Richard Perry, record producer behind 'You're So Vain,' dies at 82
Record Producer Richard Perry attends the 72nd Annual Golden Globe Awards cocktail party at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 11, 2015 in Beverly Hills, California. (Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES - Richard Perry, a record producer known for many successes, including Carly Simon’s "You’re So Vain" and Rod Stewart’s "The Great American Songbook" series, has died. He was 82 years old.
According to the Associated Press, Perry died at a Los Angeles hospital after suffering cardiac arrest, his friend Daphna Kastner said.
"He maximized his time here," said Kastner, who called him a "father friend" and said he was godfather to her son. "He was generous, fun, sweet and made the world a better place. The world is a little less sweeter without him here. But it's a little bit sweeter in heaven."
Perry entered the music industry after graduating from college in 1964, leaving Michigan for Los Angeles where he produced the first couple albums for avant-rock cult legend Captain Beefheart.
During the 1970s, Perry began working with legedary artists including Barbra Streisand, Art Garfunkel, Diana Ross, Ringo Starr and more.
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In Stewart's autobiography, "Rod," he would remember Perry's home in West Hollywood as "the scene of much late-night skulduggery through the 1970s and beyond, 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."
"Richard had a knack for matching the right song to the right artist," Streisand wrote in her 2023 memoir, "My Name is Barbra."
From 2009 to 2017, Perry was in a relationship with actress Jane Fonda.