When it comes to figures in pop music, few have lived as an extraordinary life as Peter Asher. He was born into a well-to-do family — his father a doctor, his mother a musician. His sister Jane, a successful actress and model, dated Paul McCartney, who moved into the idyllic family home. Peter, a burgeoning musician himself, formed the British pop duo Peter & Gordon with schoolfriend Gordon Waller. After a handful of hits, Peter moved to behind the scenes, first doing A&R for Apple Records, then producing records and managing the careers of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. There is little doubt Peter Asher: Everywhere Man, the documentary about the man and everywhere he’s been, lives up to its title.
The film, produced and directed by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, starts out with Peter and Steve Martin luxuriating on a white sofa set in a posh (presumably) Hollywood Hills home. They jam a little on guitar and banjo before Martin praises Asher, who smiles and blushes as we’re transported to a place called Bimbo’s 365 Club in San Francisco with “Peter Asher” on the lighted marquee. Eric Idle makes his introductions followed by a litany of famous faces uttering the name “Peter Asher”. The stage is set as the man himself takes the audience sitting before him and the one watching the film on a journey of his life.
As we learn, he started out as a child actor, along with his sister Jane and Clare — three redheaded Ashers or, as local oboe student and Beatles producer George Martin affectionately called them, “The Carrots of Wimpole Street”. Once Paul McCartney moved in, Peter’s musical ambitions were inspired. McCartney and John Lennon apparently spent time writing songs in the music room of the Asher household. This led to one fortuitous opportunity for Peter to hear an early version of “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” among others. One of the others called “A World Without Love” caught Peter’s ear. It turns out the song was incomplete and more or less rejected by Lennon. Hearing Asher tell the story of what happened next is the stuff of legend. In short, “A World Without Love” would go on to become Peter and Gordon’s first and only Number One single.
For the next four years, Peter and Gordon rode the British Invasion wave right into the London underground and the Indica art gallery. It’s after Peter and Gordon “drifted apart,” as the film’s subject puts it, that a major shift occured and Peter Asher’s affluence, intellect, and business acumen were put to the test. It took a phone call from singer Paul Jones to put him in the producer’s chair. “I’m very grateful to him for that,” Asher says. From there, we find out why. In the meantime, the opportunity of heading up A&R for Apple, the Beatles’ record label, presented a wealth of possibilities. One of those was a young, unknown singer from America named James Taylor. The association between Taylor and Asher, as it is revealed, would change the course of both men’s lives.
The Beatles’ breakup and the end of Apple, along with the suicide of Asher’s father, might have altered a lesser man’s plans, but the ever-resourceful Peter Asher overcame business and personal loss by going to Los Angeles and building James Taylor’s career. Signing with Warner Brothers and putting a band together, Asher and Taylor molded what would become the Grammy-nominated Sweet Baby James, a defining record for the producer-manager, the singer-songwriter, and even all the musicians who played on it.
The film isn’t bashful in suggesting a new kind of rock, in which Asher was a major player, emerged at the dawn of the early 70s. Once Taylor made the cover of Time magazine, citing this new direction, Asher started scouting out new talent. One was Kate Taylor, James’ younger sister. Another one was Linda Ronstadt. Asher initially felt that because both singers were on similar paths, Taylor was the one he would back. As we find out, Kate Taylor’s musical career was short-lived (though she would revisit music years later), which lead to Asher becoming Ronstadt’s manager and producer. This is when Peter Asher truly became the Everywhere Man.
According to longtime friend and musician Daniel Kortchmar (the man responsible for connecting James Taylor with Peter), “everything changed” when Asher started producing records and tapping into numerous songwriters and musicians to support Ronstadt. As a musician, singer, songwriter, and performer himself, Asher’s instincts, coupled with the trust he earned from all the artists he worked with, placed him in a distinguishable and powerful place among the music elite. When Linda Ronstadt won a Grammy for “Blue Bayou” in 1977, she thanked only one person: Peter Asher.
Ronstadt, who suffers from progressive supranuclear palsy, was able to participate in the film, as well as most everyone still around who, at one point or another, played a part in the Peter Asher story, including his two sisters, Taylor, Kortchmar, Carole King, Patti Boyd, and many others (with only a couple of old sound-bytes from Paul McCartney) . At various intervals, Peter is either talking with Martin or Idle, continuing his story at Bimbo’s, or showing his daughter Victoria around his old haunts of London.
Not everyone in Asher’s life shared in the accolades. His beloved first wife Betsy Doster, who passed away in 2018, struggled with depression and drugs — the latter something Ronstadt and Asher both admit was “fun” at the time. Divorcing in 1977, Asher carried on unabated, winning Grammys, remarrying, having a daughter, and producing records for Diana Ross, Cher, Neil Diamond, and Elton John.
What may serve as the most poignant part of the film is the reunion Asher had with Gordon Waller, another one deprived of the fame and glory his one-time partner enjoys. In archival interview clips, Waller freely takes the blame for ending the group due to ego and lifestyle differences. Apparently, the music was never an issue. Still, it took a benefit concert in 2005 to bring Waller and Asher back together on stage for the first time in over 35 years. More shows followed until Waller died in 2009. After seeing the short segments of their performances — with one being an incredible simulation — those famous harmonies stood up to the ravenous threat of age and decades passed.
As we see toward toward the film’s end, Asher, now in his 80s, has little problem looking back and paying tribute to his past, especially in the 1960s when Peter and Gordon were part of the hit parade. As the camera leaves San Francisco and the beatific sounds of “A World Without Love” fade away, you can take refuge in knowing that one man’s life often resonates with rich and positive results beyond the bounds of his own inner circle. Such is the life we see and experience in Peter Asher: Everywhere Man.
~ Shawn Perry
