Chords for Linda Perry Bio 1 of 4

[Am] _ Take a good look at this face because if you're a fan of Pink, _ [Dm] Christina Aguilera, or Gwen Stefani,
you might not know [F] that who you've been really [Am] listening to is this woman, Linda Perry.
From the chorus, it goes [C] right into, there's no pick [Am] up.
One of the hottest songwriter-producers in pop music [G] today.
Sorry, sorry, I keep having [Am] that spot.
Linda has worked with Ziggy Marley, Ben Yellin, Sierra Swan, Dixie Chicks, Kalis, Fisher Spooner,
Lisa Marie Presley, Enrique Iglesias, Vanessa Carlton.
[Dm] She doesn't change who they are, she just takes them to that best place,
the place that they should [Am] be anyway, but might not have gotten there on their own without her help.
[C] Linda Perry doesn't [Am] just help careers, she transforms them.
_ [F]
With [E] Perry's Beautiful, [Am] Christina Aguilera went from pop-tart to pop-diva, [C] virtually overnight.
[Em] People were like, oh my god, this is the same person who's done all these other songs,
[E] and it showed this additional side of Christina that I think a lot of people had possibly not been aware of.
Pink wasn't a household name until Perry's Get the Party Started pushed her over the top,
making her album an international bestseller.
[Eb] Misunderstood did incredibly [G] well, it's up to about 12 million records around the world now.
[Bb] And when Gwen Stefani went solo, [C] Linda helped her pen her [G] breakthrough tune. _ _
_ _ _ Linda's gift as a songwriter stems from her ability to [Bbm] express [N] universal truths or universal feelings in a three-minute pop song.
I know that's what every lyric writer and every songwriter strives to be, but she really has a knack for it.
It isn't just a knack, Linda's proving she has what it takes to make it in the male-dominated music industry.
You have to do this guy, it'll be all_ _
_ _ _ _ There are a lot of successful female songwriters out there,
there just aren't a lot of successful female songwriter-producers.
Did we get a confirmation on what day Christina is going to come back in next week?
I've been in this business for 37 years and I've never seen a [Bb] female producer survive more than one [Bm] or two tracks usually.
To be quite honest, I'm not thrilled about [Gm] the direction they're going with the album cover.
But surviving is what Linda Perry is all about.
How's your music doing?
[F] Doing real fine, I'm waiting on that big break.
_ Her [Gm] journey's been directly shaped by a painful childhood and adolescence.
I need a break.
[Eb] _
I was depressed, I was [D] suicidal, I was sick, [Gm] I was never good enough, I was [C] invisible.
_ You know, so all these [Gm] feelings come up.
And it's [C] not pity me, you know, because all of it, [Bb] I wouldn't change for one [E] second.
Linda Perry was born April 15th, 1965 in Springfield, Massachusetts,
and raised in San Diego, California, [G] the youngest of six children.
As a toddler, Linda's life was threatened by her failing kidneys.
From [E] nine months to two years, I keep a watch on her, you know, and I say, something is not right.
I just remember we went to the hospital a lot, and I just [G] kept asking, what's wrong with Linda, what's wrong with Linda?
And every time she would come home, we would have to take her back again.
That young, you don't understand the seriousness of illness.
[E] But later on, we understood just how bad and how sick she was.
Corrective surgery a few months shy of Linda's third birthday resulted [G] in complications.
_ Doctors predicted that she wouldn't make a full recovery for almost two years, if at all.
Most [E] kids that have to go through that trauma develop, you know, a shyness or going into _ seclusion and so forth, and she wasn't like that.
But Linda [G] rebounded well.
She was energetic, strong-willed, curious, and aggressive.
Everything that we did, she would just want to do.
She just [E] needed to kind of compete and find her niche and [G] her claim in the family.
Daddy would just take us to the park, and play baseball all [B] the time.
And Linda would be right there, you know, if she'd have a glove on, she'd be a catcher or [Am] something, or she'd be out in the outfield.
She would try to [G] _ show that she could do exactly what [E] we would do, you know, that she was just as good as us. _
[Am] So she was really feisty.
[Em] At such a young age, [G] Linda Perry's fighting spirit was already beginning to show.
Her earliest passion was music.
Raised by a Brazilian mother and Portuguese father, Linda was surrounded by music.
_ So baby, go down.
_ But her biggest musical influence was her brother John, a gifted guitarist.
I idolized him.
Idolized him completely.
And I thought, I'm going to really start practicing guitar because I want to be like my brother.
We didn't take lessons.
We just played [N] everything by ear.
That's pretty much how Linda got her start as well, just by watching me and wanting to play those songs that I was playing.
Linda always used to lock herself in the bathroom.
And she always used to just go in there by herself with the guitar and with the tape player.
And she would just start singing and playing.
[Gm] No one could have guessed that Linda was just a few years shy of filling much bigger venues.
But to get there, she'd have to survive the turbulence of her teen years.
I needed an understanding of who I was because something was happening to me.
What was happening was Linda's new [C] understanding of her own sexuality.
It's like when you [G] should be making out with boys and [F] doing all this stuff.
And I just wanted to make [G] out with girls.
This realization soon grew into an unbearable [Gm] burden.
[C] I was so devastated with this [G] feeling and so [Gm] just _ [F] _ _ confused.
_ [Dm] _
And _ [C] I literally came home [Dm] one day, went into my mom's bathroom, [C] grabbed that bottle of tranquilizers, [Am] downed them, laid on the bed.
And I just in stereo just heard [A] this, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.
Only the low potency of the prescription saved Linda from becoming another teenage suicide statistic.
It [Am] kind of changed my life.
I just [D] went for it after that.
I was like, you know, screw it.
I have a crush on her.
I'm going to hit on her and see what happens.
And then sure enough, the girl that I hit on liked me too. _ _
So it all came better.
Now look at me.
I love women. _
_ I am a dog when it comes to women, I tell you.
[N]
Coming up.
It sounded like it hit.
She looked like a star.
It was great.
[Bb] When Women on Top returns. _
_ _ _ [Ebm] _ _ _ _ _