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Richard Perry, the prolific record producer behind hits like Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” has died.

What to know

Perry, 82, died Tuesday in a Los Angeles hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest, The Associated Press (AP) reported..

Who was Richard Perry?

Born in New York, Perry was an avid musician and member of a doo-wop band in high school. But after college he turned his attention to producing records and became one of the most successful producers of all time.

He has worked with major artists from Barbra Streisand to Rod Stewart and Fats Domino to Leo Sayer.

Perry was also on hand to record The Beatles’ first post-breakup work together on a song on drummer Ringo Starr’s first solo album, A sentimental journey.

The producer worked with Stewart on it The Great American Songbook series and won a Grammy Trustee Award in 2015.

Well-connected with high-profile celebrities and musicians, Perry dated Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda and was briefly married to actress Rebecca Broussard.

What people are saying

Perry’s girlfriend, Donna Kastner, broke the news of his death to the media, describing him as a “fatherly friend”.

“He maximized his time here,” she told the AP. “He was generous, funny, sweet, and made the world a better place. The world is a little less sweet here without him. But it’s a little sweeter in heaven.”

Streisand worked closely with Perry throughout her career and praised him in her memoir, My name is Barbra.

“I liked Richard from the moment we met. He was tall and lanky with dark, curly hair and a big smile,” she wrote. “He arrived at our first meeting loaded with songs and we listened to them together. Whatever hesitation I felt about our collaboration soon disappeared and I thought, ‘This could be fun and musically liberating’.”

She also wrote of his musical abilities: “Richard had a knack for matching the right song to the right artist.”

Perry used his memoir to confirm a closely guarded, decades-long secret by revealing exactly which ex-boyfriend Simon sings about in “You’re So Vain.”

“I will take this opportunity to outline my insider information,” he wrote in his 2021 memoir, Cloud nine. “The person the song is based on is actually a composite of several men that Carly dated in the ’60s and early ’70s, but primarily it’s about my good friend Warren Beatty.”