Ted Perlman Speaks On Dr. Dre & More [Interview]

[Lunatic]

http://raptalk.net/website/content/view/2331/54/

Here we are with Ted Perlman, the legendary studio wizard who has worked with everyone from Bob Dylan to Dr. Dre (from the Burt Bacharach release, “All This Time” which picked up a Grammy).

With an impressive career that has crossed many borders and has lasted over three decades and counting, Ted Perlman takes us on a brief time travel of the studio sessions throughout his history which also includes Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, that very same studio where he is currently working with rising Country vocalist Tesa Ruiz – a future star out of Sulphur, Louisiana.

Check out what Ted Perlman has to say about Dr. Dre as he goes in depth regarding his legendary 1992 The Chronic album and the many other distinguished artists he and his renowned wife Peggi Blu have worked with.

Ted Perlman on MySpace at: www.myspace.com/tedperlman

Read Full Interview Here:
http://raptalk.net/website/content/view/2331/54/

[Lunatic]

Interview: We’re here with well-known industry figure Ted Perlman. We want to start off by giving the readers a bit of your background information because your resume holds more than a few impressive accolades.

Ted Perlman: I started out as a guitar player and played for a whole bunch of different people. I’ve worked with everybody from Bob Dylan to other people and cross genres of music, pop music, country music and more. From that, I started arranging recordings for a lot of people all the way up to producing. I pretty much come from a very wide background of styles. I’ve played with African musicians, musicians from China; I lived in Israel for a while. I’m well versed in a lot of different styles of music.

To me, it doesn’t make any difference. I can go from a 12 year old kid from Disney or to Bob Dylan, or to some crazy some rock and roller. As long as the songs are good and the singer is good, it doesn’t make a difference to me. It’s a blessing to be able to move in and out of all those different areas. Hip-hop, dance, it doesn’t matter to me. I do it without any problems. It’s easy for me. It’s a great thing and I see it as a blessing.

Interview: That’s unbelievable to see you move all over the world and from genre to genre. How do you think how your work became so diverse?

Ted Perlman: I was confused for a while. I worked with so many different people that it was bizarre. I have had a really weird performing career, where I’ve worked with so many different folks, but it’s a real school lesson to go through something like that.

Most of the guys I knew came from New York and there was a period from the 70’s all through the mid 80’s - - it was easy to do all those different things in New York because during the real golden age of music.  You had jazz musicians and then you’d go into a session with some country group.  You just do this every day and you just went from one thing to another. It didn’t make a difference and that was the way I was taught. I could stand up in front of an orchestra, wave my hands and conduct the orchestra, write the charts for the orchestra, record and mix the orchestra and then if worse comes to worse, I could run out and do the sound.

I know how to do that because that was the way I was brought up. The one thing that is good is you go all that time and you work with these great artists, I worked with Whitney Houston when she was 17 and what you learn is that someone comes along that’s really special talent wise which goes back to Tesa Ruiz. Something like that just shows up and she’s a real natural talent. It’s like discovering a great restaurant; wow, nobody found this place yet. That comes from all those different people I worked with. That’s what got me so excited about her [Tesa Ruiz].

Interview: Working with so many great people and running from club to club, crossing genres from conducting orchestra’s to setting up sessions with Bob Dylan in that same night, it might be a totally different sound of music in a matter of hours. From when you were coming up, do you think that music has lost that feeling today? We don’t see enough of that anymore?

Ted Perlman: It’s not the fault of the people coming up because there is nowhere to learn it. Take somebody like Dr. Dre who came up from hip-hop, NWA and he’s very aware of music. He brought Snoop Dogg, and you have someone like Kanye West, all these guys are very aware of music. They made the effort to go out and learn about all the different things. There are people coming up but a lot of the guys are just working by themselves so they have no opportunity to learn all this stuff because they’re not working with other people. They just sit in a room with a computer and they bring some loops together. There’s a difference.

The main thing about the music business is that it has to be song based, otherwise it doesn’t work. A great song could be Macarena or Do Wah Diddy.  It’s just something that is really memorable and people feel good to listen to. As long as the songwriter is the one who determines what’s happening and the material is good in any style, than the business strives and everybody is happy. Now they talk about the record companies and the music business is so bad, it’s not that, it’s nobody is writing songs. A lot of people are writing songs but most of the business is based on people writing beats. They are cool beats but once you have a good beat, you have to keep the song in there.

Someone like Alicia Keys comes along and she has songs, her music is still song based. It’s only going to be successful that way. Lady Gaga has songs and she comes from the same background in New York and she did everything. You can see a video of her on www.youtube.com performing at the place where Peggi (Blu) and I started, The Bitter End. She’s up there just singing some songs. In New York, that’s how you get people to come down and see you. She’s doing really well because her music is all song based – Paparazzi, Just Dance – you can remember the songs.

A lot of the music that is out, especially in hip hop they take somebody else’s thing and they don’t do anything with it – “yo, yo, my homies, my bitches” and that’s not song based. Somebody like Jay-Z and Alicia Keys [Empire State of Mind], which is a really good song. People like The Black Eyed Peas, its songs. That’s the good side of the music business. It will always go forward when its song based and not based on three guys on stage looking like thugs rapping “yo, I’m gonna’ cut your bitch” or something like that. That’s bad for business just like it was bad when certain disco stuff came out and it was just ten minutes of drumbeats and no song. I can talk about this for hours so you want to stop me on this (laughs).

Interview: I did pull a couple of questions from the stuff you addressed. One thing you said is that with the new people coming up, it’s not their fault that the music business has sort of lost that feel. They may be sitting in a room with a computer and they put together loop after loop as you said. Do you think that is there own ego or is that the people who are in a position to help them aren’t doing so?

Ted Perlman: I don’t want to dog anybody but when I was coming up, all I wanted to do was go out of my way to find the older musicians, the people who had been doing it for a long time and I found them and went to them. After a session where I would just play guitar, I would stay around and watch them record the background vocals, the strings, I’d watch the engineers and I didn’t go to music school. All the stuff I learned was from me repeatedly asking “how do you do that?” and I was so hungry for this knowledge that I just went wherever I could find it. I asked everybody and if you listen to them talk, they’ll tell you everything.

It’s a different time now. A guy can sit there by himself and put something together and it’s a big hit record, and suddenly the guy doesn’t feel he needs to learn anything else because he made so much money. There’s no motivation. When I came up, you couldn’t get rich like that unless you could really play. If you got into a rock band that became very successful, it’s because everybody could play. Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones –all of the guys that came up from that era, they could play and they’re all before me. You get to the 70’s and you have the Elton John’s and so on – they could all play and all the musicianship was at a very high level.

These guys all wanted to get better and the quality of musicianship was better. You never had somebody who just sat down by himself and put the whole thing together and suddenly made $50 million dollars off of one song. You can’t tell somebody who just made $50 million dollars that he needs to learn something; especially if he’s really young. If he’s older than sure, I want to learn something every day of my life. There is no motivation to learn and expand.

Especially if you have a guy coming out of the ghetto who has never had anything his whole life. He’s growing up poor and he didn’t think there was anything for him except for a little 9-5 job. Now suddenly he gets a lot of money and maybe there was no father figure. It’s a bad cycle and something like that is very common in hip-hop. You have a lot of guys that come from a poor background in the ghetto and suddenly they have a lot of money and a lot of power. They weren’t raised or taught right and now they’re rich and powerful. That’s a lot of our business right now.

In a sense it’s kind of like payback for all of the years that black musicians were dogged. On the other hand, it’s affecting the overall part of the business and it’s affecting the younger musicians coming up. There isn’t an opportunity for them to really learn their craft. Economics has to do with it too because there are no clubs where everybody could go play. I believe it comes down to do you want to learn and if you want to learn, you go out and find it. There is obviously a lack of motivation for these kids because they want to be Eminem and make that money. Why bother learning music, I’ll just get some beats and learn how to rap.

It’s not a good thing. There are bright spots in the business; you just have to kick the way you think and you can’t think the way it was, because the way it was doesn’t exist anymore. It’ll never be like that again anyways. You have to keep re-evaluating your goals. Whether it’s producing in music or not, you just have to look harder to find someone like a Tesa Ruiz. Because as I said, that’s not the norm, not even in country music - there’s that exceptional talent that comes along but it’s not there anymore. The motivation in country is to get some big boobs and put some blonde hair on with a short dress and that will get you over, no matter what you sing like.

Interview: Will definitely get into that as well. However I do have something else I want to get your take on. You mentioned the music being good and successful when its song based. In hip-hop, it wasn’t about guys in just getting on stage and acting like thugs. Then again, one of the largest and most praised pieces in hip-hop history is Dr. Dre, The Chronic. That album is about as vulgar as a project in hip-hop can get. What’s your take on that? You praised Dr. Dre earlier, so how do you spin that differently?

Ted Perlman: Well I love that album and I worked with Dr. Dre on the [Burt] Bacharach album that we won a Grammy for.  I’ve worked with Dr. Dre and he’s very musical. He’s really aware of a lot of different styles. On The Chronic, that was “Nuthin’ but a ‘G Thang baby, death row is the label that pays me” – I remember that because they sampled Leon Haywood. That came from a guy named Leon Haywood who is a great musician and is kind of like a Barry White orchestra, national sounding records.  They sampled all of that.

That was really cool for a lot of musicians that got sampled because they made a lot of money. Leon Haywood made tons of money from that Dr. Dre record because it was very successful. [Dr.] Dre was in a band before NWA and it was like a show band. There are pictures of it online; he was in a band with a friend of mine. And they all look yellow, red and so on, very stylistic. They weren’t gangster at all. It was something like a [Las] Vegas show band.

And then all of a sudden they put on Chicago White Sox hats and they changed the language. That’s what they had to do to get over. Lady Gaga couldn’t get anywhere - she was writing songs, playing piano and performing and nobody paid attention to her until she stuck some three sizes too big hair on and went completely outrageous.

With [Dr.] Dre and hip-hop, in order to get where they wanted to go, they had to get more hardcore. They weren’t hardcore from the beginning; [not until] NWA came around. The “bitches and hoes” stuff, that entire gangster rap, at the time, it wasn’t the prevalent thing in music so it didn’t bother me. It was like okay cool, like Lenny Bruce saying “fuck this and fuck that”, or Richard Pryor saying the “N” word and “motherfucker”, it didn’t mean anything because there was other stuff around. You had Richard Pryor but then you had Bill Cosby and it was balanced.

Gangster rap came in and the thing that was really bad was that it dominated everything and there was no room for anything else. That’s the bad thing. When one style of music dominates everything, it’s really bad and the music struggles. Music should be pop based, and it should have reggae and reggaeton, salsa and it should have European dance music, country music, the blues, rock and roll, soft rock, hard rock, grunge, heavy metal – all of these things should be able to co-exist and none of them should be the dominant force, but hip hop took over for ten years and we had nothing else doing really good except “yo bitch motherfucker.” That’s really bad.

I think we’re more balanced now because a lot of the hip-hop artists have moved off. [Someone like] Jay-Z, it’s more highly developed hip-hop in other words. It’s not gangster rap but you don’t find too many guys like that. You got Lil Wayne and [he’s] in jail (laughs).

Interview: As mentioned, you won a Grammy for the work you did with Burt Bacharach and Dr. Dre. Tell us more about the work you did with Dr. Dre.

Ted Perlman: That was a really great record. It started with [Dr.] Dre and his beats, I sat down with Burt [Bacharach] and we started cutting them up and moving them around. Burt Bacharach started writing these songs and we put music to it. It just developed like that. In the beginning, it was just some drumbeats. All the people aware of music would love Burt Bacharach. The first record I heard was “Walk on By”, Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick. Even on a little radio, that music sounded so good because Burt [Bacharach] was cool. Even though it was traditional instruments like the cello, the piano and the orchestra, there was always something unique about everything he wrote. He did the Bobby Vinton, “Blue on Blue”, those songs are cool and the rhythms are cool. The way Burt writes his music isn’t like anybody else.

Even all through the years from that stuff to the stringer things like “Raindrops” and amazing things like “Alfie” – he’s the guy who’s done so many things like “On my Own” with Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald. All through the years, all that music is valid and it’s all great and it’s different.

On this album at this time, except for one song with Rufus Wainwright, most of it is instrumental so we really stretched on this. It really was a wonderful thing that they [Grammy’s] acknowledged the brilliance of this guy. Even to this day, he’s always looking forward – this guy never looks back. All the great things he’s done, he doesn’t live on it because he goes forward. Working with Burt Bacharach is like going to the Burt Bacharach College of music. I love it because I understand music and what he does, he loves working with me and it’s amazing. The people I worked with Burt Bacharach, we worked with Brian Wilson, we worked with Elvis Costello, we worked with Phil Ramone – we always had somebody really cool with us.

[Dr.] Dre, he’s always working with somebody. He’s never the snobby type who feels he doesn’t have to do anything. And that’s great because George Burns was always working. I worked with Bob Hope when he was 90 and he was just as interested in making people laugh at 90 as he was when he was 20. That’s great and whether it’s an actor, a musician, a singer, an artist, a journalist, an author – whatever your doing as you get older, you still want to strive for excellence.

Dan Rather, I’m sure if he didn’t get kicked off he’d still be working hard to do the news.  Look at Larry King – that’s the way I want to go out; like Larry King, George Burns and Bob Hope – I want to be working.

Interview: That’s the right way to carry a career, to see it through to the end. One of the names that you’ve worked with that we haven’t talked about yet is Mariah Carey.

 Ted Perlman: I played the national anthem for Mariah Carey in the Adam Sandler “Zohan” [You Don’t Mess with the Zohan] movie. I played the piano version of the national anthem and at the end of the movie, she just sings it acapella. It was pretty cool to spend the whole day playing the national anthem for Mariah Carey. That was great and pretty cool.

Mariah [Carey] used to sing background in my brother’s band in Long Island years ago. She’s one of the most amazing singers that have ever been born. She’s the real deal. She does a lot of beat based stuff now.

Whitney Houston was the same thing – when I worked with her when she was really young, she was unbelievable. She comes from that background. Her mother Cissy Houston used to work with Elvis [Presley]. Whitney [Houston] had that inspiration and that’s her mother singing on “In the Ghetto” and that’s also Whitney Houston’s mother singing on Aretha Franklin’s “Ain’t No Way.” Whitney came along and she’s the real deal.

These people I’ve worked with like that, these are really great singers. My wife Peggi [Blu] comes from that same era. The only difference is that Peggi never had that big, number one record. Peggi [Blu] remains one of the most famous, unknown people in the world because she’s worked with Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, and Bob Dylan so she’s had records, she’s been on TV shows and she can sing like Patti LaBelle. She’s in the same league of Patti LaBelle, Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight.

I’ve just been fortunate to work with great singers. That’s why I can do all these different styles because if I get a great singer, I’m a hero. I know how to make the music that just makes them sound great. None of the records that I’ve made share the same style because it’s all based on who the singer is. It’s not like some produced records that sound the same with a different singer. All of my records are different because it’s all about the singer.

Tesa’s record doesn’t sound like stuff I’ve done for rock bands or anybody. It’s really a partnership with the singer in everything we do. It’s not about me just producing and the singer just sings. It’s a real partnership. If the singer is great like a Tesa Ruiz, I can just put this music on that makes them sound great. It surrounds them and makes the whole thing work. That’s my gift, like the hands of All-State; if the singer is right in the middle of my hands, I can just make this music for them.

Interview: You’ve alluded to it a few times, the “real deal” singer that comes along like a Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston – do you think Tesa Ruiz is in that same category?

Ted Perlman: Oh yes, totally. In country music, you have Reba McIntyre, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton who are the older ones and the newer ones like Martina McBride, Wynonna Judd, Carrie Underwood and Tesa Ruiz. Shania Twain wasn’t a great singer but she’s a great stylist. Dolly Parton is an unbelievable singer, so from Shania Twain to Dolly Parton, Tesa Ruiz is right there. She’s got the gift. The thing that makes it more amazing is that she’s just this unknown find. It’s like finding gold in the ground. It’s a real natural talent. She didn’t learn it from somebody showing her how to sing; it’s like a Susan Boyle and that’s the only thing I can compare it to. Thank God Tesa Ruiz is better looking than Susan Boyle (laughs).

It’s all about discovering that unknown talent that nobody knew about. It’s a pure, God given talent. Like we said, every once in a while somebody comes along that has that gift. Whether it’s a Kelly Clarkson or an artist of any style of music, they come along out of nowhere and there just exceptional - - that is Tesa Ruiz.

Tesa Ruiz is as pretty as any of those singers that I’ve worked with. She’s got “it.” She doesn’t just sing, she sings the song to you. You don’t just hear her, you can feel her. It’s surprising that when I met her, I was like wow this girl is great. The first question everybody says is “where have you been?” she’s just been doing what she’s doing – raising a family and being a mommy.

It’s such a great story. It’s a feel good story. It’s like Susan Boyle or Justin Bieber; where did they come from? Someone just picked them up off the internet. Finding a talent, the non-traditional way is exciting to me.  Wait until you hear “Beautiful” – the first of many singles from Tesa Ruiz…

Interview: I really appreciate your time Ted. Tesa is an exceptional talent and we’re going to end it on that note. Do you have any last words?

Ted Perlman: I’m honored to be working with Tesa Ruiz and her husband Mike, who was introduced to us by her manager Julian Williams [of Enterprise Management Group].  When I worked with Whitney Houston, she was 17 and everything just worked. Within a year, she just exploded and I think that’s what’s going to happen with Tesa Ruiz. Everything is in place and she’s been doing this for a long time. Sometimes when you keep on pushing something, it works. You run into somebody or something and the whole planetary system aligns and goes “whoosh“.  That’s what we’re going to see with Tesa Ruiz. Everything has been easy and not the normal channels. I think she’s going to be huge and it’s going to be wonderful to see because she’s a really great person and you’re not going to see her on TMZ and she’s not going to be in rehab. She’s going to be on TV, in the movies, in the concert halls and she’s going to have a wonderful career. I’m just proud to be apart of it.

 Keep up with Ted Perlman at his MySpace, www.myspace.com/tedperlman

[Action!]

I think I would get along with him quite a bit.  Based on this interview we share very similar opinion music and the industry.  Take for example this point which I try to hammer away when people complain about Southern music,

Gangster rap came in and the thing that was really bad was that it dominated everything and there was no room for anything else. That’s the bad thing. When one style of music dominates everything, it’s really bad and the music struggles. Music should be pop based, and it should have reggae and reggaeton, salsa and it should have European dance music, country music, the blues, rock and roll, soft rock, hard rock, grunge, heavy metal – all of these things should be able to co-exist and none of them should be the dominant force, but hip hop took over for ten years and we had nothing else doing really good except “yo bitch motherfucker.” That’s really bad.

I think we’re more balanced now because a lot of the hip-hop artists have moved off. [Someone like] Jay-Z, it’s more highly developed hip-hop in other words. It’s not gangster rap but you don’t find too many guys like that. You got Lil Wayne and [he’s] in jail (laughs).

Seems like a great dude.

[BOX5 the best poster on this site yell]

I think I would get along with him quite a bit.  Based on this interview we share very similar opinion music and the industry.  Take for example this point which I try to hammer away when people complain about Southern music,

Gangster rap came in and the thing that was really bad was that it dominated everything and there was no room for anything else. That’s the bad thing. When one style of music dominates everything, it’s really bad and the music struggles. Music should be pop based, and it should have reggae and reggaeton, salsa and it should have European dance music, country music, the blues, rock and roll, soft rock, hard rock, grunge, heavy metal – all of these things should be able to co-exist and none of them should be the dominant force, but hip hop took over for ten years and we had nothing else doing really good except “yo bitch motherfucker.” That’s really bad.

I think we’re more balanced now because a lot of the hip-hop artists have moved off. [Someone like] Jay-Z, it’s more highly developed hip-hop in other words. It’s not gangster rap but you don’t find too many guys like that. You got Lil Wayne and [he’s] in jail (laughs).

Seems like a great dude.

^^^^ay you quoted exactly what i was gonna quote,and this shit is so on point,but again a equal been saying it for years,but you know how it is,it takes somebody "famous" to say it for sheeple to listen yell

[da chronic]

i think its the first i read an interview of someone asked about dr dre, and it doesn't have the word "perfectionist" in it.

[Lunatic]

^ He DEFINITELY praised Dre a lot though. And you can tell it comes from someone who doesn't LOVE hip hop lol

[Action!]

His critiques seem justified.

[Gamestarr]

yo bitch motherfucker. I would have lmao'd if I had heard him say that.

A great interview. Thanks for postin it!

Didnt know who he was but it seems he really is somebody in the music

[David Gutterman]

Cool stuff good interview, thanx

[Nima - Dubcnn.com]

That was a good interview.

[Lunatic]

That was a good interview.

Thank you Nima!

[Dre-Day]

Dre should keep it 100% original, cause he's giving away too much money on royalties due to samples