewing John Barry’s signature big horns and haunting melodies for something more contemporary, this lighter, breezier and perhaps sexier alternative, epitomised Roger Moore’s interpretation of James Bond 007. As Barbara Broccoli later said, “Over the years ‘Nobody Does it Better’ has become synonymous with Bond.” Written by the EGOT winning composer Mavin Hamlisch and lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, the track was produced by Richard Perry who finessed it into a winner which not only served the movie beautifully but became a top ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA and a Best Song Academy Award nominee.
Richard Van Perry was born on 18 June 1942 in Brooklyn, New York and raised around music. His parents ran Peripole Music, the largest and most successful supplier of musical instruments for children in the United States. At a young age Perry learned to play the drums and the oboe and formed his own doo-wop group. Securing a music and theatre major at the University of Michigan, Perry originally set his sights on a Broadway acting career but instead launched his own record company Cloud Nine Productions in 1965. Two years later he joined Warner Bros Records as a staff producer.
By the early 1970s, Perry was in hot demand and called upon to perfect dozens of records, turning them into hits with a polished pop sound. He worked with the likes of Tiny Tim, Theo Bikel, Johnny Mathis, Ella Fitzgerald, Ringo Starr, and Barbra Streisand, who wrote in her autobiography, "I liked Richard from the moment we met. He was tall and lanky, with a mop of dark, curly hair and a big smile. At our first meeting, he arrived laden with songs, and we listened to them together. Whatever hesitation I may have felt about our collaboration soon vanished and I thought, 'This could be fun, and musically liberating.’”
Perry was first introduced to Carly Simon in 1972, an artist who had interested him for some time. In his 2021 memoir Cloud Nine Perry admitted, “From the moment I heard Carly Simon’s first album, I was determined to work with her someday, some way. The reason for this was threefold. First, I fell in love with her voice – it sounded like a cross between a well-lubricated trumpet and a mellifluous bass clarinet; second, she had an ability to write unique, personal songs and melodies that captured the best qualities in her voice; and third, she had a unique look that personified beauty, heat, and sensuality.” Their song, ‘You’re So Vain’ became a number one hit, “I consider this to be the closest I’ve come to making a perfect record and it is the one of which I am most proud.”
In 1973 Perry produced Ringo Starr‘s third solo album ‘Ringo’ in London. The project came close to witnessing a near-total Beatles reunion. The John Lennon penned ‘I’m The Greatest’ saw Lennon take on backing vocals and keyboards, Starr on drums and George Harrison on guitar. However Paul McCartney was not involved in the recording, but he did help write and arrange the ballad ‘Six O’Clock,’ featuring the ex-Beatle and Linda McCartney on backing vocals. ‘Ringo’ was a commercial success, selling over one million copies and reaching Number 2 on the Billboard Album Charts.
Perry opened his own state-of-the-art recording complex Studio 55 in 1974. Located on Melrose Avenue near Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles it became the creative hub for all of Perry’s work up until 1992, “Anyone who sets out to pursue a career as a music producer will inevitably have two supreme goals: one, to have his or her own recording studio, and two, to have his or her own label.”
In 1977 Marvin Hamlisch approached Perry to produce ‘Nobody Does It Better’ the track he had co-written with Carole Bayer Sager to accompany the opening titles of 'The Spy Who Loved Me'. Hamlisch told Jon Burlingame author of The Music of James Bond, “We just felt that he could make a hell of a record.” Bayer Sager had first worked with the producer in 1975 on her song ‘Midnight Blue’ sung by Melissa Manchester. She attributed Perry for launching her into the big time, “He was one of the great producers of the time and I had tremendous faith in him.”
In 2021 ‘Some Kind of Hero’ authors Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury interviewed Perry, who by this time, was courageously fighting Parkinson’s. While speech issues prevented him from fully articulating his thoughts Perry slowly recalled to the authors the genesis of his involvement in ‘Nobody Does It Better’, “They played me a demo they’d made, and even though it didn’t show well as a demo, there was something about it that intrigued me.” It is unclear who first approached Carly Simon. Hamlisch said the American singer was his first and only choice, while Perry stated, “Marvin and Carole weren’t as eager for Carly at first, but I knew in my gut that she would kill it, and apart from ‘You’re So Vain,’ it would turn out to be her biggest hit.”
Following her previous collaboration with Perry, Simon knew she was in safe hands. The singer told Field and Chowdhury from her home in Martha's Vineyard, “Any time Richard produced a song his talents were extremely audible and visible.” He recorded Simon’s vocal at Studio 55 and completed the record in the UK, “Since Marvin was in London recording the score for the film, I felt it made sense for us to overdub the orchestra there, which would give him the opportunity to be present for the recording session of the song he’d co-written. When it came time to add the strings and horns, I contacted the noted British arranger Richard Hewson, known for his work with The Beatles. To make the experience even more special, I arranged for us to do the session at Abbey Road, Studio B, the very Beatles studio where I’d worked with McCartney four years prior. Richard Hewson’s arrangement was stellar in every respect.”
Carole Bayer Sager recalls that both she and Marvin Hamlisch were knocked out by Perry’s final mix, admitting they had originally only provided him with a piano vocal sung by the composer, “This was really his vision of the song.” Simon remembers, “He added those wonderful sexy swoops in the melody. The arrangement was [completed] under Richard’s auspices.” Hamlisch told Burlingame, “Perry was known for his fade-out endings. Carly sung it five or six times, and then he just layered them one after the other. It was just like, wow.” Perry continued to work with Carly Simon throughout the next decade and into the 1990s.
The 1980s saw him work with the likes of Diana Ross, Neil Diamond, Pointer Sisters, Donna Summer, Thelma Houston, and most famously Rod Stewart who described Perry’s home in West Hollywood as “the scene of much late-night skulduggery and a place you knew you could always fall into at the end of an evening for a full-blown knees-up with drink and music and dancing.” Perry had his greatest success with Stewart’s million-selling ‘The Great American Songbook’ albums. In the 1990s Perry produced work for Tina Turner, Luther Vandross, Ray Charles, Tom Jones, and Art Garkunkel. Summing up his career Perry reflected, “I’m proud to say that I am one of the very few producers who has had a No. 1 record on all four major Billboard charts: pop, R&B, country, and dance. Moreover, many of the recordings for some of the artists I worked with including The Pointer Sisters, Rod Stewart, Carly Simon, Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson have been the most successful of their respective careers.
Perry dated Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda and briefly married the actress, Rebecca Broussard. He died on 23 December after suffering a cardiac arrest. Perry’s passing was announced by his close friend Daphna Kastner Keitel. Carole Bayer Sager said in tribute, “I loved him, and he played such an important role in my life. I wish his soul to live forever in peace and love.”
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