This is quite a long interview/article with (about) Linda Perry...but it's an interesting read nonetheless...I highlighted the part that discusses the track that she wrote and produced for Britney...it's quite a shame that it didn't make the album...
Source:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/liv...the_protector/ The Protector
Red-hot producer Linda Perry is keeping the world safe for women stars
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff, 11/2/2003
LOS ANGELES -- Linda Perry isn't an It Girl. Her fondness for racy tattoos and Harley-Davidson belt buckles hardly qualifies her as a fashion icon. She's neither Hollywood power broker nor upscale drug dealer.
So why is Courtney Love showing up at her house in the middle of the night?
How do you explain a flustered phone message from the singer Pink, threatening to stalk Perry if she doesn't return the call?
Who is this person who bosses around Britney Spears and gets away with it?
Linda Perry writes songs. Good songs. She produces them, too, arranging and playing the instruments and often sending a singer home after a night's work with a fully finished track that, statistically speaking, will become a big fat hit. Fans of the 1993 radio anthem "What's Up?" ("Hey-yay-yay-ay, hey-yay-yay, I say hey, what's goin' on?") will remember Perry as the brash, dreadlocked frontwoman of the San Francisco rock band 4 Non Blondes, which sold 6 million copies of its debut album and then promptly vanished.
Ten years later -- a genuine "Behind the Music" decade filled with ugly lawsuits, unheard solo projects, debilitating depression, and enough serendipity to restore your faith in the higher power of a pop song -- Perry has reinvented herself as the consummate musical collaborator to the stars.
Like her red-hot contemporaries the Neptunes and the Matrix, Perry is a multitalented musician who has carved a niche as a behind-the-scenes composer and producer. What sets her apart is her clientele, almost exclusively women; an approach to music that by all accounts defies the calculation endemic to mainstream pop songwriting; and a particular flair for wrapping her musical arms around young pop stars during the vulnerable early stages of their careers.
"It's really hard to be yourself," says Perry, "especially when you have a big machine behind you saying, `This is what's hip on radio, and this is a hip look, and this is what's hip hip hip hip hip.' If the first album was a hit, it's usually because the artist really wanted to be a rock star, and if she has to do it this way, she'll do it. We compromise a lot. "When I met Alecia [Moore, a.k.a. Pink], she gave me her first album, and I was, `Ugh. What is this?' I called her up and said, `Can you come over and bring me your CD collection? The stuff you listen to?' And it was Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Tupac, Carole King, Guns N' Roses. And I'm like, `OK. I get it.' She was 16, and she wanted a record deal."
Perry's first two projects were high-wattage and high-impact: She helped transform Pink from a teen-dance moppet into a formidable pop-rock force as writer and producer of eight songs on the singer's breakthrough sophomore album, 2001's "M!ssundaztood," including the title track and the ubiquitous "Get the Party Started."
The following year Christina Aguilera became a credible artist in the eyes of many thanks to the surprising depth of her performance on one song: "Beautiful," written and produced by Perry.
"That was going to be my comeback song," Perry says of "Beautiful." "I only played it for Christina to break the ice when we first met. But she wanted to sing it, and I let her record a demo at my house. Her vocal was so honest and so real. I knew the song was hers."
A creative guru Perry follows her gut, no questions asked, an iron-clad approach to life and business that's brought her much torment and a recent bonanza of blessings. Her upper body is covered with butterflies, images she's had etched into her flesh to remind her of a few important facts: that the lowly caterpillar emerges from her cocoon magically transformed into a lovely creature, that crawling things can learn to fly, that everything changes.
She explains this in the candle-lit control room of her recording studio, which is tucked discreetly behind a locked gate amid the strip malls, liquor stores, and auto shops of Burbank. Perry has created a musician's cocoon here, a vast, cushioned space filled with low sofas and ruby-red rugs, soft lights and swirling fabrics. Dozens of guitars rest against the walls of a room filled with the scents of incense and fresh flowers. In one corner is a menagerie of percussion instruments, in another sits a Steinway. Next to the grand piano Perry has arranged a cluster of bean bag chairs for singers inclined to curl up.
While her work with Pink and Aguilera established Perry as a creative guru for young pop stars in search of substance and direction, she's become the collaborator of choice for a broad swath of women in rock. No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani tapped Perry for her solo debut, due out early next year, as did Love; Perry co-wrote seven tracks for Love's forthcoming "America's Sweetheart" during two months of chaotic, booze-fueled, all-night jam sessions with Love, drummer Patty Schemel, and bassist Jerry Best. Perry's recently branched out into country and world music, on projects with Faith Hill and Angelique Kidjo.
"She asked me what I feel like, what I think about, what I want to talk about," says Kidjo, who recently wrote two songs with Perry. "I talked to her about my child, and the two songs we wrote are about that love. She brought to me the idea that no matter which language you write a song in, it's all based in one thing -- the story you have to tell."
It's impossible to distill Perry's role, which is constantly morphing. She's Keith to Courtney's Mick, and Pink's big sister. She's savvy insider and spiritual guide. It's no surprise that a slew of new female talents are trekking to Perry's studio for writing and recording sessions -- among them 24-year-old Sierra Swan, a Fiona Apple-esque singer-songwriter whose debut album (for Atlantic, due out next summer) had been foundering for years.
"Label people get paranoid. They feel like they need to put someone in there with you," says Swan, who had been paired with numerous songwriters before. "When I met Linda it was like, `Here we go again.' I played her some stuff, showed her some ideas. And she put me in the studio by myself, for two weeks, with her engineers."
"I could have gotten in trouble for it," Perry happily reports. "But I couldn't help it. Sierra is one of the most tremendously talented people I've met. She played me what she'd done on her album so far, this dance-y stuff, and I'm like, `Do you want my honest opinion? I wouldn't buy it.' Then she played these songs she did on her own at her dad's house, very dark, and I was like, `I would buy that.' So I gave her the money they gave me to produce her and said, `Go do this. And we're not gonna tell the label.' "
Of course the label found out. Whatever betrayal they may have felt, however, was tempered by what they heard on tape.
"Linda will do whatever it takes to get done what needs to be done with the artist," says Mary Gormley, vice president of A&R at Atlantic Records. "She doesn't placate me, either. But to be honest, that's what I love. It makes me trust her."
Trust is a vital piece of Perry's working relationships, and she's come to believe that gender plays a role in the comfort level and deep connection she establishes with artists.
"For years I didn't want to be judged because I was a woman and because I'm gay," Perry says. "But I've been in denial. There is a difference. And in a weird way I think I'm very genderless. I have a macho dude thing about me, and obviously I'm a chick. I seem safe. I'm unthreatening, but I'm demanding. I work these girls hard."
Indeed. When Aguilera launched into her familiar vocal gymnastics during the recording session for "Beautiful," cramming 12-packs of notes into swooping arpeggios, Perry laid down the law.
"I don't settle for the tricks I hear," she says. "If I had produced her vocals like she normally sang, really plushed out with major harmonies all over the place and her `woo-woo-woo, I am beaoooo-ti-fuuuuuul,' it wouldn't have gone anywhere. There were points where she cracked and it wasn't perfect. But that's when the listener catches onto something real, and that's all you've got."
Not a pop star Killer hooks and artistic integrity are an elusive recipe. Part of Perry's appeal is her history as a serious artist with a subversive streak. Perry -- who was born in Springfield to a Portuguese father and a Brazilian/Moroccan mother and grew up in San Diego -- left 4 Non Blondes at the peak of the band's newfound popularity because she had been determined to raise the creative bar on their second album. Her bandmates and their label, Interscope, wanted to repeat the commercial success of their multiplatinum debut.
"I went to Tom Whalley [then vice president of A&R for Interscope and now chairman of Warner Bros.] and said, `Look at me. It's Linda, and I'm telling you I'm never going to write you "What's Up?" again.' Those songs were killing me. I was walking around in a top hat and dreads and shoes three times too big, and it's who I was, but it had become a gimmick. Nobody took us seriously, and we had no longevity. I offered to give them all the songs, if that was the issue, and help find a new singer. I just didn't want to be a pop star. I wanted to be a thing that blended into the wall, with no face, no videos, no press, just a thing that people heard."
To everybody's shock, Interscope dropped 4 Non Blondes and kept Perry on as a solo artist. The band was devastated and so was Perry, and her state of mind only worsened when the label shelved her introspective 1996 solo album, "In Flight." After financing her own yearlong tour, Perry slipped into a massive depression. Two years later, in 1999, she moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where she bought a dumpy little house in the valley and was teaching herself to program drums when the fortuitous threatening message arrived from then-stranger Alecia Moore.
"She was so loud I was holding the phone back like this," Perry recalls, laughing on a lime green sofa in the onetime dumpy little house, which was recently made over into a minimalist, Zenlike retreat. Her assistant Shannon replenishes Perry's steady diet of Miller Lites and cigarettes. " `My name's Pink and I love you and oh my God I had to steal your number out of my makeup artist's book and if you don't call me back I can definitely get your address and come down there if I have to.' And I'm like, Pink? What is that?"
Perry put her comeback plans on hold as soon as Pink stepped into her life. The irony of her career transformation isn't lost on Perry -- the young, rudderless star who grew disgusted with the politics of pop music, dropped out of the game, and is now feeding the careers of young, rudderless pop stars. But it's exactly why Perry's vantage point, and by extension her intentions, may be unprecedented among songwriters-for-hire.
In the studio, Perry asks her engineer, Dave Guerrero, to cue up some new songs. She silently mouths the words to "Waiting for Love," one of three tracks Perry cowrote and produced for Pink's new album, "Try This," out Nov. 11. It's another creative left turn for Pink -- a Zeppelin-flavored rock waltz, drenched in warm beats and acoustic guitars, sinewy riffs, and hard, soulful vocals. Next comes a demo of Perry singing "Watching Over Me," an old-time, Patsy-Cline-type country tune, which she'll deliver to Faith Hill in Nashville in a few days.
It's hard to believe the same musician wrote the next track, "Girls and Boys," a sinuous electroclash tune. Britney Spears is singing about masturbating while her lover sleeps beside her. The song -- inspired by Perry's impression that Spears wanted something edgier in her repertoire -- won't be on Spears's new album, "In the Zone," scheduled to drop Nov. 18. According to Perry the label felt it strayed too far from rest of the tracks and plans to save it for release on a soundtrack. She reports with great satisfaction, however, that "Britney loves it."
Perry is clear about her allegiance. She's not working to supply record companies with hits but rather artists with songs that feel like natural extensions of who they are.
"I've had labels bring me an artist and tell me, `We want "Get the Party Started," ' and then the artist walks in and I'm looking at this Bob Dylan/Jeff Buckley type of character. And then I sit and go, `OK, Linda. Where are your personal boundaries on this?' And I always have to follow my heart."
One can't help but wonder if Perry's heart will lead her back to her first love, performing. She books occasional shows at the Knitting Factory in LA and invites friends down to hear new songs. During an afternoon in the studio she stepped into the vocal booth herself to try a few takes on a song called "Bill," a pensive ballad-cum-train-wreck of a tune from a rock opera she's been working on for years.
Her voice is powerful -- a high-octane mash of grit and melody. But the Linda Perry session is cut short. She can't, she says, cut loose.
"I don't know if I'm capable of making my own album," Perry says, "because I'd be terrified of it failing. I'm starting to feel more comfortable in my skin. I'm not constantly wanting to be invisible anymore. But what I'm doing right now makes all the sense in the world. It's not about me. It's about the music."
Info on the Linda Perry produced track, "Girls and Boys"... 
NOW I WANT THIS SONG!!!
