‘The best gift my mother gave me was a peaceful death’: Linda Perry on cancer, abuse and her powerful writings | Music

WWhen Linda Perry agreed to let director Don Hardy film her at work in his studio, she had no idea what she was getting into. Perry – a singer, producer and songwriter – has been Hardy’s partner since he scored his 2020 film, Citizen Penn, about Sean Penn’s humanitarian work in Haiti. If nothing else, Perry hopes he can use some of Hardy’s content on his Instagram page: “So he just started showing up and I forgot he was there.”

A few weeks later, Hardy told Perry that he had edited the 30-minute footage and showed it to his friends. He said: ‘We think there’s a great movie to be made here,'” he recalls. “So I said: ‘Okay, go ahead and don’t talk to me about it. Then things started to go well for me. “

In late 2022, Perry was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent two surgeries early the following year. Hardy’s film, titled Linda Perry: Let It Die Here, shows her a week later, happily walking into her studio carrying two surgical drains – she calls them “blood blisters” – so she can work on a film. Then, while Perry was recovering from his surgery, his elderly mother, who had physically and emotionally abused him as a child, fell ill and died three months later.

Perry is still struggling with her mother’s abuse. “He hurt me a lot, he hurt me a lot,” he remembers now. Even so, he took her to her home for her last months, placing her in the bed next to him. Perry said that he and his siblings always “feared the day my mother would die, because she would send us to hell.” This is sad, but also beautiful: the best gift my mother gave me was a peaceful death.”

Perry, who rose to fame in the early 1990s as the lead singer of the queer group 4 Non Blondes, and later wrote songs for Christina Aguilera, Pink, Courtney Love and Gwen Stefani, is speaking via video from her Los Angeles home. In his trademark bandana and vintage hat, a teardrop etched under his left eye, Perry has a nutty charm and a menacing charisma that would be terrifying if he weren’t so relaxed and taciturn. When she was a child, she said: “I learned from my mother that showing your emotions is weak, but I did the opposite of what I used to do because I felt sorry for myself.”

If there was a suggestion, after Perry’s initial brush with success, that he was comfortable working in the shadows and using his skills to benefit others, he is now throwing caution to the wind and stepping back. Last year, they also produced 4 Non Blondes to perform at the BottleRock festival in Napa Valley, California. “I had one experience,” he says of the reunion. “I said I don’t want to play any songs on (their solo album) Big, Better, Faster, More! except for Train and (their biggest single) What’s Up because I don’t agree with the other songs anymore. I told the band: ‘I want to play something new.’ So I wrote the album’s precious material based on what I want to hear when I go to a festival.” The new album is coming out early next year.

Perry has also released her third solo LP, her first in 27 years. Let Us Be Here is a beautiful, moving and unflinching work about the loss of her mother and the struggles that came with it. Songs include I Am Daughter, Now That She’s Gone, Liberation and What Lies With You, in which he calls his mother “an evil muse”. Then there are the releases, which have been partially released in June. As well as showcasing Perry’s songwriting skills as she sparred with Dolly Parton and Kate Hudson, she was seen hosting an event at the South By Southwest festival for EqualizeHer, the organization she founded to promote gender equality in the music industry. Early in her career, Perry was denied a producer’s credit on What’s Up, the song that sent 4 Non Blondes stratospheric. He stopped it then but swore it would never happen again.

But Let Us Here is no rock’n’roll hagiography. This is a link to the video where Perry enters the cameras in his private time, struggling with what seems to be artistic difficulties – several times, he questions who he is and what his purpose is when he is not creating for others – or dealing with his illness and his mother.

Although we never meet Perry’s mother, she only looks at what is happening as the source of her daughter’s pain. When Perry was 16 years old and living in San Diego, he attempted suicide by overdosing on his mother’s prescription medication; he only survived because his mother’s doctor reduced the dose without knowing that he would reduce himself. Another near-death moment occurred when Perry took acid and crystal meth and collapsed in a house, miraculously living to tell the story. Eventually, Perry’s brother John intervened and took his sister in to live with him. “I think that’s all I wanted,” Perry said. “(I wanted) somebody to see me because I didn’t think I was there.”

There is a scene in Hardy’s script where Perry is caught dancing hysterically in his bedroom to Supertramp’s Take the Long Way Home. As she walks, Perry reveals how she hasn’t danced since she was a kid, a time when “I didn’t care if I died…I just wanted to get out all the time”, and then breaks into a deep sob.

“I don’t know what happened,” he says now. “It triggered something in me because there was a time when I was listening to Supertramp all the time and he used to make me smile… I have a real life problem. I don’t even remember now, I feel like I’m dirty. When I watched the movie later – honestly, I could cry right now – I was, like: ‘Holy shit?’

Perry paused to collect himself. He says that when he watched the final documentary with Hardy, it crossed his fingers. “It was like watching a horror movie. But I think the movie helped me fix it and see what I didn’t know I was doing. Like, I was hurting myself. The movie was therapeutic for me, but it’s so embarrassing and raw and I can’t believe I let this out into the world.”

Through his solo work and the reformation of 4 Non Blondes, Perry may be putting himself on stage again, but he has not stopped working with other artists: His recent collaborators include Paris Jackson, Mike Campbell, formerly of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, and a “wonderful girl” called SophiaTreadway.

Perry admits to being a workaholic: as well as writing and producing for others, working on her own projects and promoting gender equality in music, she runs a record label and manages artists. He recently took a month off for the first time in years and traveled to the California Valley town of Ojai, where he sleeps, eats, rides and sleeps. “I found it very interesting in a strange way, because I realized that I’m very difficult when I’m not doing something. I don’t know if I want to be alone all the time. Like many people who have pain, I’m afraid to be alone because I don’t want to go back there. Creating and working with music is my support and it’s where I feel safe.”

There is another interesting scene in Let It Die Here that Perry is worried about but proud of. While on a photoshoot on a windy day in the southern California desert, she found herself “getting mad at the wind because it was taking so much out of me”, and so, with the camera rolling, she tore off her shirt to reveal her surgical scars. He said, “ad-lib, another time to ‘get worse.’ There were things I didn’t know I could reveal, but I felt strong when I did.”

Later, we see him walking into the distance “so I’m about to go where I don’t know. Everything I’ve been through will change my life forever. Life and death happened right now, so let’s see what happens from here.”

The Let It Die Here album is out now. Notes Let It Die Apa shows at Olympic Studios, London, 21 June. 4 Play Non Blondes Shepherd’s Bush Empire, Londonon 24 June.

In the UK, the domestic violence helpline is 0808 2000 247, or visit Mother’s Aid. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In Australia, the national domestic violence helpline is on 1800 737 732. Other international support options can be found through befrienders.org